A unit of Lasting Forests
Sustained forests; sustained profits
evolving since March 30, 1999

of an Alternative Wildlife Resource Management

Toward a Satisfactory Condition

Has anyone noticed that while some things, like those technological, seem to get better, other things seem to be getting worse? The CIA has been ridiculed, the air transportation system is not as convenient or dependable as it one was, more than half of new marriages fail, and private businesses out-compete the post-office monopoly. The U.S. Forest Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, seems to many people to be in trouble like other natural resource and "environmental" agencies. Once the paragon of federal agencies, it is now under attack for many reasons such as flawed planning, staff conflicts, failed accountability (recent GAO report), unresolved regional differences, and failures to use the knowledge base that they have built over the years. A book, Reforming the Forest Service (O'Toole) has been written as if the need was real and the effort and pain of such writing was worth it.

These observations connote a problem in the agency, but it is only one agency and some of the same apparent failures are common to related state and federal agencies and to organizations and corporations as well. We cannot solve all of the social problems, maybe none of them, but we believe that we perceive a situation and that by analyzing it and applying some creative effort, perhaps a solution or some tentative better condition can be created. We call that a satisfactory situation. First we discuss the U.S. Forest Service, hopeful that the perceptions are true and that if so that they may be analogous to the situation in other agencies. If so, then maybe the means to arrive at a satisfactory condition can also be used. Perhaps synergism can be gained in a small group of similar actions to achieve the new condition.

After years of spiraling decent in delays, suits, frustrations, counter-claims, and conflict among practitioners and analysts, the difficulties of decision making within public natural resource management (particularly the U.S. Forest Service) have reached a level at which further change seems intolerable. The rise of environmental interest, while favorable, has had negative unavoidable consequences within the realm of management within which forests, rangelands, the wildlife resource, fisheries, streamside zones, and soil are the major topics. I now believe that we have ... a situation. Herein, is an analysis of part of the situation which may prepare the grounds for describing and implementing a way of significantly improving the way natural resource decisions influence the creation of new, more desirable conditions. (I am heading for a description, in subsequent documents, of a means to reach a satisfactory condition.

Fig. 1. The system of general systems theory. Feedback can be applied to all components of the system. Feedforward is the concept of using predictions and estimates of the future to improve current decisions. The context specifies, temporarily, the limits of the subsystem under design or operation.

Hopefully, the last statement has not been "leading." We have been held for years by the wisdom of the technical literature analyzing decisions. It varies, but usually has the elements of general systems theory. Typically there are objectives, facts and figures are gathered, they are processed in several ways (from very simple to complex computer means), and in some instant (the tap of the gavel or the mailing of a registered letter) the decision is made. There may be feedback that improves the decision when next made. The structure of the general system (with refinements) is as shown in Figure 1.

The general system has served well and decision theory is well developed. Formerly an advocate, I now believe, however, that classic decision theory is inappropriate for public wildland-related natural resource decisions. While there are similarities between classic decisions and the events within the public so-called "decision arena", I now believe the differences are so great that an alternative analysis is needed.

The Collective Situation

Herein, I' trying to describe the conditions for what was once the public wildland-related natural resource decision. While it has some of the parts of the above system (the Fig. 1 diagram) is is largely a description of what I perceive to be the context of most public events, these events said (erroneously) to be decision-making events. I call these times or events situations.

Classical decisions are made by a person or a small group. There is a decision maker, an objective, a time, a place, limits, and fairly clear objectives (though that is often discussed and debated). Current public decision making has few of these characteristics and now has many other characteristics never addressed (to my knowledge) by decision analysts.

The following components (with the traditional caveats about overlap and limits) create a condition, a collective situation, in which classic decision theory has no meaning and little relevance to significant public wildland decisions:

1. There are now many more educated people in society (than to base date comparisons of 1949-50 and the multiple use, sustained yield, and planning legislation was passed by Congress)
2. There are now more poorly-educated people in the US society (solipsistic, a-scientific, folklorists, metaphysical)
3. Many believe that every opinion (studied or not) is equally important or valid following the peculiar logic that if every person is equal then every opinion of such people is of equal value)
4. There are fewer people in society with outdoor experience (any amount more than weekend outings or a summer camp)
5. Fewer people have farm experience (less than 30% of the US population is classed as "rural"(a little of such experience might transfer as forestry experience)
6. There persists the flawed logic of the masses: public forestry is the same as private forestry
7. Few "public participants" realize that if a system has 7 components (and all natural systems have more than this) and the decision makers are 0.90 sure of each part, then the chances of a correct outcome are 0.5. The demands for "good" decisions are exorbitant
8. Few people realize how many potential alternatives there are for every natural resource decision. The best place to put X probably has 10 elevation classes, 8 aspect classes, 4 slope classes, 4 landform classes, 2 nearness-to-stream classes, 4 nearness-to-road classes, and 4 soil/geology classes. The place must be decided from among 41,000 spots.
9. Few people realize that sequence is a major part of natural resource decisions. This involves permutations ... how many different ways (sequences) can things be done (like irrigating, fertilizing, and thinning). Seven components, for example, can be brought into a system or into a decision in 5,040 different sequences. The decision maker must select from among these. Usually "the best one" is desired.
10. Few people comprehend optimization, briefly the computer-based means to select the best point or condition from among millions of options. These processes have only been available since the mid-1940s. Some people demand their use; the majority are unaware of their existence, meaning, capabilities, or limits
11. Nowhere in society are planning horizons any longer than in natural resource management and decision making. Financial planning rarely exceeds 40 years; isotope half-life and nuclear energy waste disposal has not penetrated the national conscience; global warming remains too futuristic to contemplate. There may be evolutionary limits; ability of humans to deal with long time-frames has not been tested well for its survival value. (Until recent time, such long horizons have not existed; human longevity was less than 40 years.)
12. Because resource decisions in the public arena can be viewed as investments in the future (e.g., retaining old-growth forests, building dams, conserving soil for future farming), issues of rational investment are appropriate. The profound effect of the interest rate used in investment decisions for the long-term is well known. The proper procedure (or rate) for investment remains hotly contended. See Portney and Weyant 1999 Discounting and Intergenerational Equity.
13. If interest rates and procedures could be agreed upon as policy for public investments, over the long periods of natural resource investment, national policies distort the discount rates. Such rates, regardless of policy distortions, are conspicuously dynamic over the period of resource investments
14. There are more people with more leisure time than in the past (thus time to dabble in "public participation")
15. There is inconsistent and always temporary public participation (the discussion of the agencies and their agents is with a parade, maybe a crowd; the discussants are seldom the same)
16. There is dynamic (inconsistent?) agency policy
17. There is changing scientific knowledge, changing technology, and thus changing efficiencies (thus costs)
18. There are inconsistent agents (RIFs, lateral moves, career ladders, retirement options, relocations, etc.) to present a consistent proposal or set of premises and agreements if they exist
19. Getting elected officials with a 2-year electoral cycle to deal with problems beyond their election horizon is an obstacle, unresolved after two centuries,to improved natural resource management
20. Recently Society of American Foresters members testified before Congress on the inability of three selected members of that society to agree on resource plans and planning practices
21. There are masses with massive lack of knowledge about the" wilds"; even those with outdoor-recreation, farm, and forestry experience; even after improvements in biology, ecology, and environmental education
22. Individuals within "the public" as part of public participation policies have been asked to express opinions about topics (having given them less time than the average legislator gives or gets to spend on a vote)
23. Environmental impact analyses and assessments continue unabated even with well-recognized limitations (e.g., no mandate; no social consequences assessed; trivially limited sets of alternatives; and disregard for actual or likely budgetary limits and dynamics for the projects being evaluated). The public is unaware of the limitations, over-confident in the process
24. Notable scientific accomplishments and introductions to science have created in the general public an environment of excessive expectations for technology, resource manipulation, and data gathering
25. Science has been touted as the primary methodology for improved decision making but science itself is currently being openly criticized
26. Scientists, the community, have adopted an arch-conservative, risk-averse paradigm in the standards for confidence in their micro-environment, tightly-controlled experimental decision making. That paradigm has been taught and widely accepted and thus the general educated public now has excessively high, excessively costly, excessively delayed contributions of "science " to decisions.
27. The rise of globalization (e.g., T.L. Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree) expands the scope of almost every decision, not only within the US (e.g., the impact of changes in logging in the Pacific Northwest on lumber prices and supplies in the Southeast) but the world (e.g., the tax on cants sold in Japan related to timber harvest schedules affecting elk forage)
28. The slow increase in awareness (but an increase, nevertheless) relating to landscape ecology issues (i.e., generally the off-site but nearby consequences of local actions on public lands)
29. The rapid rise of committee-ism; no"one" decides; long delays; anonymity is gained; conservatism prevails; novel or singular ideas are dismissed (or never voiced because of the predetermined fate of such ideas)
30. There has been a concomitant rapid rise of litigious attitudes; many people and agencies are afraid, it seems, of being sued. The direct penalties are small; the costs and delays are enormous. Youthful enthusiasm and zeal for resource management, land, and the agency can be jailed by punitive law suits, often arranged by people without standing.
31. There remain very large but variable and unpredictable budgets. (money, like the sun powers ecosystems, powers all action on the land.) Delayed and unpredictable budgets (and frequently discontinued funding that prevents a project from achieving benefits for people) make every decision risky and potentially open to litigation, and failures common but not a fault of the agent or agency but the budget process itself) (Call it an "exogenous force")
32. There are many exogenous forces affecting every situation in which development is proposed or project contemplated. Trained and experienced people contemplate these as part of every decision. Few people in the general public now do so for some of the above-listed reasons. The forces include wildfire, storms, disease, insects, pollution (air and water), poaching, vandalism and theft
33. The Service and other public resource agencies are now in the grips of anarchists; the minority denies the rational democratic premise that after votes are taken, everyone tries to "go-along." The minority can prevent the views and conditions desired by the majority from being realized. This is a failure of the entire current democratic process and it is not limited to the US Forest Service. This needs to be made clear to the employees and the public. It is believed to be a crisis within the US sociopolitical system.

Rather than continuing to add to a long list of dimensions and developing an abstruse argument, I assert from years of experience and observation that most of the above items are true and that even if as many as half were flawed, the conclusion would still be the same. This conclusion is that we have a new situation and it is not subject to classical decision theory.

If two topics such as water and temperature were discussed (as they might relate to tree growth), then we could say that we are discussing a two-dimensional system. We could display it on a 2-dimensional piece of paper, a graph. If we discussed three factors (water, temperature, and light), we might imagine trees responding and being displayed within a box, a 3-dimensional space. The above dimensions of the situation suggest an n-dimensional or many-dimensional volume. It changes in time and differs depending on the region of the people being discussed. The area may change due to shifts in ownership, flooding, and wildfires. It is a changing, n-dimensional entity. Difficult to imagine, the situation can be pictured in an elementary way as an ever-changing, moving cloud or blob. Thinking about a three-dimensional thing is easy; four-dimensional thought is difficult; n-dimensional thought available to a limited few. The natural resource situation typically requires n-dimensional thought ... or aids to approximating it.

The weakness in the footing of the present procedures has been presented above to begin to understand why an alternative means is needed to arrive at a satisfactory condition within many public natural resource. The collective situation is the same throughout many resource agencies. The needs now are so different and great and the decision making process is so different from classical decision theory as to make it irrelevant. It is a general situation where current "public participation" in natural resource decisions is untenable; where alternative risk-taking takes on an imperative; where education for situations (not "more, general education") becomes required; and where computer aids are used to present alternative emergent situations.

Understanding the situation seems necessary. An alternative is to ignore the present situation and creatively develop a perfect one, then to compare the present to that one and make changes. That's a dream, ignoring the power moves within and outside of the agencies, ignoring the strongly held value-systems at work, and acting as if history has no meaning. A new condition can be created. I call it the satisfactory condition and I work with others on seeing it clearly and implementing it.

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Last revision July 21, 2000.