Public participation is rarely viewed as a two-way street. While area staff have objectives of informing the general public of opportunities provided on the area and throughout surrounding areas, they also hold that rules and regulations should be obeyed. That requires knowledge of them. The staff is aware of studies suggesting such knowledge is lacking over many areas. Efforts to educate users and visitors, at least minimally, is needed and users need to adopt a willingness to learn about the area and its rules. Many rules exist to assure safety, health, a pleasant experience, and high probability of later use.

Opportunities for use may be presented. Interpretive displays and projects will be directed specifically at achieving stated objectives, then at promoting behavioral change.

Literature, maps, and other media will be provided (typically at user costs).

The area will be provided with abundant, attractive, tasteful, information signs in context with local conditions and the desired image. If use increases, users will be required to gain a permit contingent upon knowledge of the area and conditions for its use.

The Guidance process is unique and reflects a potential turning point in natural resource management nationwide. The change has been prompted, necessitated by the failures seen in past planning efforts. In Guidance, emphasis is placed on citizens define the objectives. The managers, within an array of constraints, select the best possible ways to achieve these citizen-defined objectives, cost effectively. Citizens express desired conditions, managers seek to achieve them. The full power of the expert, the transdisciplinary team, and their technology can be brought to the problems presented by the area. The challenges for citizens are to state their objectives precisely; the challenges for managers are to achieve them, on and around the area, timely and cost effectively. Mixing objectives and actions among the groups in the past has resulted in conflicts, managers stymied, citizens unable to specify exact techniques, managers mistaking their personal objectives for citizens' objectives, and other problems. Many of these are solved by the Guidance procedures.

Not utopian, there is within the system an assumption that values can be gained; that a consensus, while desired, is not essential; that institutional arrangements can vary; that there will be conflict, but it can be minimized; and that change will occur. In fact, the utopian view, which provides no account of how we get from here to "there" (some general view of the distant desired future conditions), is replaced with a clear view of at least one way, the best one known, given the conditions and forces as we know them, to achieve that vision.

Literature