Future Forest Requirements

The traditional objectives for forest policy—ways of meeting future requirements, if you like—need to be reformulated, in my view, and some new ones need to be added.

First is the well-established objective of efficiency in growing, harvesting, transporting, processing, and marketing—of conducting forestry and managing forest industries according to the canons of engineering and economic efficiency. My main point here is that this objective is still an important one, a binding one on private enterprise, but that the framework within which it will operate in the future will have to change in certain respects. Generally speaking, these changes will be in the direction of environmental and social values, to which people now attach higher priority than ever before. For example, clear cutting on particular tracts will have to be judged not only against silvicultural and economic standards, but also in terms of public acceptability of the environmental effects. This means, of course, that people must be accurately informed by foresters, ecologists, planners, and others about the likely effects if they are to play their role intelligently. To its credit, the Forest Service has taken steps in this direction. I suspect—no, I am confident—that this is only one of many instances that will be coming along requiring that efficiency decisions be made within a somewhat different framework of factors to be considered. The industrial sector of forestry as well as the governmental should be ready for this and adapt to it rather than fight it.

Second, and related to the first, are the twin objectives of sustained yield and multiple use for forestry, born of the first conservation movement sixty and more years ago and now enshrined in forestry dogma as well as the statute books. I believe these objectives, these guiding principles, are still highly relevant and valid but need some careful restatement. Sustained yield is an incomplete concept and an uncertain guide to practical decisions unless the levels of management and yield of products and services are specified. These in turn depend heavily on the amount and kinds of investments in forest improvement programs, including tree planting, which this conference is celebrating. From now on forestry will want to aim not only for sustained yield of tangible products like lumber, and conventional services like outdoor recreation, but also for intangible and newly appreciated benefits like air purification, visual delight, and the sense of solitude.

The central idea of multiple use is still a good and useful idea, but it also needs careful restatement, without which it is incomplete and uncertain. In what specific instances is single use to be preferred over many uses, whether the single use is for products, recreation, genetic reserve, wilderness, or whatever? What should the criteria for determining single use forest areas be? Is non-use a legitimate use if someone has to plan and manage for it as is now typically the case? The multiple use concept could, to its advantage, be elaborated to include a planned sequence of single uses over time. For example, an area of mature trees could be harvested in a manner that would permit speedy restocking naturally or by planting or, more likely, by some combination of the two. This could be followed by a period of years when the area could be devoted to wildlife in a favorable habitat of bushes and new growth trees. Next in sequence could come a period when camping and hiking recreation would be the dominant use, with the trees taller and the ground more open. And finally the cycle could be completed with another round of timber harvesting. Thus, multiple use becomes a sequence of single uses, one following logically after another—multiple use over time, but single use at any given point in time.

The multiple use-single use controversy contains another trap, at least when it is put forth in oversimplified terms. Much depends on the size of the area being considered. Take a forest area that surrounds a lake or includes a stream: the woods within, say, half a mile of the lake shore or the stream bank could be reserved for recreation, while back from that cutting could proceed. Care should be taken that logging roads do not go across the recreation zones and that noisy operations that would disturb fishermen are not permitted during those particular days and times of the year during which fishing is concentrated. The point is that multiple purpose forestry on a tract of adequate size can be thought of as a planned mosaic of single purpose uses on different parts of the tract. My plea here is for an extension of the multiple use notion to include the possibility of a planned arrangement of single purpose uses, as well as a planned sequence of such uses. This is not a new idea, by any means, but I think it needs to driven home more solidly. It can take much of the sting out of the multiple use-single use controversy

Finally, as a new direction of forest policy to meet future requirements, I see the need for experimenting with new kinds of incentives to induce private owners, big and little, industrial and nonindustrial, to take account of changing objectives and public attitudes, particularly with regard to environmental matters. These inducements may take the form of tax advantages, subsidies, penalties, management assistance, educational and extension programs, and many others. I see the need also for some new or amended laws and administrative regulations in the direction of more comprehensive land use planning, environmental impact statements, public hearing procedures, judicial handling of class suits, and some others. But I do not have time to go into these matters here, beyond saying that the people and their government should be in a mood to try out some new policies, to experiment with some new institutions and ways of doing things in land and water and forestry and environment. We should keep in mind that with an educated and lively citizenry, a tradition of grassroots democracy, and the intense desire on the part of so many to participate in political and economic decisions, the way things are done is as important as what is done.

Meeting future forest requirements has become much more than simply satisfying anticipated demands for conventional products and services, with a sideways glance at environmental preservation. It now embraces everything people want from their forests or might want in the future. This defines the new scope of forest policy and management. But nothing much will get done at this exalted level unless individual persons, millions of them, will take single steps, one at a time, like planting a tree and then a second one. Let us be reminded: there is the equal danger of not seeing the tees for the forest.