TOPICS:
Understanding environmental problems; market approaches; overall approaches to the environmental policy-making process; of general applicability to environmental problems; written for the first party participant.
ABSTRACT:
Reforming the Forest Service is an examination of the need for reformation of the Forest Service through consideration of the failures of the Forest Service and remedies for those failures.
Reforming the Forest Service examines the need for substantive changes in the Forest Service through consideration of: the symptoms of its failure, the causes of that failure, and proposed remedies. The text is divided into three sections, each focused on a particular part of the overall topic. The first of these parts is devoted to analyzing the symptoms of the failures of the Forest Service. The author focuses on the financial mismanagement of the Forest Service. He discusses: below-cost timber sales, poor investments and multiple use clear-cuts.
The second section is devoted to forming a diagnosis, as it were, for the troubles which plague the Forest Service. The author examines why the Forest Service loses money, and its timber sales process. He addresses several budget maximizing policies, one of which is sustainable yield. The final section of the book offers solutions to the Forest Services problems. The author proposes the injection of rationality in the decision-making process of the Forest service, and the challenging of the dominant paradigm. Among the additional proposals made is one suggesting that the Forest Service would benefit by exposure to market forces.
Reforming the Forest Service is a cursory examination of the ills which have plagued the Forest Service for the better part of the present century. It will serve as a starting point for those who seek further study of the subject.
T. A. O'Lonergan