Montana Summit: Governance of Public Lands
August 5-7, 2003, Big Fork, Montana

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Preface

Challenging the frontiers of knowledge and promoting critical inquiry are the heart of the academic enterprise; sharing the results of this academic discovery with the community and the world are central to our mission.

During the University of Montana’s Academic Planning process in 2002, participants identified a set of academic visions that add life to the academic mission through the next decade. These include the progressive building of engagement between the academy and the society it serves, and the strengthening and expansion of niche programs for which the University is known.

As one manifestation of these visions, the Academic Officers of The University of Montana proposed a summer institute. This institute was designed to be a “think tank” where nationally and internationally known experts are invited to come to Montana in the summer to explore a pressing social/economic/political issue and create future directions or solutions.

Over the last few years, with the assistance of external constituents, we have developed this idea into the Montana Summit, an ongoing effort to expand academic knowledge while we seek solutions to emerging issues.

Lois Muir, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs
The University of Montana
October 2004

History of the Montana Summit

In summer 2002 an initial planning group conceptualized the Montana Summit, an annual event that capitalizes on the institution’s strengths and addresses significant societal issues. The mission statement for the Montana Summit is:

“To inform and advance public discourse on important issues confronting civilization.”

In pursuing this mission, the Montana Summit goals are to:

• Provide solutions to regional, national, and global problems
• Expand knowledge and expertise on pressing issues
• Have a significant outcome for society with meaningful impact
• Enhance the academic reputation of UM; positive visibility
• Bridge the gap between intellectual discourse and real world applications

To fulfill Montana Summit’s mission and goals, each year a select group of experts will be invited to attend a three to five day meeting to address a specific issue confronting civilization. Participants will include renowned business leaders, government officials, non-affiliated individuals, and University of Montana faculty with expertise in the issue. The Montana Summit Advisory Board guides the selection of issues to be addressed and the appropriate participants to invite. Each Summit utilizes creative brainstorming and problem solving whereby new approaches and solutions to the issue may be identified. The meeting will produce a lasting text or production that can be widely disseminated. Dissemination will promote the continued exchange of ideas and enable continued and creative dialogue that is necessary to resolve pressing political and societal issues.The first Montana Summit was held August 5-7, 2003, in Big Fork, Montana. The focus of the Summit was governance of public lands. Approximately 30 UM and partner participants were involved in the primary discussions. The output from this first Summit is the white paper contained in this publication. It is anticipated that politicians and administrators responsible for public land governance will use the white paper in subsequent discussions regarding governance, especially those organized by a consortium of western policy centers.

Prior to the summit, early discussions of the university planning committee focused on the possible need for a new public land law review commission (PLLRC). Given the time and current political climate, the planning committee was not sure that a commission would be the answer, though it might eventually be part of what is needed. Thus, rather than focus all attention on a PLLRC, the summit planning focused on broader questions of the need for changes in governance and ideas for change.

Significant attention is focused on public lands governance and the Montana Summit will help direct this attention, and ensure that UM is a major participant as subsequent events unfold. To that end, the planning group joined with several western policy centers (Andrus, Stegner, CRMW, and others), Montana Consensus Council, and the Kennedy School at Harvard in developing a sequence of events looking for solutions to the many problems being faced in the governance of public lands. The first Montana Summit was part of the assessment phase of this larger set of events and will help shape them. At the same time, the Montana Summit produces ideas to be shared with those in Congress and the Administration to widen the discussion of governance possibilities.

The program for the summit was designed to involve a mixture of presentations, panels, and discussions. The format sought to promote discussion and thus presentations were short and designed to stimulate the generation of ideas.

Planning Committee

• Keith Allred, Harvard University
• Len Broberg, UM College of Arts and Sciences
• Jerry Brown, UM School of Journalism
• Perry Brown, UM College of Forestry and Conservation
• Jim Burchfield, UM Bolle Center for People and Forests
• Ray Cross, UM School of Law
• John Freemuth, Andrus Center
• Chuck Keegan, UM School of Business
• Daniel Kemmis, UM Center for the Rocky Mountain West
• Jim Martin, Univeristy of Colorado NR Law Center
• Steve McCool, UM College of Forestry and Conservation
• Matt McKinney, Montana Consensus Council
• Martin Nie, UM College of Forestry and Conservation
• Jack Ward Thomas, UM College of Forestry and Conservation
• Pat Williams, UM Center for the Rocky Mountain West

Montana Summit White Paper

“Governance of Federal Public Lands: Reviewing the Options”
James Burchfield and Perry Brown, College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana

Introduction

On August 6-7, 2003, leading natural resource professionals, academics, and interest group representatives convened at Flathead Lake, Montana, for the first Montana Summit to consider the governance of public lands in the United States (appendix A lists participants). Conference participants deliberated on the status of federal land management and the opportunities to address major issues regarding decision-making, public participation, and the legal and institutional framework guiding public land administration. This paper provides a summary of the presentations, panels, and group discussions surrounding these topics and highlights some of the controversies and barriers to effective public land administration. Throughout the paper and in its conclusion, the paper brings forward lingering questions regarding public land governance. It is the authors’ hope that this summary offers a useful basis for subsequent discussions and additional research and evaluation on public lands issues.

The Role of Federally Administered Public Lands

The contributions of public lands to the American people seem evident to most observers. They provide opportunities for current and future generations to experience landscapes and settings unconstrained by private privilege. They offer environmental, social, and economic benefits via the generation of both commodity and amenity resources, and they manifest multiple public expectations for land – large, untrammeled wilderness areas, for example – that may not be desirable to private owners. Although the scope and significance of these benefits are well acknowledged, the specific outcomes of public land management and the processes used to formulate decisions remain in contention.

Beginning with an overview by natural resource historian Paul Hirt, conference participants considered a series of assumptions about the evolving purposes of public lands over the past century. These assumptions validated broadly recognized values such as diversity, productivity, beauty, and opportunity, and highlighted the stewardship responsibility Americans embrace in sustaining these values. Public lands encumber citizens to consider rational, purposive, organized action to meet their common objectives.

For some public lands, purposes are relatively constricted – for example, National Parks do not have the same breadth of demands of the “multiple use” lands of the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). However, even in situations where originating mandates appear clear, there is fuzziness in the applications of existing laws and standards. Public lands cannot help but be affected by contextual factors and the changing characteristics of human uses of these lands.

Involvement of Citizens in Federal Land Management Decisions

Since the passage of the Administrative Procedures Act in 1946, citizen involvement in public decision-making shows an unmistakable upward trend. It is doubtful that federal managers will ever experience reduced public scrutiny or a diminishment of interest in their decisions. The current public participation model has evolved out of a string of court interpretations of the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution, yet we have stumbled into a system where there are many hearings yet little listening. People have become decoupled from responsibilities to respond to competing views or create necessary solutions.

One question is whether or not the current system of citizen involvement is broken beyond repair. Those who conclude that citizen participation has become dysfunctional cite two major branches of evidence. First, even simple actions, such as a request for a right-of-way across public land, can cause a time-consuming, multi-agency morass of regulatory demands and prescrip tive constraints. Second, the very evidence of the collaboration movement in the western U.S. to address resource management problems provides a “living critique” of the ineffectiveness of existing decision processes. Collaboration is hard work with little guarantee of an agreement; the fact that people have assembled in multiple, organic groupings attests to the public frustration with business as usual.

Perhaps the impasse in realizing effective public engagement relates more to the cultural clash between citizens and agency employees than it does to structural deficiencies. Natural resource professionals regard their contributions toward public land management as privileged because of their training and expertise. They can assess conditions according to tested methodologies and can skillfully decipher cause/effect relationships. Conversely, many members of the public do not trust the agencies to consider or even respect the interests of citizens. The outcomes of public land decisions frequently eschew benefits that at least some of the citizenry anticipates. Is there a need to realign the setting of goals and the decision methods to address these public expectations?

Other questions remain: To what degree are citizens expected to participate? Are there preferences for citizen contributions in areas “local” to the implementation of a decision, however that locality may be defined? How can knowledge applied by citizens be verified as having either relevance or legitimacy? Criteria to evaluate effective and efficient means for public engagement are noticeably absent.

Institutional Problems

Federal land management agencies, buffeted by political forces, are often unable to mobilize resources toward purposive action. Is it fair to expect agencies to mediate these social conflicts? Should there be Congressional intervention to create clearer policies that direct agencies toward a “dominant use?” At present, managers are both frustrated and confused - uncertain about the first steps they should take toward either planning or management. The old social contract between agencies and residents adjacent to public lands has been broken, and there is nothing on the horizon to replace it.

The loss of institutional capacity with “competitive sourcing” or other programs that reduce the public sector workforce present multiple challenges over the long-term. Can a smaller workforce address both the technical demands of managing a complex resource base and the rigors of a more open, transparent, public-driven planning environment? The loss of capacity for land management has also confronted the private sector, and there are questions about the ability of a sharply diminished corps of available commercial operators to carry out management prescriptions.

Pilot Programs

A common approach for addressing complex problems is the development of pilot projects and a subsequent evaluation to understand whether or not a new model of management brings desired results. These might be viewed as “incremental change,” or even window dressing to potentially systemic problems, but they at least offer opportunities to attempt creative management. Pilot programs are also popular with the U.S. Congress, because they allow attempting something without a wholesale commitment to fundamental changes that could bring political risks.

This again raises the question of the nature of the problem of public land governance – is it systemic or not? Are issues only reflecting highly localized conditions, or are these issues affecting the land management system nationwide? The scale of a decision or policy proposal can also affect its feasibility and acceptability. Should new policies be developed on a piecemeal basis – administrative unit by administrative unit, or should a larger sweep of policies be the favored approach? In one respect, pilots are appealing because of their temporary or limited impact, yet there are few examples of pilot projects that do not evolve into permanent management arrangements.

Where and what type of pilots are most useful for understanding opportunities for good governance on public lands? In some settings incremental changes may be sufficient. In other settings dramatic changes may be necessary. Within “safe harbors” for environmental protection, what are the opportunities for experimentation?

Income-Generating Opportunities from Public Lands

Several strands of conference discussions questioned the responsibility that the federal government assumes for income generation from public lands. Federal land management in the early 20th century was largely “custodial,” assuming a rather passive role in development. Is custodial management reemerging as a preferred style of management? Post World War II management of both National Forests and BLM lands was highly active, involving an extensive timber program, road building, recreational developments, and wildlife habitat improvements. These actions affected opportunities for income in multiple rural areas, even though economies of scale, markets, and technological changes have deeply affected the potential for employment in most commodity sectors. Although public lands continue to provide income-generating opportunities, the economic sectors benefiting from federal lands do so more or less indirectly, with jobs tied to tourism or to private land developments that take advantage of public demands for nature appreciation. Thus, the developmental responsibilities of federal land ownership remain an open question, as to how the agencies should (or should not) go beyond custodial management to play a role in the generation of wealth and income.

Conference participants raised multiple questions about the capacity of the federal government to be an effective actor in development. The history of federal programs for job creation is mixed, and it may be argued that government institutions are ill suited for entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand, active management programs that produce commodities only as by-products, such as treatments for restoration, can be engines of economic activity. Should active management of federal lands be directly tied to management responsibilities to sustain ecological characteristics – such as clean water flows – rather than to specific income targets or industry sectors?

Budgets and Plans

The current budget situation demonstrates inconsistencies between indicated needs from land management plans and budgetary allocations to carry out the will of Congress on specific programs. Cost accounting (a component accelerating requirements for government accountability) is an arduous process that requires an unraveling of incompatible databases and many layers of expenses and hidden subsidies. In the current situation, agency managers are forced into an inefficient juggling of multiple accounts to get work accomplished. Depending on the potential for interest groups to work toward synergy, budgetary processes could be an area amenable to change.

The uncertainty of budgets dismantles the primary function of planning - the rational consideration of purposive action. Does one create a plan that can be implemented within the given budgetary constraints, or does one create a plan that provides the best possible series of outcomes for the landscape?

Assessment of Public Land Laws

The conference examined the history of the four prior Public Land Law Review Commissions (PLLRC) and heard first-hand accounts from participants in the most recent PLLRC that ran from 1964-1970. The political nature of these bodies cannot be understated, as each possessed charismatic leaders whose interests and values dominated subsequent recommendations. In general terms, the direct result of PLLRC recommendations has been lackluster, but there have been noticeable indirect effects from the issues raised and the learning generated.

Is it time to call for another Public Land Law Review Commission? Would current political forces overtake any new commission, converting it to a more ideological rather than a learning experience? For some interest areas, the consolidation of executive and legislative control by one political party has led to a strategy of “playing defense.” This might be a very poor time to reconsider public land law. On the other hand, the cost of delays might make environmental problems more difficult to resolve. Now may be the best time to reexamine the full array of laws governing public lands, subjecting to scrutiny the Mining Law of 1872, the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, and the other more notable recent environmental laws such as NEPA, ESA, NFMA, and FLPMA. Three questions must be addressed to consider the formation of a new Commission: who decides, under what standards, and following what procedures?

Short of a new Commission, conference participants at the Montana Summit felt that a more thorough “assessment” of the contradictions presented by the current body of law could be beneficial. An assessment also presents risks that the process could spin out of control. It is possible that the current clumsiness in the application of public land law is a natural outgrowth of the time lag between the enactment of laws and the development of a sufficient body of case-law for general policy direction. Can there be harm from an assessment, or will it be a generally positive exercise?

Would the formation of a new Commission or even the execution of a review of the current laws serve as appropriate vehicles to deal with current problems? An assessment or a Commission does not necessarily help build public trust in federal land management. Alternatively, an assessment might be particularly well suited to surface causes of mistrust and point out opportunities for righting the situation.

What will be the role of the Congress in either an assessment or the formation of a new Commission? Is it necessary to legitimize this process through the Congress? Where else will the resources be generated to complete the work? Regardless of how the issues are framed, Congress will likely move the process in a self-guided direction. Given the nature of current land management controversies, can Congress make choices that address the most important barriers and contradictions in effective public land governance, or will they focus instead on more targeted, short-term fixes that will further muddy the waters?

What can be done?

In small group sessions, conference participants explored the range of future actions that could be taken to address the governance of public lands. The potential contributions of research appear positive, although the manner in which research is conducted will be decisive to the credibility of outcomes. Is the best route an assessment conducted by a respected, objective institute (or series of institutes) so that problems and opportunities for action are thoroughly and objectively described? Should the National Governor’s Association sponsor this assessment?

The perceived openness of any type of assessment will affect its credibility. Conference participants recognized the limited diversity within their deliberations, as several key groups, such as American Indian tribes and minority populations, were underrepresented. Would it be best to commission a series of papers from different perspectives, such as former Chiefs of the Forest Service, environmental groups, industry groups, or academic sources well-versed in public land law? Is there a public process that could be designed to accompany the assessment? Perhaps surveys or focus groups could be employed.

A diversified portfolio of evaluations might be necessary to better consider the factors predisposing institutions to change. A comprehensive evaluation of existing pilots would be a positive first step. Recent innovations such as stewardship contracting and the Valles-Calderas Trust should be incorporated into evaluations to continue learning of the types of models that lead to better results on the ground and a more empowered, confident citizenry.

The timing for an evaluation of this type is fortuitous. There is a great deal of public attention directed at public lands, especially with issues such as fire and access for recreation becoming more politically salient. The year 2005 also brings an important anniversary to the forefront, as it is the centennial for the creation of the USDA Forest Service. Ultimately, political leaders and Congressional representatives will need to be involved, but the timing for their involvement remains uncertain.

Addressing key questions

When taken as a whole, the many questions regarding public land law imply a series of subsequent steps to understand the role these lands will play in the future. Although Montana Summit participants did not formulate a series of action steps, major questions emerged from the conference and beg resolution. The preceding text has articulated a series of questions, but a few warrant rephrasing and emphasis:

• If retention of land in public ownership is desirable, which public entities should administer this estate?
• In governance of public lands, who should participate and where should emphasis be placed geographically and substantively? What criteria will guide the process for public engagement?
• What are the implications of a changing workforce in public land management?
• Where are reforms needed most? Are they at all levels - administrative, legislative, and judicial? What is the subject and nature of each needed reform?
• Who will conduct assessments of existing public land laws and associated administrative regulations? What will be the standards and procedures for this assessment? Will Congress be involved in the sanction and review of assessments?

The Montana Summit has served as an important initial step in advancing a national conversation about the governance of public lands, but it is one early conversation that must be followed by many others. Recent changes promulgated by Congress and land management agencies, such as the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act, will create additional consequences, and ongoing evaluations will be important to gauge our progress. The Montana Summit reinforced the notion that people with very diverse perspectives can discuss issues civilly, discovering commonalities in our passions and commitments to the most pressing social dilemmas. It is now incumbent upon both Summit participants and others to actively pursue the questions raised during the Summit, so that our public institutions may promote a governance of these lands that engenders sustainable benefits for the American people.

Keynote Address

To set the stage for discussions at the Montana Summit, historian Dr. Paul Hirt was asked to develop an historical review of the governance of public lands and to place this evolving history in the context of social change. He did this quite admirably and the paper that follows gave an excellent launch to the work of the Summit. Paul’s paper is printed in full.

“Governance of Public Lands in the Context of Social Change”

Flathead Lake, Montana, August 6, 2003
Paul Hirt, Department of History, Washington State University

I want to thank Perry Brown and all the co-sponsors of this interesting gathering for inviting me to participate. I am humbled by the expertise in this room. I have not been following public land politics as closely as I used to since I started researching the history of electric power a few years ago, so I hope my comments this morning are relevant and help to launch a useful, well-grounded discussion of where governance of the public lands is or ought to be heading in the coming years.

Whenever I put together a talk, I first try to think carefully about my audience. The participant list I got from Perry indicated a highly diverse group of experienced people from different niches in the public lands policy landscape, and that got me thinking about what perspectives and biases we might share or not share. Presentations, like mine and the others we will hear these next few days, all rest on a foundation of assumptions and values—often unacknowledged. I thought it might be helpful to start by making explicit the assumptions and values I bring to this conversation.

Assumption #1: I assume we all care about the public lands and their biological health and productivity. This may seem fairly obvious, but it is important to acknowledge. Why do we care? At the most fundamental level because we humans are a biological species carving out a supportive niche for ourselves on this planet, and the public lands are one of our sources for the natural resources we use to sustain our societies. In the long run, our use of natural resources must be sustainable and the human environment must be healthful. This is the most basic unalterable fact of our continued existence.

Assumption #2: To merely survive is not enough. While production and consumption are central to survival, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual interests also motivate us and enrich our lives. I assume we all value to one degree or another such things as beauty, equity, efficiency, democracy, fairness, transparency in our governing structures, etc. All of these are social constructions which are irrelevant to our biological survival but essential components of our social life. The public lands have an important role to play in this arena too.

Assumption #3: We get these things that we need and want from the public lands through rational, purposive, organized action. Some of you may balk at this one; but I assume societies rationally pursue their self-interest and that social goals can be achieved through thoughtful, organized action. Why else are we here if we don’t have some faith in that principle? However, we should be careful not to place too much faith in it; history reminds us that societies can be short-sighted, self-destructive, and irrational.

Assumption #4: America’s public land estate is an admirable, invaluable asset. Wise minds created this estate and wise minds will keep it. We would not want a wholly privatized national real estate any more than we would want a wholly nationalized real estate. Diversity is desirable.

And that is assumption #5: diversity is desirable. Land does not come just in a privately owned or publicly owned condition. Each of the two broader categories has myriad guises, and each of those guises requires different management policies. In the broadest sense, public lands include federal, state, and local government ownerships. Just the federal lands alone span the spectrum from multiple-use management lands to more focused-purpose lands such as the national parks, wildlife refuges, and military reservations. Even highways, dams, mineral reserves, and rights of way are publicly owned real estate. The same kind of diversity holds true for private lands which run the gamut from home sites to shopping malls to strip mines to Nature Conservancy Preserves. Lands in whatever ownership come in many forms and serve myriad purposes, and this tremendous “zoning” diversity is a particular strength of our land system. We should support this diversification of land uses as much as possible, and we should embed management decisions within the context of larger landscape level ownership and use patterns. In the natural world, biological diversity evolved slowly over eons. Similarly, America’s rich diversification of land classifications and uses evolved over centuries, and its richness reflects the increasing complexity of our society—which is why I think returning to a simpler land policy system would not only be undesirable, but unworkable. As in biological evolution, the evolution of public land law has usually come in short bursts of activity followed by longer periods of incremental change. These short bursts of activity usually coincided with times of conflict or social change. The era of industrialization in the mid- to late-19th century was a time of tumultuous change and accordingly a flurry of public land law revisions and governance innovations resulted. Certainly the 1960s and 1970s were also a time of significant conflict and social change, and accordingly our last burst of land law revisions came in the mid- to late-1970s. Although the times-are-a-changin’ today, it’s not so much as when Bob Dylan made those words famous, so I’m not sure if the conditions are ripe for major public land law revisions now. But, because nearly three decades have passed since Congress enacted RPA, NFMA, and FLPMA, certainly the time is ripe for a major review of our land laws.

My thesis regarding public lands governance, is that there is no silver bullet, no management model that can serve as a panacea for social conflict, no blueprint of policies and procedures that will work for all agencies or serve all purposes, no one-size-fits-all governance strategy—much as our policy makers might like to have one.

However, based on historical experience we can identify the desirable elements of a good governance strategy. I believe those elements include: (1) clear policy guidelines for each public land property; (2) the use of the best science and expertise to determine what is feasible to accomplish and then to implement management plans; (3) democratic, stakeholder participation both in planning and in management; (4) long-term planning with environmental and social impact assessment; (5) open decision processes (i.e., transparency and full disclosure in governance); (6) monitoring of results with clear feedback to the decision makers, policy makers, and the public; and (7) economic feasibility and efficiency—by this I do not mean that public land management should pay for itself or that revenue-generating activities should be favored over subsidy-requiring activities. I mean that whatever we seek to accomplish, it should be financially reasonable and we should try to get the most results for the dollars spent. Let me make a few historical observations about each of these elements. Although public land managing agencies have always fought to retain as much autonomy and management discretion as possible, experience shows that clear policy guidelines provide essential parameters for containing and directing agency discretion. Clear policies help reduce confusion, inconsistency, and even contention among stakeholders. During the 1980s wars over national forest timber harvests, for example, timber industry leaders said repeatedly that if they couldn’t have all the timber they wanted at the very least they required some predictability upon which to base future business decisions. When everything is up for grabs, without clear limits and priorities, stakeholders are at each others’ throats, managers give mixed signals, and the decision environment is little more than chaos. Congress can of course go too far in spelling out policy guidelines, and this usually happens during times of extreme conflict where decisions are continually appealed to higher levels of the government. More discretion at such times solves nothing. However, too much central guidance carved in stone inhibits the capacity of managers to adapt to new information, conditions, and opportunities. Good governance means striking an appropriate balance between these two extremes, finessing that perfect blend of centralization and decentralization.

About 120 years ago, Americans dealt decisively with the problem of too much politics and too little science in governance. American democracy evolved in the 19th century into a spoils system in which the winning ticket assigned all the government jobs to its party loyalists, regardless of their qualifications—or lack thereof. Ineptitude and corruption were rampant, and government services were notoriously unreliable. This is in part what prompted one famous American to quip: “Democracy is the worst possible form of government…except for all the rest.” Reformers in the 1880s finally convinced a reluctant Congress to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which instituted examinations for certain government employees to help assure that people were qualified, or at least literate, before assuming government service. About the same time the federal and state governments accelerated their funding of agricultural and engineering research and education, and set up bureaus like the geological survey and forestry departments, with the understanding that social and political objectives might be more efficiently obtained when pursued by trained experts as opposed to party hacks. In the 1890s Congress began establishing a permanent public land estate, and during the next couple of decades it created several federal agencies to administer those lands under what I consider to be an admirably far-sighted conservation philosophy. With the corruptions of political party machinery still fresh in everyone’s mind, the Progressives perhaps overemphasized the role of technical experts and undervalued the benefits of democratic participation in decision making, leaving a legacy that many scholars characterize as elitism. In context, however, their attitude was understandable. But our task now is to carefully navigate a course that balances expertise with stakeholder participation, a pathway that blends and balances science and politics.

Troubled by the 19th century boom and bust economy that characterized poorly regulated capitalism, conservationists advocated the principle of “sustained yield” in natural resource management. In forestry, where this concept reached its highest development, managing for a sustained yield of wood products—or grass or stream flow or wildlife—required unusually long-term planning horizons, and an understanding of the long-term consequences of management actions. Early forest policy legislation simply endorsed this general principle and gave the Forest Service wide discretion to figure out how to extract products sustainably from the public forests without harming the ecological processes that made the forests productive and healthy.

As conflict over national forest development erupted during the booming decades following World War II, however, interest groups dissatisfied with the Forest Service’s decisions sought to influence the agency through its planning process. Unfortunately, at the time Forest Service plans were generally internal documents produced in an insular fashion without much real consultation with stakeholders. Furthermore, the plans invariably responded to specific pressures from specific interest groups, and were therefore focused on specific output targets. For example, in the late 1950s there was a Timber Resources Review with long-term targets for timber production. A few years later the Forest Service published Operation Outdoors with targets for recreational development. Independently there were also wildlife habitat plans developed in response to lobbying from the hunting and fishing community. None of these plans were ever integrated nor did they contain much in the way of social or environmental impact analysis. And, of course, they did nothing to quell conflict among resource users or resolve escalating environmental problems from rapid development. Finally, in response to unceasing agitation from interest groups, between 1969 and 1976 Congress passed four key laws (NEPA, RPA, NFMA, & FLPMA) extensively elaborating management policies and planning guidelines for federal land managing agencies. The laws were based on a remarkable vision: federal agencies would avoid doing irreparable harm to the environment while seeking to provide goods and services from the public lands, they would engage in comprehensive, integrated resource planning using interdisciplinary teams of experts, they would involve the public from start to finish, consider a variety of management alternatives, assess the impacts of each alternative, solicit comments and respond thoroughly to them all, choose a preferred alternative, and politely handle all protests and appeals. This supremely rational vision of proper decision making, of “good governance” if you will, had two serious flaws: first, better decision procedures do not necessarily yield better decisions. Second, there were no effective mechanisms for guaranteeing that the management plans would actually be implemented. As a result, a tremendous amount of money, resources, sweat, and tears have gone into producing hundreds of multi-volume comprehensive land management plans that sit on the shelf while more immediate factors control year-to-year management decisions, such as budget allocations, court directives, administrative initiatives, congressional riders, fires and floods, and disease or insect irruptions. In some cases all these planning procedures, public comment periods, and appeals have led to what the current chief of the Forest Service calls “analysis paralysis” where foresters spend too much time in documentation and not enough time in the field managing resources. Our task today is to find some way to streamline the planning process and then make sure the plans are feasible (more on this in a minute) when written and action-forcing when completed. The goals of the 1970s reforms were admirable, but the implementation has been disappointing. Besides elaborating policies and procedures, the legislative reforms of the 1960s and 1970s also mandated a much higher level of transparency and openness in public land decision making than ever before. Building on the much earlier Administrative Procedures Act, the 1966 Freedom of Information Act became a powerful tool for stakeholders to get access to the information on which federal agencies based their decisions. Still, interested members of the public had to forcibly pry their way into the decision making process as managers resisted opening anything more than their data files to the public. Consequently, Congress, which was attempting to pry open the federal agencies to more oversight itself, mandated a proactive program of full disclosure by federal land-managing agencies. This greatly complicated the whole planning and management process, but also significantly improved the quality of data and the honesty and responsiveness of decision makers. It was an important reform from a social standpoint if not from an efficiency standpoint.

There have been numerous instances of attempted reforms in American history that failed for lack of follow-through. A policy is of little value without effective accountability. Quite often, a surge of public concern over an issue will lead to legislative or regulatory changes, such as the epidemic of public land law abuses that led to the land law revisions of the 1890s, but when the perceived crisis is over and attention to the problem fades, the former status quo can often reassert itself. On a more benign level, managers with the best of intentions cannot implement a plan, such as improving range conditions on overgrazed allotments, without adequate monitoring of range condition year by year to know whether their actions are having the predicted effect. Unfortunately, interest group lobbyists, policy makers, and agency leaders all pay much more attention to conceptualizing solutions than to monitoring implementation. In particular, federal agencies get heaps of money from Congress for writing land management plans but a pittance for monitoring and evaluation. This imbalance needs to be corrected.

Finally, an important element of good governance is economic feasibility and efficiency. One of the chief flaws I noticed in the first round of forest plans was that the architects of the plans often proposed a suite of management actions that required for implementation an extravagantly inflated budget well beyond reasonable expectations. Of course that subsequently made it easy for them to blame a stingy Congress for their failures to achieve planned goals, but it crippled plan implementation. We should not write plans that cannot be implemented. Another problem is throwing money at hot button issues in ways that don’t really solve problems or settle conflicts. Our whole approach to fire is a good case in point. The amount of money we spend suppressing fires is astronomical, yet fire suppression helps create the fuel load conditions that make future fires worse. Even with all that money, we still have devastating fires and hazardous fuel loads. Worse yet, the budget available for activities that would actually reduce fire hazards, prescribed burning and fuel reduction, is only a tiny percentage of that spent on suppression. Our priorities are backward and our use of precious tax money is inefficient.

Well, knowing the desirable elements of a good governance strategy does not necessarily make policy-makers’ or land managers’ jobs any easier. The rub is that we have to constantly negotiate and renegotiate how these various elements of good governance fit together and what measure of each element to use for each public land property. It is a messy, muddle-some process that requires patience and persistence. (That’s why historically those who command the greatest economic resources get the most out of governance negotiations: they have the wherewithal to hire experts to patiently and persistently pursue their interests.

Some people seem to be wedded to one or another of these governance elements, adhering to them like a religion. There are what I call the “free-marketeers” who still believe that Adam Smith’s mythic Invisible Hand will ensure the greatest good to the greatest number; the policy wonks who think legislation can fix anything; the techno-optimists who believe mechanical and chemical tools can fix anything; the academic philosophers who cling to their favored theory as a panacea for all problems; the environmental idealists who believe everything will be fine if we just leave nature alone; their opponents who believe every ecosystem can and should be improved upon; and more recently there are the adherents to the cult of collaboration who believe that conflicts will melt away if only we can get all the stakeholders to respect each other. I know all of you have met many of these people. Unfortunately, good governance will never be that simple. Governing public lands in the 21st century will likely become more complicated rather than less. We will have to create a variety of public land management recipes with different mixes of these governance ingredients, while keeping in mind our long-term goals: sustainability, health, equity, efficiency, participatory democracy.

What is the essence of this governance vision? It is a combined environmental and social ethic. Good governance rests upon a foundation of ethics; the social and biological sciences are simply tools for implementing an ethical vision of how we should organize ourselves as a society and as a species inhabiting the ecosystems of this fecund and beautiful planet. Private owners of private lands should be motivated by a social and environmental ethic too, but in practice our prevailing political and economic institutions do not provide adequate incentives or restraints to guarantee this outcome. Hence, we have public lands to fill the gap. Public lands fit a different niche in our political economy than private lands; they fulfill functions that private lands do not or cannot adequately fulfill, and they provide us our best opportunity to showcase responsible, sustainable, ethical land management. Not every society has such a luxury of choice or such a richness of resources as our public lands provide us. Taking the best advantage of this opportunity will require patience and the kind of persistence that is driven by ethical commitment, it will require humility and an appreciation for diversity, we will have to be flexible and embrace the pragmatic philosophy of adaptive management. If we can do all that, I am confident that we will not only survive but thrive as a society without further impoverishing the beauty and biological diversity of this remarkable continent that we are privileged to live upon.

Montana Summit 2003 Participants

• Lois Muir, Provost, University of Montana
• Perry Brown, Dean, College of Forestry & Conservation, UM
• Matt McKinney, Director, Montana Consensus Council
• Ray Cross, Professor, School of Law, UM
• Jay Jensen, Staff, Western Forestry Leadership Coalition
• Daniel Kemmis, Director, Center for the Rocky Mountain West, UM
• Bob Keiter, Director, Wallace Stegner Center, University of Utah
• Bob Wolf, Forestry Consultant, St. Leonard, MD
• Jake Kreilick, Endangered Forests Project Coorinator, National Forests Protection Alliance
• Chuck Keegan, Associate Director, Bureau of Business and Economic Research, UM
• Jay O’Laughlin, Director, Policy Anaylsis Group, University of Idaho
• Mark Lambert, Student, Environmental Studies Program, UM
• Mary Mitsos, Vice President, National Forest Foundation
• Jack Ward Thomas, Boone & Crockett Professor, College of Forestry and Conservation, UM
• Hal Salwasser, Dean, College of Forestry, Oregon State University
• Greg Aplet, Ecologist, The Wilderness Society
• Keith Allred, Associate Professor, Kennedy School, Harvard University
• Harold Bergman, Ruckelshaus Institute, University of Wyoming
• Steve McCool, Professor, College of Forestry and Conservation, UM
• Jerry Muys, Muys & Associates, Washington, DC
• Len Broberg, Associate Professor, Environmental Studies Program, UM
• Jerry Brown, Dean, School of Journalism, UM
• Martin Nie, Associate Professor, College of Forestry and Conservation, UM
• David New, Vice President, Boise Cascade
• Robert Lewis, Deputy Chief, USDA Forest Service
• Paul Hirt, Professor, Department of History, Washington State University
• Jim Burchfield, Associate Dean, College of Forestry and Conservation, UM
• Lisa Gerloff, Executive Coordinator, RM-Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

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