Research

Book:
Forest Policy:
Ready for Renaissance

Published 1998
Edited by John M. Calhoun

ONRC Projects

Big Changes in Small Places:
Assessing Social and
Economic Trends
at the Local Level in Clallam
and Jefferson Counties

Elk Populations

Forest Policy: Ready for Renaissance

Forest Manager's Colloquium

GIS Clearinghouse

Mill Creek Water Quality

Olympic Region Harmful Algal Blooms

Integrating Biocontrol in the IPM for Spartina in Willapa Bay

Public Involvement in OlyPen Wolf Reintroduction

ONRC Projects

Forest Policy: Ready for Renaissance

Project Description: 

Forest policies are not just about the “best science”.  In fact, science-based policies, while promoted as rational, often crate gridlock and polarization among interests rather than harmony.  The best science will always be debatable, hopefully.  Further, many believe that enlightened, widely accepted forest policy will require a greater appreciation of social, cultural, economic, analytical, and ecological values.  Yet forest policies, often constrained by regulations, rarely seek to blend these diverse disciplines.  Failing this integration establishes them from the outset as incapable of achieving broad consensus.  The staleness of the debate begs for new ways of thinking.

While ecosystem management has been proposed as the progressive alternative to traditional commodity-based management with the ultimate goal to provide sustainability of non-timber as well as timber-commodity forest functions, the form of ecosystem management has been interpreted to include a wide range of alternatives.  These alternatives constitute diverging new paradigms from historical processes, including substantial changes to biodiversity, watershed protection, aesthetic values, carbon storage, wood products, economic activity, and social participation.  They seek and reflect different values for various segments of society.  The costs of producing them are also different among the management paradigms.  With limited resources, there are trade-offs among producing these goods and services resulting in choices both for policy makers and land managers.  Value assessments of the goods and services produced by any given alternative are necessary to determine which best serves the social welfare.  The best alternatives may include some features from different paradigms. 

The critical issues that are both driving and constraining the creation of these new paradigms need to be better understood.  The goal of this project is to develop a better consensus on desirable outcomes and implementation approaches.  The conference and proceedings will be organized into 6 sections:

1. The Place and the People
2. Land, Ownership, and Uses
3. Diversity, Habitat, and the Future
4. The Policy Issues
5. How Values Are Measured
6. Cultivating New Ways of Thinking

Status:

The three-day conference was held at ONRC on September 17-19, 1996 for 48 participants.  The conference included presentations and panel discussions that outlined basic concepts in the policy process, identified spatial scales of policy implications, and considered the economic, social, biological and long terms goals of forest policy in defining some alternatives for natural resource management.  From conference presentations ONRC compiled 20 peer reviewed papers published in:  

John M. Calhoun, Forest Policy:  Ready for Renaissance, (Seattle, Institute of Forest Resources, Contribution No. 78, 1998)

The Journal of Forestry published a Perspective pieces entitled The Renaissance of Forest Policy by John Calhoun in the Vol. 95 No. 12 Dec, 1997 issue adapted from his address to the annual meeting of the Washington State SAF in April 1997.   

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