A conspiracy of optimism: Sustained yield, multiple use, and intensive management on the national forests, 1945-1991
This study focuses on two core national forest management policies; sustained yield and multiple use. Public and elected officials attempt to apply principles of sustainable development to publicly-owned forest lands to ensure that a wide variety of both market and nonmarket forest values are preserved for the benefit of present and future generations. Interest groups, the Forest Service, and policy makers have conceived of sustained yield and multiple use in different and evolving ways over the years. This study explores how these principles have been variously defined and either implemented or thwarted. After World War Two, with escalating demands on national forest resources, the US Forest Service turned to intensive management as a technological method of enhancing natural forest productivity and mitigating the environmental effects of increased use. But the agency's optimistic vision of efficient, sustained production of forest commodities through technical mastery over nature has met overwhelming fiscal, environmental, technical, and political obstacles. Changing public values since the 1960s and popularization of ecology have initiated a growing skepticism toward the premises of intensive management.
- Research Organization:
- Arizona Univ., Tucson, AZ (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 5206449
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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