The Forest Service has a complex and very costly process to create plans for the various national forests. It has been estimated that 40 percent of the total direct work of the agency is involved in planning, which consumes more than 20 percent of the national appropriations, several hundred million dollars.

Roger Sedjo on
Streamlining Forest Service Planning

These plans often are not implemented, however, because of appeals and litigation, changing circumstances such as the creation of new critical habitat areas and roadless set-asides, or major disruptions as caused by wildfire.

You can do this without changing the existing legislation, although it may require a revised set of regulations. Simplifying and rationalizing the current forest planning process, which requires a huge amount of detail and the development of very long-term projections, could make planning far less costly, perhaps saving up to 40 percent of the current time and funding requirements.

Download this Policy Recommendation

The amount of detail currently included in the plans is unnecessary, as the rapidly changing circumstances of the forest soon render most of the long-term plans obsolete. I propose a scaled-down planning process that would use an Environmental Management Systems (EMS) approach.