In 1976, Congress passed a law requiring all national forests to write long-term, comprehensive management plans. I remember attending a 1980 meeting of newly hired planners who were all excited about the opportunity to shape the future of 193 million acres of the nation’s public lands.
Their spirits were somewhat dampened when Professor Richard Behan, who later became dean of the Northern Arizona University school of forestry, predicted that planning would fail. He urged the Forest Service to simply ignore the law. The Forest Service ignored him. A decade and at least a billion dollars later (Behan thinks it was a lot more), some of the plans were still unfinished and those that were finished were ignored by forest managers who quickly realized they were worthless.
