Diverse stakeholders and their interests matter to the U.S. Forest Service: a network of action situations analysis of how stakeholders affect forest plan outcomes

Since the 1980s, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has transformed from an agency predominantly focused on timber production to one focused on recreation and ecosystem management. This shift is particularly remarkable because it occurred without major substantive national forest policy changes. During this period, many national forests changed their forest planning processes in ways that provided greater opportunity for public input into forest plans, and in 2012 the USFS issued new planning rules that institutionalized these practices. In this study, we ask: how has the planning process changed over time, and how have these changes shaped forest plan outcomes? To answer these questions, we conduct a comparative case study of two national forests—the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit and the Inyo National Forest—that produced forest plans in the 1980s and again in the 2010s. We use the Network of Action Situations (NAS) approach to compare planning processes over time and across forests. We find that in addition to the changes mandated by the 2012 rules, both forests developed a series of forums to engage the public in plan development and review, and that increased stakeholder engagement has helped shape forest priorities. These findings suggest that greater involvement by regional stakeholders could pressure the USFS to adopt more regional approaches for addressing challenges like climate change and wildfire risk.