Public agencies and bureaus responsible for forest management and protection: an assessment of the fragmented institutional landscape of state governments in the United States

Public environmental and natural resource agencies have become increasingly diverse in mission and organization. Although holistic approaches for sustaining the physical attribute of large forest ecosystems have been advocated, attention has yet to focus on complementary organizational landscapes composed of integrated and co-ordinated public agencies. Results of a 2000 assessment of state agency conditions in the USA indicate that state government agencies affecting forest conditions are dispersed over all sectors and levels of state government; a state's lead forestry agency is often only a small piece in the puzzle of state agencies affecting forests; state agencies affecting forests engage primarily in forest resource use and management activities, yet some state agencies affect forest conditions by aggressively implementing responsibility for fisheries and wildlife, water pollutant management, and parks and recreation; consequences of fragmented state agency responsibility for forests are generally adverse, especially public confusion over agency roles and lack of integrated resource management; co-ordination among state agencies affecting forest conditions is modest and takes many forms; and the counterpart to state level agency diversity is the plethora of federal agencies that affect forest conditions, a situation that often deters state ability to integrate management of forests.