Environmental Management of the Public Lands

In this Article, Professors Heyman and Twiss discuss possible reshaping of legal and administrative systems to consider the environmental implications of actions taken by land management agencies. By focusing on the Forest Service, and particularly its activity of timber harvesting, a methodology is proposed for dealing with the extraordinary complexity of problems that must be faced in order to make environmentally sound planning and management decisions. In evaluating this agency's activites in terms of the developed criteria, the authors conclude with a number of suggestions for strengthening the systems used by the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies.