Introduction

State bureaucracies managing forests are known to develop problems because of command-and-control mentalities and political links to legislatures and industry (Baskerville, 1995; Holling and Meffe, 1996). Command-and-control thinking leads to simple models of ecosystem behavior, such as the sustained yield of a single ecosystem product like wood fiber. Such thinking, by suppressing complications, can lead to unpleasant surprises. Economic dependence on a short list of products, linked via politicians in powerful legislative positions who are supported by economic interests, can reinforce the thinking in a bureaucracy managing a natural resource. When the side-effects of the dominant approach create a crisis, either natural or political, will the crisis lead to changes in the social and political configurations that caused the problem? Gunderson, Holling, and Light (1995) emphasize the importance of crisis as a necessary condition for change. A crisis is not sufficient, however. This chapter explores conditions preventing and allowing change by examining the forest sector in the USA from 1970 to 2000.

Between 1970 and 2000, two similar scenarios occurred in the management of national forests in the USA. Each time, action began when a local problem of ecosystem imbalance induced litigation that led a court to stop Forest Service timber harvesting. After the first halt, Congress passed the National Forest Management Act, but the Forest Service continued high levels of wood fiber production. The impact of these cuts on an endangered species led to the second halt.