THE ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL FORESTS

EARL W. LOVERIDGE.

Our national forests are big, complex, varied in the services they render and the land they cover, widely distributed, and diverse in use and possibility. As pertinent as the fact that their exterior boundaries embrace nearly 230 million acres is the fact that 140 million American citizens own them. The administration of the forests has to take into account all those different factors.

The great area and distribution of the forests is one basic problem of administering them in the public interest.

The other is the dual purpose for which the forests were established and are being managed. The purpose includes service to the Nation and to the local economy and welfare.

The same dual purpose controls the management of the national forest range resource, which is utilized by some 10 million head of livestock, owned by more than 25,000 ranchers and other nearby residents. So, too, with the recreation and wildlife resources, which attract millions of persons to the forests each year. Water that the forests produce likewise must be so managed to serve interstate and local needs and to reduce its high potential for such disasters as floods and siltation of reservoirs. Because of its supreme importance, water management must be given predominating consideration in the handling of each of the other national forest resources.

The situation gives the order. Obviously, decentralization and delegation of authority to the tree and grass roots are called for. When Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the Forest Service, formed a decentralized type of organization and administration in 1908, he said, "Each locality should be dealt with on its own merits." Since then that has been the controlling principle. A small central office is maintained to meet the needs for coordination and leadership, for essential facilitating and control services, and for the work with the board of directors Congress. Of the total employment during a normal field season, less than 2 percent is in the central office in Washington.

Administration of the national forests is one of three main responsibilities of the Forest Service. The other two and research and State and private forestry cooperation. In charge of each of the three major lines of activity is an assistant chief, who with other assistant chiefs comprise the staff of the Chief of the Forest Service in dealing With matters of national importance.

The assistant chief in charge of national forest administration, acting for the Chief of the Forest Service, has full operating responsibility for planning, coordinating, staffing, organizing, and directing all national forest functions and activities. He in turn delegates to division chiefs in his office responsibility for particular functions. This functional organization is made up of the divisions of timber management, range management, wildlife management, recreation and land use, watershed management, fire control, and such service units as engineering, information and education, finance, as well as personnel.

Territorially the United States is divided into regions, each region into national forests, and each national forest into ranger districts.

The line of authority runs from the Chief of the Forest Service to the assistant chief in charge of national forests, to the regional forester, to the forest supervisor, to the district ranger.

The functional organization in the Chief's office, however, is extended to the field. In Washington, for example, a Division of Timber Management is responsible for over-all direction of timber management. In the region there is likewise a timber management division. At the national forest level there is a functional-staff man for timber management, and in the ranger district as many men are stationed as are needed to do the work.

Here then we have a secondary organizational line parallel to the primary lines of authority, and, like it, running from top to bottom. There are as many of these secondary lines as there are functions. The purpose of the first line, that is, the so-called line of authority, is primarily that of coordinating the work of the functional divisions, although it has other important duties, as will be seen later. The various functional lines must be kept in balance and held within their proper fields.

The relationship between the line of authority and the functional lines is important. Briefly stated, the relationship is this : General policies are issued down the line of authority, and only down that line. Within the framework of those established policies, a functional chief in Washington may issue instructions to the regional forester. The same practice holds as between the regional office and the forest supervisor's office.

THE REGIONAL FORESTER is in a key position.

While ordinarily there is thus an open channel of communication down the functional lines, it is to be understood that all functional officials in the region are responsible to the regional forester, and not to the Washington functional chiefs. They are employees of the region (not of the corresponding functional divisions in Washington), and the regional forester, who is responsible only to the Chief, is their immediate supervisor. Upon the regional forester rests ultimate responsibility for the needed correlation between functions and for the success or failure of all national forest operations in his region.

With this picture in mind a group of functional lines paralleling a controlling coordinating line we are now ready to consider field relationships in greater detail. While the assistant chief has full responsibility for national forest operations, he and his division heads in Washington exercise control only at the over-all, Nation-wide level. That is, within the mandates of Congress and the Secretary of Agriculture, the assistant chief and his Washington staff formulate objectives, determine policies, develop plans, establish standards, and check the accomplishments. These objectives, plans, policies, and standards must apply to the Nation as a whole and must be general enough and broad enough to cover all possible conditions.

A significant feature of the organization is the small size of the functional divisions in the central office that are responsible for national forest activities. An example is the Division of Fire Control. The extent of its responsibilities is indicated by the fact that each year there are some 11,000 fires in the national forests, and as many as 20,000 fire-control workers are employed at times. Fire-control expenditures amounted to more than 12 million dollars during each of the past several years. But there are only three staff-level employees in this Division and two clerical assistants.

The United States is divided into 10 national forest regions. The average region includes about 20 million acres of national forest land and an average of 15 national forests. Those are rounded-off averages that do not apply to any one region. They do, however, indicate the general framework of the organization at this level. The person versed in administrative matters will be interested in knowing that the average "span-of-control" in the territorial organization for a regional forester and his staff of functional division chiefs is 15 forest supervisors, in contrast to the generally considered maximum "span" of 3 to 7 supervisory or other important subordinate positions that an administrator can handle effectively. That the regional forester can handle such a broad span of control is due partly to the parallel functional organization line I have described.

The assistant chief in charge of national forest administration delegates to each regional forester control over all operations within his own region, subject to the requirement that he must operate within the framework of the policies, plans, and standards established for the country as a whole. The regional forester, with his staff of functional division chiefs, then sets the objectives for his region. He establishes regional policies, makes regional plans, establishes regional standards, and, of course, makes certain of compliance by field inspection and otherwise. That is necessary because each region is different. Conditions in the Southeast, say, differ materially from conditions in the Pacific Northwest the timber, the types of recreation, and the wildlife are different, and so on. Each region makes its own plans and carries on its own activities. It does whatever is necessary to make the national forests of greatest value in the social and economic life of the region. The only restriction is that everything done must contribute to the national objective, must come within national policy, and must be up to national standards.

The field, then, stands on its own feet. There are some exceptions, although it will be seen that even those are, in reality, applications of the general principle that the Washington staff should confine itself to national matters. Sometimes an operation, even though it is located entirely within a region, is of national importance. It then must be considered on a national basis and by the Washington office. For example, a small timber sale is of only local significance, but a large one affects national markets and has national economic importance. It is difficult to say exactly where the dividing line may be, but now it is estimated to be around 30 million feet in some regions, 50 million feet in others. If a sale involves more than that amount, it must be approved by the Washington office; if it is less than that amount, it may be approved within the region without reference to the Washington office. The same general rule applies in all other functional activities.

The regional office, which is organized for national forest work on the same general pattern as the Chief's office, is likewise manned on a skeletonize, basis, with certain differences. Although each main function is represented in the Chief's office by a separate division, frequently several functions are grouped within one division at the regional level, depending on the work load. In addition, the regional office provides project and other service to individual national forests as needed, where the national forest concerned does not have enough work of that type to require the full time of specialists attached directly to the staff of the forest supervisor.

For example the logging engineer and his assistants who are attached to the regional office will provide their specialized type of service for short periods each year as needed on the national forests that do not have a full-time logging engineer. Range- and timber-survey crews, bridge-construction experts, and central equipment and machine shops headquartered at the regional office are other examples of special services available for limited periods to all the national forests in the region. In other words, there are two general classes of personnel attached to each regional office. One is of the supervisory, or overhead, class. The other is made up of project workers engaged in direct operations in the woods and on the range. They normally have headquarters at the regional office merely as a convenient turning and base point for a succession of work assignments to different points in the field.