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ROBERT H. NELSON (2000) A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 196 pp., $27.95 In A Burning Issue, Nelson, a professor of environmental policy at the University of Maryland with previous experience at the Department of the Interior, describes the rather serious issues confronting the U. S. Forest Service as it enters its second century of existence. The subject is timely, considering the fact that the Forest Service and its past performance have largely escaped public scrutiny, in spite of the national importance of environmental issues, and in spite of the media attention given to the large, destructive forest fires that seem to sweep the western forests with increasing frequency. Fire control and forest maintenance are the Forest Service’s two main jobs, and Nelson presents a convincing case that the Forest Service should not be allowed to continue performing these jobs as it has in the past. In the early chapters of the book, Nelson presents a convincing case that the Forest Service has spent the majority of its time executing a misguided mission. The Service was founded almost exactly a century ago with a mandate to ‘‘scientifically manage’’ the vast federally owned forests of the American West; that is, the Forest Service was to manage forests so they produced the largest possible amount of usable resources for the country. At the time, the most important aspect of this job was thought to be suppression of fire, and unfortunately, as is widely known today, the principle of fire suppression was misguided. Fires play a critical role in maintaining the health of forests, but after nearly a century of fire suppression, western federal forests are in awful shape, severely overcrowded with smaller trees. Ironically, the makeup of national forests created by fire suppression virtually guarantee that future forest fires will be more severe. Though the management mandate was misguided, it was at least easily understood. In subsequent chapters, Nelson points out that the Forest Service’s original mandate has now been replaced by a more complex, ill-defined and multifaceted management goal. No longer are forests seen primarily as storehouses of timber. Large, influential constituencies now view lack of human disturbance in the forest as a desirable outcome in and of itself. Nelson points out that the Forest Service is thus now confronted with the difficult task of achieving an ‘‘environmental vision’’ for forests, which must take into account such nebulous concepts as ‘‘biodiversity,’’ ‘‘ecological integrity,’’ and ‘‘habitat recovery’’ while also recognizing the recreational and economic demands placed on forests. Moreover, the daunting task of rehabilitating national forests, through either harvesting of unwanted timber, or prescribed burning, also confronts the Forest Service. The Forest Service is faced with these two difficult issues in an adverse policy-making environment; remarkably, the Forest Service has somehow managed to simultaneously alienate environmentalists, industrialists, and local constituencies. But if the Forest Service is to be abolished, what should replace it? Nelson calls for decentralized management of forests and application of management techniques that rely upon experimentation and consensus building at the local level. Nelson reasons that these types of policies encourage much-needed flexibility in the policy-making process, allowing management practices to be tailored to the needs of individual forests, while at the same time placing decision making power in the hands of those who bear the costs

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and benefits of forest management. This is a shrewd suggestion, both scientifically, because it recognizes the tremendous diversity in the forests, and also economically, because it better aligns costs and benefits (indeed, it is possible that many federal agencies could benefit from this advice). While Nelson attempts to buttress this argument with evidence that forests in private hands have fared better than national forests, this evidence is not as systematic or extensive as his description of the state of national forests. While the critique is well executed and easily digestible, towards the later pages of A Burning Issue it becomes unclear whether or not Nelson is actually calling for the Forest Service’s abolition or simply an end to the Forest Service’s centralized management strategy. As a case in point, much of the evidence presented in the book suggests that the latter may be a more reasonable course of action. For example, nearly all of the examples of local management groups (these cannot yet be referred to as successful cases of local forest management) that have sprung up in recent years include Forest Service officials in decision-making, including the Applegate Partnership in southwest Oregon and the California-based Mokelumne River Watershed Project. Indeed, while Nelson writes that ‘‘it is federal agencies that are losing legitimacy; it is local groups that are gaining the social authority to resolve local problems’’ but then adds ‘‘if sometimes tapping into federal state resources and skills’’ ( p. 137). Similarly, Nelson lauds the National Resources Conservation Service as a federal agency that ‘‘has been an exception to the general disillusionment with federal actions of recent decades.’’ The National Resources Conservation Service, Nelson points out, has succeeded because it works through local organizations, not with ‘‘the club of federal power’’ ( p. 115). It is not clear why the Forest Service could not be reconstituted to function in similar fashion. Some discussions in the book may leave the reader uncomfortable with abolition of the Forest Service, even though the discussions are intended to engender confidence in local management. In a chapter called ‘‘Lessons in Western Political Economy,’’ Nelson calls attention to the disproportionate power many senators from sparsely populated Western States wield in Washington. This fact alone makes me, for one, uneasy about eliminating federal presence in national forest management. In a discussion of the forces leading to privatization, at one point Nelson mentions the trend towards privatization in the former Soviet Union; in my opinion, this is not the sort of imagery one wants to evoke in building a case for decentralized management. Indeed, through the latter half of the book, it seems as though Nelson backs away from a case to strictly abolish the Forest Service, and the reader may find plenty to disagree with here, though Nelson’s suggestions for reforming management of the national forests are interesting. Still, the strength of A Burning Issue is its concise presentation of the diverse philosophical, practical, and scientific problems present in forest management, and this alone should interest readers from a variety of disciplines. Matthew J. Baker Department of Economics United States Naval Academy Annapolis, MD 21402 USA