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Multiple-Use Management for Recreation in the East

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Multiple-Use Management for Recreation in the East MULTIPLE-USE MANAGEMENT FOR RECREATION IN THE EAST by ROBERT L. PRAUSA, Branch Chief, Recreation Management, Eastern Region, Forest Service, U. S. Department of Agn'culture, Milwaukee, Wis. ABSTRACT. An overview of the complex management problems that confront the administrator of National Forest lands in the eastern United States, with emphasis on the conflicts that occur and will intensify as a result of the many demands for different kinds of recreation opportunities on National Forest System lands. The need to identify and measure the kinds of recreation opportunities these lands can provide is brought out, together with their relationships to lands of other ownership providing other kinds of recreation opportunities. OMPLEXITY AND DIVERSITY A worker is not anxious to end air pollution C characterize the Eastern Region of the if it also means an end to his job. The United States. Within each physio- affluent suburban dweller wants more and graphic province there are wide variations better highways, not only to speed his in soils, topography, vegetation, water, and travel to and from work, thereby giving climate. Such variations lead to great dif- him more time to recreate, but also to help ferences in patterns of land use and in the speed him away from congested areas for mixture of manufacturing, mining, and a quiet weekend of solitude before hurry- commerce as well as the outdoor recreation ing back to the city with its pollution, opportunities these lands afford. ulcers, noise, dented fenders, nameless The East is also characterized by a com- neighbors, and X-rated movies. plex and diverse populace. The trend to- ward migration from rural to urban living THE FOREST LAND is perhaps greater in this region than any- Throughout the heterogeneous mix of where else. Certainly the East has greater development and cultures lie the National life-style contrasts than any other section Forests of the East. They occupy only 2.6 of the country. Every major city has its percent of the land area in the region. affluent suburbs and its ghettos. Some of the Twenty states are included within the rural countryside is made up of pleasant, bounds of the region, and 13 of them have prosperous farms just one drainage re- National Forest lands. One of the most moved from a "tobacco road." significant statistics having a bearing upon Obviously people living in these varying the management of these National Forests cultures have differing needs and wants. is that over half of the population of the The ghetto dweller is not nearly as inter- United States lives within this area (fig. 1). ested in opportunities for outdoor recrea- Almost every state within the region tion as he is in bettering his living conditions. owns and manages some forest land. Four - Figure 1.-Population centers in the Eastern Region of the Forest Service. Each circle shows a population of at least 100,000 people- the larger the circle, the greater the population. (Minnesota, Michigan, New York, and these lands provide recreation oppormni- Pennsylvania) each have more than 1 mil- ties for the millions of people living in the lion acres, most of which is forested. To- area. gether with local governments, the states Over the years, the Forest Service has in the East control approximately 12 per- tried to be all things to all people-espe- cent of the forested land. This compares cially in providing outdoor recreation. We with the 6 percent of forested land making found a need for large and highly devel- up the National Forests. Nine percent, or oped campgrounds-so we built them. We half again as much, is owned b forest responded to the need for wilderness op- industries, but 70 percent - thin lof it, portunities to the extent we had lands with nearly %-is in private ownership of tracts the characteristics of wilderness. We have of less than 500 acres held by some done our best to keep pace with the de- 2,000,000 different owners. mand for winter-sports activities. Power What these statistics mean is that there boating surged in popularity in the late is a crying need for coordinated resource 1950's and 60's, so the Forest Service moved planning of all forested lands in the East. to satisfy demands for recreation o por- This is especially true when related to how tunities for power boating, water si iing, and related sports. The list of recreation merchandising has been particularly notice- activities people engage in on the National able in winter recreation activity participa- Forests goes on and on. tion rates. At the October 1968 North- Actually, the fact that National Forest eastern Snowmobile Conference in Boston, lands have such diverse characteristics is the International Snowmobile Industry As- the main reason why they are found attrac- sociation revealed that five states have 70 tive by so man people interested in so percent of the Nation's snowmobiles: many different inds of recreation. Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wis- t consin, and Maine, in that order. Contacts with sales personnel for this industry reveal A TIME OF CONFLICT that the same proportion still exists; and if anything, sales rates for these five states are But we are rapidly approaching a time slightly higher than in the rest of the of conflict between these varied interests. Nation. We are in the throes of conflict between the harvest of commodity resources and MULTIPLE USE the so called "social amenities" provided on The National Forests are managed under our wild lands. In speaking before a group of top-level Forest Service planners and the principles of multiple use and sustained managers, Dr. Brad Hainesworth referred yield to insure utilization of the various to multiple use as "the management of renewable resources, in a combination that conflicts". I think this is a very apt de- will best meet the needs of the American scription. people, without impairment of the pro- ductivity of the land. If we were to over- Certain kinds of recreation activity con- simplify the definition of multiple-use flict with the habits of wildlife; so recrea- planning, we could characterize it as an tion activities must be curtailed or ad- allocation of resources to use combinations justed. Unrestricted clearcutting conflicts by intuition, judgment, and physical char- with aesthetics and requires adjustments in acteristics ascertained by inventories. harvesting methods. And the list goes on. It is in the inventory phase that we find Hardly a management task can be under- the greatest deficiencies. Though we have taken that does not result in a conflict with sound inventories of commercial timber, one or more of other benefits or uses of soil surveys on many areas, and general National Forest lands. locations of potential recreation-develop- Since the early 1900's major changes in ment sites, there are many serious gaps m the landscape of the East have been caused our basic resource inventories, especially b the construction and mining industries. capacities of the land to provide dispersed dwhousing, water impoundments, air- recreation opportunities. This paucity of ports, highways, shopping centers, factories, data is serious and could contribute to in- etc., have made substantial impacts on the accuracies in planning or management forested and other rural lands in this highly decisions that are improper and irrevocable. concentrated area of population. Also, the As demands for products and services region has more surface mining than other from National Forest lands increase, we regions. Yet the proportion of cropland find ourselves faced with what Dr. Marshall reverting to woodland is higher than any- Goldman of Wellesley College defines as where else except in parts of the South. an "environmental disruption". Dr. Gold- Shorter working hours, greater affluence, man attributes part of our difficuIty to the and improved transportation, systems allow fact that Americans have often been unsure more and more people to participate in of the goal they were pursuing. Some are outdoor recreation. These participation seeking purity of air and water; some are rates are further accelerated through mer- concerned only about air; others only about chandising efforts of manufacturers of water-without understanding that the en- sporting equipment, owners of resorts, and vironment must be considered as a coor- real-estate developers. The influence of dinated whole. In other words, the ecological system is ing to this drive, it is important for land self-contained. The output of a process managers to carefully plan all uses of wild- becomes the input of a subsequent opera- lands. In speaking at a recreation seminar tion. When one of the outputs is released in Spokane, Washington, last March, Re- in such quantities that it cannot be ab- gional Forester Jay Cravens commented on sorbed adequately as an input by other ~OYNthe recent controversy over timber- processes, we would normally end up with harvesting practices on the Monongahela an environmental disruption. Avoiding such National Forest in West Virginia was a environmental disruptions requires the dramatic example of the changing attitudes greatest skill and periception in practicing about resource development. He went on multiple-use management. to say that the most significant feature of This brings us back to Dr. Hainesworth's this West Virginia experience was the way definition of multiple use being the man- the public "cracked our bureaucratic in- agement of conflict. I have already referred stallation," reaffirming their right to de- to one of the conflicts between utilization mand action. And through this experience of a commodity resource and social amenity we have also learned that being sensitive to values. In my opinion, these conflicts- puldic concern does not necessarily lead to between the use of land by people for cornpromise of professional expertise.
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