Making sense of sustainable forestry in the United States: Past actions, present conditions, and potential outcomes

This dissertation presents three studies into the political and practical aspects of sustainable forestry in the United States. It also evaluates conceptual models from political science by testing their power to explain present conditions and to identify potential outcomes for sustainable forestry.; The first study utilized content analysis to test the hypothesis that as Forest Service programs broadened in the late 1980s, its support from interest groups weakened. Congressional hearings from 1984 through 1993 were analyzed to chart the trends in environmental and timber industry interest group support for the U.S. Forest Service. Support from industry declined during the time period, and although environmental interests increased their support, the increases did not offset industry decline.; The second study tested the hypothesis that differences in legal approaches to forestry at the state level result in advantages for landowners seeking to participate in sustainable forestry programs. Practices deemed sustainable by third-party certification organizations and by second-party standards programs were compared with two management scenarios for NIPF landowners in the five major timber producing regions of the United States. Under a "mandated" management scenario, owners in the Pacific Northwest already meet many of the requirements of the standards and certification groups. All landowners under a "combined" management scenario face roughly equal costs to participate.; The third study applied network analysis to the issue of sustainable forestry in the U.S. to identify potential public and private outcomes for the issue. Results indicate: (1) that Delphi methodology is a useful tool for issue network studies; (2) that influence in the sustainable forestry network is equally distributed between actors in the federal government, companies in the timber industry, and non-governmental organizations; and (3) that outcomes likely to affect public and private lands include new policies, revised policies, and private actions. Finally, results show that sustainable forestry has been incorporated into the broader debate over U.S. forest management, suggesting that the issue will continue to expand.