Model Public Participation Process for State Forest Master Planning

In the coming weeks, the DNR will commence Master Planning for the 225,000 acre Northern Highland/American Legion (NHAL) State Forest. Located in the heart of Wisconsin's once legendary pine forests of Vilas, Iron and Oneida County, the NHAL Master Plan must, by statute, take into consideration a wide variety of topics such as biodiversity, recreation, timber harvesting and wildlife habitat. Since it is updated only once every 15 years, it is likely that the plan will attract enormous public attention and will affect what the forest will look like for many decades to come.

To arrive at a plan that achieves widespread public support, it is crucial for the DNR to implement a credible public participation process. Newly enacted state laws that guide Master Planning, however, are very vague with regard to this important aspect of forest planning. Although the DNR has almost unbridled discretion in implementing a public participation plan, the members of two northern Wisconsin environmental groups, Environmentally Concerned Citizens of the Lakeland Area (ECCOLA) and the Northwoods Conservation Association (NCA) believe that if the DNR adheres to the following planning principles advocated in a 1990 study by the late Prof. Timothy Knopp and Elaine Caldbeck of the University of Minnesota, it may avoid the contentious and often litigious battles that have plagued forest plans in other states and National Forests.

First of all, it is not sufficient merely to offer a prospective plan and solicit public comments. "A distinction has to be made between simply listening to the public versus actually allowing them to enter the decision-making process. This distinction is hard to establish as long as decisions to allocate lands to various uses occurs behind closed doors where no one can be sure who if anyone had any influence. One possible solution is "participatory democracy" where individuals have a known and quantifiable effect on how lands are allocated. At this point, public participation moves from simple comments with unknown effects to a process that the public can understand and evaluate."

The first step is for the DNR to solicit comments from interested parties about the goals and objectives for the property.(ex., Would the management emphasis for the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest be recreation, timber production, environmental protection? etc..) From the list of respondents, the DNR could choose a Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) that would work with the property managers to develop a forest plan. Selecting an equal number of participants from the full spectrum of "interests" such as local government, recreation, conservation/environmental, forest industry and unaffiliated citizens will prevent citizen advisory committees from becoming "stacked" in favor of a single interest.

During this process, DNR staff can inform participants about the socioeconomic effects and the ecological impacts of various land-use allocations. It is important that differences in opinion among the participants be publicized so that a maximum amount of information can be made available to the public.

Knoop and Caldbeck also advised that, "In order to arrive at a collective decision, individual preferences should be determined in a clear and easily understood manner so that citizens know how they've affected the outcome. Although not every decision lends itself to simple mathematics, the allocation of land-uses could be determined through some form of proportional representation." For example, each participant could be allotted an equal number of credits that they could allocate to the land classes described in the Master Plan Rule.

The DNR has already successfully used this method to arrive at goals in its 1993 Northern Initiatives process. Another benefit is that it also helps avoid the tyranny of the majority. (i.e., minority preferences are not discarded) This process would probably satisfy most, if not all of the participants, in that they could see that they had some quantifiable impact upon the plans. In order for this process to work, the choices of different land-use classes should be clear, unambiguous and comprehensive. The Master Plan Rule which provides seven distinct land-use classes ranging from forest production to wilderness should meet these demands.

Once a draft Master Plan is completed, the DNR should go back to the public to gather comments and opinions via open house meetings, letters, etc. With these comments in hand, the Citizen Advisory Committee and DNR could identify and evaluate pertinent modifications and present the final plan to the Natural Resources Board for their approval, modification or rejection.

The checks and balances needed to preserve the fairness of democratic decision-making would still be present. It appears that no part of the statutes directing forest planning; Wisconsin State Forest Law SS 28.04 or Master Plan Rule NR 44 explicitly prohibits shared decision-making. Any plan derived through shared planning would still have to be approved by the Natural Resources Board. Citizens that are unhappy with the outcome would still have the opportunity to voice their grievances to the Board before they would vote to approve the plan.

Implicit in this process is that the public is the best arbitrator among conflicting values. Intuitively, it makes sense that direct public involvement in decision-making is most appropriate for determining land-use allocations. At this level, a detailed technical understanding of natural resource issues would be less relevant. Implementation of the plan, facilitation of the Master Plan process and informed technical advise to the CAC should be the concern of the trained professionals in the DNR

Finally, we would like to emphasize that the duration of the planning process is vitally important. Protracted planning processes that take more than two years to conduct lose citizen interest through attrition, leaving paid representatives of well-funded firms and parochial interests to exert a disproportionate influence on our public forests. Furthermore, prolonged planning makes it all too easy for decision-makers to indefinitely postpone tough decisions and needlessly squanders tax money.

Shared decision-making may indeed create controversy. However, proportional representation may be a necessary to achieve a just allocation of land uses. Most people are probably more inclined to accept the outcome of a process that they perceive as fair. Current approaches to forest planning that involve "black box" planning are often justly perceived as unfair. ECCOLA and NCA would like to point out that if an area is indeed public, we need to accept the principle of shared ownership and decision-making authority.