Managing the diverse interests of stakeholders.

In far southeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Arkansas, the Ouachita Mountains roll ridge after ridge in a 150-mile range, extending east to west. Although the range is not as well known as the Ozark Mountains to the north, it offers visitors a wide variety of recreational opportunities. Because of the east-to-west formation, the northern slopes of the Ouachita Mountains tend to be moister and cooler than the southern slopes and are dominated by mixed hardwood forests. During the fall, these hardwoods provide a rich diversity of colors, as the leaves change in mosaic patterns across the ridges. By contrast, the southern slopes remain the deep green of the short-leaf pine, common to the drier, warmer soils receiving more sunlight.

Black bears have made a resurgence in the Ouachitas during the past 15 years, especially in Arkansas. As the black bears roam into Oklahoma, they encounter recreation visitors at several of the established campgrounds and add to the attraction of the area. The Talimena Scenic Drive follows the east-to-west ridge lines, offering tourists panoramic views extending miles in all directions. As the Talimena Drive nears the Oklahoma-Arkansas border, it parallels the Upper Kiamichi River Wilderness, providing car travelers the opportunity to be close to wilderness, to look across valleys and hillsides of "untrammeled" watershed.

Crystal digging, rock glaciers, the Ouachita National Recreation Trail, the Winding Stair National Recreation Area, bird-watching, rare salamanders, and botanical riches attract other visitors to the Ouachita Mountains. Recent development of an outstanding equestrian campground attracts horse campers from throughout the South to enjoy the special facilities and trails provided for their preferred recreation pattern. Residents of Dallas, Fort Worth, Little Rock, Shreveport, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City are only hours from a mountain experience in the South.

By contrast, the resident population in the Ouachita Mountains relies on the forests, largely managed by the U.S. Forest Service as the Ouachita National Forest, for very different purposes. The timber industry in certain districts of Oklahoma and Arkansas provides the only consistent employment opportunities. Other residents rely on the forest lands for cattle grazing, firewood, or other uses.

Circle of Stakeholders 

The stakeholders of a national forest can be viewed as individuals and groups of people arranged in concentric circles, radiating from the resource base. The type and extent of expression of the "stake," established or demonstrated by various individuals and groups, becomes important to the U.S. Forest Service as they manage the resource for the varying interests represented by the public. Unfortunately, it is often assumed that the type and extent of expressed "stake" are a result of place of residence.

More accurately, the innermost circle is comprised of on-site visitors or users of the national forest, the people who "show up" and experience the forest in any way, whether it be for commodity or noncommodity interests. This circle includes people engaged in recreational pursuits of all kinds (campers, hikers, sightseers, hunters, bird-watchers, rock hounds, hang gliders, etc.), timber contractors, various permittees (grazing, utility corridor, oil and gas, etc.), educational groups, and more.

Moving outward, the next circle of stakeholders includes private landowners, communities, local businesses (motels, resorts, service stations, grocery stores, restaurants, etc.), timber companies, and interest groups on the fringe of the national forest. This group is affected directly or indirectly by its immediate proximity to the forest, thereby deriving benefits or accruing some interest: recreation opportunity, quality of life, source of employment, tourism income. Typically, those people in this group are the primary providers of services to stakeholders in the innermost circle. Often enough, they also become innermost circle stakeholders, as they leave their homes or businesses and enter the forest to hunt, picnic, cut wood, and ride or hike trails. As fringe circle stakeholders, they are influenced to a greater or lesser extent by spin-off forest benefits by virtue of their proximity to the national forest.

The outermost circle includes stakeholders from more distant vicinities who express an interest or concern toward the national forest, but typically only derive vicarious benefits from it. Like fringe-proximity stakeholders, more distant stakeholders may occasionally visit the forest for recreational or other pursuits. For the most part, outermost circle stakeholders are members of advocacy groups or trade associations, individuals who express an interest, stance, or "stake" in a national forest. They are representatives of a cause, defenders of a position on an issue, or citizens concerned for the place "just because it is there."

Responding to Stakeholders

The management of public forest lands and associated natural resources in the United States has become more complex than ever as the nation approaches the 21st century. Present and future land managers must apply an approach to planning and decision-making that integrates scientific, economic, sociological, and political undertakings and analyses. Increasingly, managers are expected to consider and accommodate a blend of national, regional, and local interests as they administer public lands to meet a multiplicity of commodity and noncommodity uses and values. Adding to the complexity of modern forest or park management is the sobering reality that many of the associated issues and debates are emotionally charged and often laden with value judgments from divergent interest groups.

The accommodation of national, regional, and local interests for public land managers is not confined to the U.S. Forest Service. Local accommodation in management of federal public lands may best be demonstrated by the management plan for Niobrara National Scenic Riverway in Nebraska. According to a National Park Service record of decision, Niobrara will be operated unlike any other park--with management responsibilities handed over to a local council. Nebraska State Senator Chris Beutler has introduced state legislation to strengthen the management plan by providing funding and some oversight of a proposed zoning process.

Accommodation of diverse local, regional and national interests is also demonstrated in such discussions as maintaining habitat for spotted owls in Oregon, developing a management plan for reintroduction of wolves into the Yellowstone ecosystem, and designing a plan for snowmobiles in Voyageurs National Park. Such high-profile cases attract the majority of public attention, while equally important discussions are occurring daily on which stakeholders will influence management decisions for local wetlands, streams, lakes, parks, wildlife, and related recreation experiences.

Whereas the professional resource manager historically has been afforded wide latitude in applying biologically sound analyses to resource management decisions, it is clearly obvious in modern resource management that biologically "correct" approaches may not necessarily be socially acceptable nor politically prudent. The obligation is on land management agencies to learn more about an increasingly diverse public and to enrich the public's understanding of natural resources and its role in human welfare. That enrichment spans the realm of possibilities including commodity, noncommodity, tangible, intangible, functional, and instrumental uses and values.

The democratic ideal of majority rule, with protection of minority rights based on assessment of the best available information, can be approached most effectively through participation by a diversity of people. The mandate for public participation in the management of the National Forest Service has been delineated in several legislative acts. If the public forests are to represent diverse, healthy, productive and sustainable ecosystems, while providing a multiplicity of values to society, then it is imperative that forest administrators and managers have a thorough understanding of their stakeholders and the benefits they derive from the resource.

Characterization of Stakeholders

In an effort to assist management of the Ouachita National Forest in understanding its stakeholders, Oklahoma State University conducted a two-year assessment of visitors and forest users. This assessment included an on-site interview during the first year and a mail survey during the second year. Six stakeholders variables were analyzed: activity-group alignment, extent of place attachment, awareness of National Forest Service mandate, awareness of ecosystem process, trust and satisfaction with forest service management, and nature resource ideology.

The first in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 126 visitors and users of Oklahoma districts of the Ouachita National Forest yielded characterization of four clusters of stakeholders. The largest of these clusters included 62 percent of visitors that were characterized as non-local, trusting of the forest service, with occasional-to-frequent experience in the forest, participation in a wide range of noncommodity activities, but with only moderate place and activity orientation. Sixteen percent of the visitors were characterized as "passive-visual-skeptical" visitors who did not trust the forest service, were novice-to-occasional visitors, had low place attachment, limited knowledge of forest service mandate, and limited knowledge of the ecosystem. The smallest group (nine percent) was characterized as "place-connected-commodity users," demonstrated by local residence, frequent visitation patterns, high knowledge of forest service mandate, high place attachment, high levels of understanding of the ecosystem, and activities oriented around commodities within the forest (hunting, timber cutting, fishing, berry-picking).

During the second year of the stakeholder assessment, a detailed mail-response survey was completed by 151 respondents contacted while on-site in the Ouachita National Forest. Analysis of this response group yielded three clusters of stakeholders with some similarities to the sample from the prior year. Eighty-six percent of the contacts during the second year were classified as "noncommodity-oriented visitors" who had never provided input for management or planning of the forest, were satisfied with present management, rated the management by the forest service as "high," tended to be biocentric in ideology, and were truly tourists within the forest. A second group, made up of 11 percent of respondents, were characterized as "horseback-riding users" of the forest who visited the forest occasionally, were biocentric in ideology, had not provided input into planning of the resource they depended upon, but were highly attached to the place where they could ride their horses. The third cluster of forest users, composed by three percent of respondents, were characterized as "commodity-oriented users" whose frequent-use history had led to a higher lever of understanding of the forest ecosystem.

This group tended to be more anthropocentric in ideology, rated the performance of the forest service lower than did their peers, were less satisfied with management, and had exercised the right to provide planning input to the forest service.

While the two-year study showed some differences in response clusters between the interview and study respondents, forest service management gained a new depth of knowledge regarding the stakeholders of the resources they managed. Assumptions concerning correlation between resource use, recreation patterns, and ideology were shown to have been inaccurate. Now the challenge is to provide appropriate means by which the largest cluster of stakeholders may have a voice in the management of public resources. Equally important is motivating these stakeholders to express themselves and to become informed on ecosystem processes and management issues.

This challenge is increasingly complicated by the expectation that the visiting public, often tourists, should have direct means of expressing their preferences related to facilities, programs, management policies and activities within the recreation resource. An initial motive for the two-year research effort in the Ouachita National Forest was to provide a mechanism by which management could be assured that "cluster" representation had been achieved, while participation from each and every stakeholder could not be assured. Knowing which voices were at the discussion table and which were not would permit managers an opportunity to balance the diversity of voices from the various stakeholders. Understanding the composition of stakeholder groups and assuring appropriate representation during difficult policy decisions could reduce conflicts over implantation of management plans.

Looking to the Future

As Americans travel great distances for recreation experiences on the 30 percent of American lands that are managed by agencies of the federal government, recreation resource managers are expected to respond to extreme variation in the public perception. Locally managed national parks may be an extreme concept in 1997, but conflict between local interests and national interests has been a central issue of management for years. Yet, management must work to balance those diverse interests within the parameters of legislated mandates.

When the interests are divided by factors other than geography, as demonstrated in the Ouachita National Forest, management has an even more difficult task in properly gauging the extent, intensity, or representative nature of the stakeholders. Large clusters of stakeholders, with intense interests in specific experiences or places, are outside the normal range of input for management plans. When management assumes a lack of interest on the part of some visitors or users because of a lack of hearing from them, management repudiates the intensity and extent of the stake of such groups.

It is incumbent upon recreation researchers and land managers to develop appropriate instruments to evaluate and characterize stakeholders. It is equally incumbent upon recreation researchers and land managers to develop better processes for input from the wide range of stakeholders common to America's public lands.

Resources

Brown, T.C. and Peterson, G.L. 1994. A political-economic perspective on sustained ecosystem management. In sustainable ecological systems: Implementing an ecological approach to land management. (General Technical Report RM-247, pp. 228-35). Fort Collins, CO: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest Experiment Station.

Bormann, B.T., Brookes, M.H., Ford, E.D., Kiester, A.R., Oliver, C.D., and Weigand, J.F. 1994. Volume V: A framework for sustainable-ecosystem management (General Technical Report PNW-GTR-331). Portland, OR: USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station.

Gericke, K.L., Sullivan, J. and Wellman, J.D. 1992. Public participation in National Forest planning. Journal of Forestry. 90(2):35-38.

Kuzmic, T. and Caneday, L. 1996. A Characterization of Stakeholders of the Ouachita National Forest U.S. Forest Service Project No. 19-93-104. Oklahoma State University.

National Parks and Conversation Association. Local Niobrara Council Approved. National Parks. March/April 1997. 71(3-4):26.

Shepard, W.B. 1994. Modern forest management: It's about opening up, not locking up. In Sustainable ecological systems: Implementing an ecological approach to land management. (General Technical Report RM-247, pp. 218-27). Fort Collins, CO: USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest Experiment Station.