Stakeholder objectives for public lands: Rankings of forest management alternatives

Public participation in decision-making on US Forest Service lands is crucial to accomplishing the planning mission dictated by the National Forest Management Act of 1976. However, including the public has the potential to dramatically increase the possibility for conflict. This study investigates the process with which the opinions and desires of the public are incorporated into the forest planning process. Using a prescriptive approach from decision analysis, stakeholder preferences for development of leasable minerals on the San Juan National Forest in south-west Colorado are explored. Ordinal preferences and cardinal value functions are elicited from stakeholders on the San Juan National Forest. The ordering for the various management alternatives differed for several stakeholders from the cardinal to the ordinal rankings. Information on stakeholder values gathered from these methods can be used by Forest decision-makers to minimize conflict in the Forest planning process.