Evolving forestry and rural development beliefs at midpoint and close of the 20th century

Abstract

Once so effective in providing sustained-yield conservation values, visions and models for the Western worlds’ transition to an industrial society, it is time again for foresters (plus many other types of forest managers and users) to re-think the role of rural economies and their forest ecosystems in the urban, post-industrial, global societies of North America and Europe. Our paper is an overview of traditional vs. emerging values and views about the role of forest management and managers in rural economic development. Much traditional forestry thinking is evolving today into more comprehensive, integrated forest ecosystem management and rural economic development concepts. For example, traditional sustained-yield models are expanding into ecosystem-based sustainability concepts; emphasis on the economic growth of forest products sectors is evolving into broader, sustainable community socioeconomic development; and the management of community sociopolitical conflict over forest management is beginning to be recognized as a sustainability consideration equally important as forest biological constraints. These all contribute to making public forest management today much more: (1) ecosystem-based and landscape-scale; (2) that incorporates diverse social values or uses; and (3) is interrelated with many community socioeconomic and political systems — from local to regional to national and super-regional (e.g. the European Community).