ABSTRACT

In addressing the general problem of managing the public forestlands for multiple uses, we have stressed the issue of public forestland because many of the resource services of the forest are public goods or include externalities for which payment, and hence revenues, are not available in exchange for supplying such services. Alternatively, some activities on the land-say, mining-are destructive of certain features of the landscape that would oth­ erwise provide nonmarketable amenities. These amenities would not be given consideration in the private sector calculus. We can understand why private resource owners would not be motivated to provide services the costs of which cannot be recovered. Provision of the full range of resource services of which the public forestlands are capable, therefore, requires some revenue source in addition to user fees (at least for the pure public good, and most of the third-party side effects or externalities). This aspect of public land man­ agement involves public budgeting and appropriations processes.