ABSTRACT
Most of this book has addressed active management — taking actions to achieve habitat goals for a species, a community or contributing to biodiversity conservation, while also considering the potential for providing wood and nontimber products for people. But many people do not feel compelled to manage their forests. The millions of small private landowners in the United States and Canada may own their forests for reasons other than timber, woodcock, or deer. They just like to have a forest. To walk through it, see it, sit in it, and listen to the birds in it (regardless of species). Except when there is a disturbance, forests change slowly. They provide a place that evokes stability, security, and spirituality. For people who view forests in this way, management is not only unnecessary, it is disruptive, and evokes instability, insecurity, and flies in the face of personal spirituality. And they may extend those feelings to all forests regardless of who owns them, because, after all, we are merely temporary tenants on earth, regardless of what we pay for the pieces we use. So, for many people, doing nothing is a perfectly acceptable management decision (Kittredge and Kittredge 1998). And doing nothing is indeed a management decision.