National Forest Management Act of 1976
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The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 (P.L. 94-588) is a United States federal law that is the primary statute governing the administration of national forests and was an amendment to the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, which called for the management of renewable resources on national forest lands. The law was seen as necessary, because a lawsuit (commonly known as the Monongahela decision) had invalidated many timber practices in the national forests.
NFMA substantially enacted detailed guidance for forest plans, particularly in regulating when, where, and how much timber could be harvested and in requiring public involvement in preparing and revising the plans. Also, NFMA established and expanded several Forest Service trust funds and special accounts. It reorganized and expanded the 1974 Act, requiring the Secretary of Agriculture to assess forest lands, and develop and implement a resource management plan for each unit of the National Forest System.[1] These plans required alternative land management options to be presented, each of which have potential resource outputs (timber, range, mining, recreation) as well as socio-economic effects on local communities. The Forest Service, in cooperation with FEMA, contributed considerable resources to the creation of FORPLAN (a linear programming model used to estimate the land management resource outputs) and IMPLAN to estimate the economic effects of these outputs on local communities.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ "National Forest Management Act of 1976". http://wildlifelaw.unm.edu/fedbook/nfma.html. Retrieved on 2009-01-18.
- ^ "IMPLAN Model". http://www.economics.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/implan/implanmodel.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-20.
