Forest Service Budget Requests and Appropriations

In spite of recent arguments that significant changes are occurring in the United States Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, to date little empirical evidence exists demonstrating that this is indeed the case and whether these presumed changes are impacting upon substantive policy outcomes. Most of the current evidence available is from studies that have inferred change by measuring attitudinal change in Forest Service employees. None to date has examined changes in quantitative indicators of agency policy efforts or outcomes. In this article, we analyze trends in the budget requests of the Forest Service, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and appropriations made by Congress, to ascertain whether priorities of these actors concerning the commodity and non-commodity programs of the National Forests have changed since the passage of the National Forest Management Act. The data reveal shifting priorities for the Forest Service, USDA, and OMB. However, although the shifts have been greater for the Forest Service than for the other two agencies, they have been significantly less than the shifts in congressional appropriations. This fact suggests that Congress is changing its view of how the Forest Service should manage its lands more quickly than the Forest Service is changing itself, and that, as some have argued, Congress has been an important external agent of change concerning the agency and its policies.