After a day listening to ecologists talk about landscape models, I am further inspired to urge planning rules that keep-it-simple-sweet.
There are three kinds of government rules. Most government rules regulate the behavior of private concerns, e.g., point-source pollution and building codes. A few regulate the behavior of other government agencies, e.g., Endangered Species Act consultation and CEQ NEPA process. Fewer still self-regulate an agency’s own behavior. The NFMA planning rule falls in this last category.
I don’t know about you, but if I wrote enforceable rules to regulate my own behavior, I’d make sure the rules were as spare and flexible as possible. Thus I offer the following rules to implement NFMA’s inventory and interdisciplinary mandates:
36 CFR 219.4: Inventories
The revision shall be based upon inventory data, maps, graphic material, and explanatory aids, of a kind, character, and quality, and to the detail appropriate for the land management plan revisions and vegetation management and timber harvest program decisions made.
36 CFR 219.5: Interdisciplinary Preparation
An interdisciplinary approach shall be used in the revision of the land management plan. The disciplines of the preparers shall be appropriate to: 1) the formulation of the vegetation management and timber harvest program; and, 2) the new information and changed circumstances and conditions in the unit that warrant revision of the plan.