Professional foresters and the land ethic, revisited

Abstract

Using a nationwide survey of Forest Service employees, this article compares the land ethic of foresters with that of other natural resource professinals and examines the relationship between one's land ethic and preferred forest policy options. Professional foresters embrace a more utilitarian land ethic than that expressed by biologists and other natural resource scientists in the agency. Because the number of foresters, engineers, and range managers in the Forest Service is declining while the ranks of natural resource scientists are growing, changes in the short-term management of national forest units may be forthcoming.