RPA Values for Recreation: Theory and Practice
John W. Duffield · eYLS (Yale Law School) · 1989
The principal law guiding planning on the National Forests is the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974 (RPA), 3 as amended by the National Forest Management Act of 1976 (NFMA).4 These statutes require the U.S. Forest Service to provide an assessment of the renewable resources on all the nation's forest and range lands every ten years and to provide a Program every five years describing a long range (50 year) plan.5 The first assessment was completed in 1979 and the first RPA Program in 1985.The establishment of economic values of resource outputs (or so-called "RPA values") is central to this process in that it allows a comparison of alternative plans on a consistent net present value basis.Resources for which values must be estimated include timber, water, minerals, fish and wildlife and recreation.6 In addition to planning at the national level, RPA values are to be used to develop long range plans at both the regional and forest level.7 The focus of this article is on the development of one category of RPA values, those for recreation and fish and wildlife.These resource uses are in general not allocated through market systems in the United States.Accordingly, the economic theory and methods available for defining these values lie in the area of non-market valuation.The following section briefly describes concepts of value, the primary available methodologies, and the standards that have been promulgated for application in various contexts.The next section provides an overview and critique of the RPA values developed in the most recent Program (1985).This is followed by a description of more recent empirical work and a general perspective on the problem.To anchor and limit the discussion, specific examples will generally be drawn from Forest Service Region 1.