and important non timber forest products (NTFPs) including first foods, medicines, and fuel wood. As one participant said, “Forest management is supposed to be by the book. Now let’s see what kind of book we can write.” The convergence of views by resource managers toward those held by tribal members first documented in IFMAT II and also demonstrated during IFMAT III can again be seen in IFMAT IV, with overall importance of protection, cultural, and spiritual values receiving similarly high scores among both Native and Non-native resource managers. The only exception to this being the relatively lower importance placed on beauty/scenery by all managers compared to the tribal public.
Unlike the highly consistent tribal values over the last four decades, the degree of satisfaction that respondents have with twenty different aspects of forest management on their reservation has been much more dynamic. IFMAT III found an encouraging increase in positive perception and five aspects of management received more than 50% positive scores. This was the first time in any IFMAT that a majority held a positive opinion. In keeping with the importance tribal members put on holistic, non-commodity forest values, the highest positive rankings went to management for wildlife, fisheries, water quality/quantity, cultural values and forest protection. Overall satisfaction with management during this time increased
to 42%, up from the baseline ranking of 22% in IFMAT I. During the intervening decade, between IFMAT III and IV, satisfaction with both overall management and all five of the most-approved-of values has decreased, with fisheries management now being the only category that received a “good” score of over 50%. Forest protection in particular suffered a 16% decline in positive rating and a 12% increase in negative ratings. While overall satisfaction went up slightly in one case (spiritual) and remained largely unchanged in two (grazing and timber for tribal use), it was down in the other 17 values. However, in only five cases did negative impression increase more than 5% points (with a maximum swing of 12%)
Forest management is observed and discussed during the IFMAT IV site visit to the Tulalip Tribes in western Washington state. PHOTO CREDIT: TIM VREDENBURG
30 Assessment of Indian Forests and Forest Management in the United States
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator