Whether the U.S. national forests become “Privatized” or not would depend on the evaluation of U.S. public policy with regards to management and preservation of forests.
Public ownership of forests in United States was prevalent even before the constitution of United States has been formulated.
Initially, forests were owned by the government but they are not managed by the government as they were merely treated as common property. However, in the later period, due to heavy destruction of forests and wider call for sustainable use of forest resources, government has started taking active steps in the direction of management and preservation of forests.
The first step in this direction was the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 which created the system of permanent forest reserves with no option of private harvesting on such land.
However, in 1897, U.S. congress has passed the general administration bill that authorized the private harvesting on the public forests albeit with restrictive conditions. After that system has evolved further and USDA forest service has implemented various laws and procedures for undertaking sustained level of harvest.
In 1960, Forest service has formulated the multiple-use philosophy with the implementation of Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act. But there was no clarity and action plan with regards to implementation of such philosophy.
Over the years it has been witnessed that public management of forest resources has not yielded efficient outcomes. Public management has been proved inadequate in providing sufficient benefits of forests to wildlife and recreation.
This inefficiency is given voice to call for privatization of forests.
But before deciding in favor of privatization we have to analyze this aspect in detail as well.
Private forest owners generally view forest as the provider of timber and do not give enough weightage to other valued aspects of the forests such as biodiversity protector and prevent soil erosion etc.
When private forest owners take decision with regards to harvesting of timber from forest, they normally does not take these aspect into account and therefore does not include external cost pertaining to absence of these function into their cost decision.
Also, forests are key habitat for wildlife and also play an important role in preservation of local ecosystem. These are also external costs with regard to harvesting of timber from forests is considered.
Private forest owners generally undervalue theses cost or completely ignore them as these are external costs and they do not internalize them and because of this their cost becomes lower than it actually would be and induce them to harvest inefficiently large amount of timber and may also prompt them to convert forests into other uses even when social net benefits could be maximized by retaining land as forests.
Unless and until, government can take strict and adequate steps to internalize these external costs with respect to private forest owners, U.S. national forest should not be privatized.
Even though public efforts are not efficient but corrective measures can bring in efficiency as government is not obliged to maximize profits and can easily take external effects on wildlife or recreation into account whereas private operation are all about profit maximization and may not take into account external effects on wildlife or recreation.
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