BLM Land Use Planning in Western Oregon: A Case Study for Integrating Public Participation in Natural Resources Planning

Public participation can fundamentally improve natural resources planning and decision-making. On an ad hoc basis, it has been shown that public participation improves the durability and sustainability of plans and decisions; it increases the technical, consensus-building, and decision-making capacity of the public; it increases levels of trust; and it improves relationships between agency personnel and members of the public. Despite the proliferation of these new tools and strategies and their successful implementation, innovative and inclusive public participation methods have still not become widely integrated into the natural resources planning and administrative decision-making processes of federal agencies. Utilizing the Bureau of Land Management's Western Oregon Plan Revision process as a case study, this paper considers barriers to the regular inclusion of innovative and inclusive public participation methods in agency's planning and decision-making processes and provides some prescriptions for overcoming those barriers. Through analysis of this case study, I identify eight potential roadblocks to integrating innovative forms of public participation in natural resources planning and decision-making, including: 1) political context, 2) the purpose and need of the planning effort, 3) false expectations for public involvement, 4) geographic scope of the planning area, 5) the plan timeline, 6) federal budgetary pressure, 7) agency culture and individual attitudes towards public participation, and 8) the limitations of leadership

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Montana

Year

2007

Author dc:creator

• West, Emily Ruth

• barriers
• BLM planning
• natural resources planning
• NEPA
• public participation

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/156

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.umt.edu:etd-1175