The basis of forest planning.

Abstract

The broad field of planning is subdivided into four main aspects - basic principles, basic considerations, planning procedures and the methods or tools of planning. Many of the difficulties of forest planning are due to imprecise or incompatible objectives and to inappropriate criteria of success. It is a basic principle that there should be one main objective with the subordinate objectives expressed as constraints. The most important considerations are that plans should be initiated at the right level of management and that they should be completely flexible. The logical planning procedure is to analyse the current expenditure in order to find where economies are most likely to be effective and then to investigate more closely whether the level and the nature of the investment is in accordance with the management objectives. There is a tendency to use simple drillbook planning guides at the lower levels of management and more sophisticated operational research techniques at the higher management levels.