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Most would agree that the management of natural resources should be a value-added endeavor that exceeds mere oversight by striving toward good stewardship. Stewardship, as the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care, is firmly rooted in the tradition of humanism, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives, and thereby justifies the use of natural resources to satisfy human values and desires. This philosophy has been codified in the mission of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, in which productivity is to be sustained to "meet the needs of present and future generations" (USDA Forest Service 2012, p. 21162). Planning then translates societal values and desires into goals. Recently, they have been formulated by many agencies in the positive as "desired future conditions" (DFCs) or "desired conditions" (DC, used hereafter). Embedded in the etymology of DC, "desired" underscores the importance accorded to a more or less diverse set of values held by society and, perhaps most importantly, those held by engaged stakeholders when formulating management goals. However, as noted by (Matonis, Binkley, Franklin, Johnson 2016) of the discussion piece, the current DC framework emphasizing the attainment of positive outcomes may benefit from an expansion that embraces the avoidance of undesired or negative outcomes.
As illustrated by many of their examples, the authors have demonstrated that not every formulation of DCs meets the test of realism. As social constructs, if DCs are composed of nebulous, unrealistic, unachievable, and/or conflicting goals, "lackluster outcomes" are inevitable in both the short and long term. Unfortunately, this often...