Rethinking the “vision”; exercise in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem

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Abstract
In 1987 the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service launched a joint coordination and planning process for the Greater Yellowstone region, commonly called the “Vision”; exercise, and produced a draft document in 1990 and a final in 1991. Public reaction was fierce: Traditional commodity extraction industries strongly opposed it, while conservationists failed to support or improve it. The process was perceived by many as a failure. Through extensive literature searches and interviews, we identified four major explanations for why the process failed: The agencies had unclear objectives, their environment was politicized, they miscalculated public reaction, and they used deliberately vague language to preserve their discretion and minimize accountability. We define all these as analytical errors, that is, failure to orient to the problem and to analyze the context of the problem adequately. We also explain the Vision exercise as a progression through the first phases of the public policy process (initiation, estimation, and selection), demonstrating a host of weaknesses common to each phase. We then offer six lessons to improve public policy processes for natural resource management in the Yellowstone region and to develop a successful model for ecosystem management elsewhere.