Get reliable science

The survey on values, objectives, beliefs, and attitudes, implemented as a module of the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, asked over 7,000 respondents nationwide about their values with respect to public lands, objectives for the management of these lands, beliefs about the role the USDA Forest Service should play in fulfilling those objectives, and attitudes about the job the agency has been doing. This report—one of a series of similar regional reports—shows respondents from the East (USDA Forest Service Region 9: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin) are somewhat more strongly in favor of preserving the natural resources of forests and grasslands through such policies as no timber harvesting or no mining than respondents from the rest of the United States, and slightly less inclined toward making the permitting process easier. Nationwide, as in the East, the most important objective was conserving and protecting forests and grassland watersheds.