The historic role of the forest community in sustaining the Black Hills National Forest as a complex common property multiple use resource.

摘要

One of the most important aspects of a complex common property resource is the collective-action right to decide how the resource will be defined and used. Throughout the history of the Black Hills National Forest, there has been a community of people interested in exercising the right to define and redefine it as a resource. By using a common property resource framework, this paper focuses on the role of the forest community (those people who were able to exercise the right to define the resource)in sustaining the forest as a multiple-use resource. The composition of the forest community had a direct impact on the sustainability of the Black Hills National Forest (South Dakota/Wyoming, USA) as a multiple-use resource. In periods when a forest community was actively engaged in preserving its multiple-use character, the forest has flourished. Without a forest community to focus on the multiple-use definition, single users competed with each other without regard for the impact of their activitieson the forest as a whole, leading to the degradation of the forest.