Introduction
FAO statistics confirm widespread deforestation in Iran. The forest per capita in the country is 0.17 hectares, while the global forest per capita is 0.62 hectares. The comparison of these statistics shows the need to pay attention to the preservation, revival and development of the country's forests (Natural Resources and Watershed Management, 2019). According to the latest statistics published by the program management organization, the process of forest destruction in Iran is increasing with high intensity; So that it has reached 1.8 million hectares from 6 million hectares in 1922. One of the factors that contributed to the deforestation crisis in Iran was the street level bureaucrats who challenged the implementation of the laws and the laws were not propeZrly implemented in the field of environment and protection of northern forests. Despite the plethora of studies on street-level bureaucrats, only a very limited body of research has focused on their role in the environmental arena; Because they play an important role in the chain of policy-making and in the actual realization and implementation of policies; Therefore, the current research was conducted with the aim of Identifying and prioritizing the strategies of street-level bureaucrats in the implementation of environmental policies (Case of Study: Law on Protection and Exploitation of Northern Forests).
Methodology
This research has been based on a mixed and sequential approach. Considering that the purpose of the current research is exploratory and seeks to rank the role of street-level bureaucrats in the implementation of environmental policies (Case of Study: Law on Protection and Exploitation of Northern Forests), The goal and problem in question, the main strategy of the research is methodological pluralism with the simultaneous use of two qualitative and quantitative methods (consecutively). In the present research, in the qualitative part with the aim of identifying and extracting the role of street-level bureaucrats in the implementation of the law on the protection and exploitation of forests in the north of the country, using the "thematic analysis" method, and in the quantitative part, due to the hierarchical nature of the research factors, using the method Hierarchical analysis process is used in fuzzy environment. In the research content analysis section, 11 semi-structured professional interviews with experts and executive managers in the fields of management, including managers of the Environmental Protection Organization, managers of natural resources and forests with criteria such as 20 years of work experience in the field of environment and forests, university professors with valid degrees Faculty and at least associate professor level and finally three foresters with bachelor's and master's degrees were done. The sampling method was purposeful with snowball approach. Thus, first, an interview was conducted with one of the managers of the Environmental Protection Organization, who has 31 years of experience in his field of work. The questionnaire tool has been used to implement the hierarchical analysis process method in the fuzzy environment. In the field of sampling, the hierarchical analysis process method was adopted in the fuzzy environment of purposeful and theoretical sampling, for this purpose, 11 questionnaires were provided to the employees and foresters of the General Directorate of Natural Resources and Watershed Management of Mazandaran, Gilan and Golestan provinces.
Results and Discussion
The extraction of semantic units in the qualitative part led to the identification of 169 basic themes, 29 organizing themes and 9 overarching themes, in which the nine main themes are "emotional attitude towards citizens, organizational characteristics, changing the nature of the policy, knowledge weakness of employees, characteristic" individual decision-makers, determining how to govern the forest, adopting coping strategies, localizing the policy and operationalizing the policy" were categorized. The results of the fuzzy hierarchical analysis showed that among the nine main themes, changing the nature of the policy determining how to govern the forest and adopting coping strategies were in the first to third place. Under the theme of adaptation of policies to local conditions, government-citizen relations, hidden politics and weak expertise and skills of employees were placed in the first to fourth priorities.
Conclusion
The results show that successful forest management requires the joint decisions of experts and local people, which in turn helps in the successful implementation of forest laws. The current research has shown that street-level bureaucrats can influence the implementation. First, street-level bureaucrats influence citizens' meaningfulness because street-level bureaucrats are more able to tailor the decisions and procedures to be followed to the specific situations and needs of their citizens. Devolution, therefore, allows street-level bureaucrats to exercise their own judgment when dealing with the needs and wants of citizens. When street-level bureaucrats perceive that their work is meaningful to citizens, this strongly influences their willingness to implement it; In addition, the results also point to another, more independent effect that discretion directly affects willingness to perform. Hence, discretion is inherently valued by bureaucrats. It seems that the freedom and discretion of bureaucrats has a positive effect on the effectiveness of policy programs, because it reduces resistance. At the same time, it adds legitimacy to the policy implementation process as it enables street-level bureaucrats to meet the needs and demands of citizens. In short, the present research is one of the first researches in the field of internal studies that deals with the role of street-level bureaucrats' strategies in policy implementation, and it is the first research that examines the role of street-level bureaucrats in the field of forest protection and exploitation. And in other words, foresters and staff paid.