A Toolbox of Resources

This framework illustrates the collaborative capacity elements that are necessary and fundable, as well as a list of activities they enable. We share the reasons why consistent, long-term investment in these elements is needed. We emphasize the contextual factors that affect collaboration so that these investments are made in the right places, at the right times, and in the right ways to achieve their potential. We end with a set of recommendations directed toward practitioners, funders, and researchers that will help align their efforts, making them more effective, efficient, and able to achieve durable outcomes.

Peer Learning Session Objectives: - Bring the CFLRP community together for shared learning activities around key topics. - Gather reflections on lessons learned through CFLRP and implications for collaborative restoration moving forward. - Provide national CFLR Program updates from the Forest Service, including funding, staffing, and reporting results. Suggested Audience: The suggested audience for this peer learning session is current and alumni participants in the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program from both the Forest Service and partner organizations. Anyone is welcome to join this session, but please note that the focus will be on the CFLR Program rather than collaborative restoration more broadly.

Session objectives: - Learn about considerations for standing up and maintaining effective collaborative processes over time. - Provide practical tools, discuss common questions and challenges, and share experiences to help groups navigate collaborative process dynamics. - Share information and learn from one another as a community of practice for collaborative forest stewardship. The suggested audience for this session includes collaborative groups, Forest Service staff, and partners and alumni of CFLR Programs.

The increasing complexity of environmental issues, as well as a growing emphasis on landscape-scale policy tools, has spurred the emergence of “all-lands” partnerships. These partnerships work at large, regional scales to address issues that span land ownerships and encompass multiple watersheds, firesheds, communities, projects, and/or existing collaborative groups. This document profiles three all-lands partnerships in the West, with a focus on their organizational structures, processes for working with multiple local-scale partners and groups, strategies for large landscape coordination, and key governance documents.

This series of vignettes capture different ways that collaboratives have engaged with Forest Service management activities at different points along the planning and implementation timeline. Examples include collaborative support with surveys and data collection and improving sale economics through support of appraisal and sale design, and cross-boundary monitoring support. Author: Emery Cowan, Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition.

During this session, attendees received updates from the U.S. Forest Service on the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), learned about an approach for building and maintaining a solid foundation for collaborative efforts using the 4-Ps (Purpose, People, Process, and Products), heard from speakers about how CFLRP changed their collaborative efforts, and were able to ask questions and join in a discussion about the process of building and maintaining a solid foundation for collaboration. Speakers included Lindsay Buchanan, U.S. Forest Service Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program Coordinator; Steve Daniels, Utah State University Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology Professor (ret.); Nils Christoffersen, Wallowa Resources Executive Director; Liz Johnson-Gebhardt, Priest Community Forest Connections Executive Director; and Nick Larson, U.S. Forest Service, National Forests of North Carolina, Grandfather District Ranger. Moderated by Ben Irey, National Forest Foundation Conservation Connect Program Manager.

Are participants losing interest in your collaborative effort? Has the purpose of your collaboration become unclear? Is your collaborative no longer making sufficient progress? Does your collaborative lack a sense of accomplishment? Has their been an increase in dissent among participants? Is collaboration just not fun anymore? If you answered, "Yes" to any of these questions then you should have a look at this document from the USDA Forest Service National Collaboration Cadre.

Whether building, evaluating, or rebuilding a collaborative effort, all require thoughtful consideration to what people will accomplish and how they will do it. This document guides collaboratives through the process of constructing or reconstructing a solid foundation for collaboration based on the collaborative's purposes, people, process, and products.

How can you tell if a collaborative effort is working? People often ask if a collaboration has succeeded, but perhaps it is better to ask what progress is being made by a collaborative. From there, progress can be broken down into progress on substance, processes, and relationships.

In both professional and personal situations, people develop expectations about their interactions with others. Whether creating a business partnership, joining a civic organization, or getting married, people anticipate and expect certain behaviors and outcomes. Multi-party collaborative efforts involving public lands management is no different. Finding ways to develop, communicate, and maintain alignment of the participants' expectations in collaborative efforts is critical to a collaborative group's vitality and effectiveness.