A Toolbox of Resources

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.

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.

Collaboration supplements traditional public participation with more focused activities that will typically allow more meaningful contributions. Collaboration requires considerable time and effort for everyone and should be undertaken when the collaborative potential is high. Collaboration can build and maintain productive working relationships and trust and capacity, both internally and externally, well beyond the immediate issue or situation.

During this session, speakers articulated successful applications of Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) for tribes, counties, and states; provided examples of when tools like GNA are unlikely to be successful; discussed how to use tools from the Tribal Forest Protection Act and the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act; discussed how to use Stewardship Contracting; and shared resources and guides to specific tools. Speakers included Rob Farrell, Virginia State Forester; Jim Durglo, Intertribal Timber Council Wildland Fire Technical Specialist; Lynn Sholty, USDA Forest Service Grants and Agreements Specialist; and Nils Christoffersen, Wallowa Resources Executive Director.

This document articulates lessons learned by the Panhandle Forest Collaborative as they went through the Tower/Grizzly Fire Salvage lawsuit.

This document explains the purpose of updating collaborative groups on the status of Forest projects, provides a template for doing so, and provides guidelines for what information to share.