The collaborative forest landscape restoration program: lessons from two Colorado-based forest restoration projects
Date
2017
Authors
Bergemann, Hannah, author
Schultz, Courtney, advisor
Cheng, Antony, committee member
Davis, Sandra, committee member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
The U.S. Forest Service's Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) emphasizes collaboration throughout the planning, monitoring, and implementation of landscape-scale forest restoration projects. The requirement for stakeholder participation in implementation is a policy innovation that is part of the agency's broader shift towards collaborative governance approaches. The purpose of this study was to investigate how CFLRP stakeholders and Forest Service personnel are collaborating during the implementation process, the extent to which they are satisfied with their involvement, and the factors that influence the ability of stakeholders to participate in this process. The study used a comparative case study approach to investigate the two CFLRP projects in Colorado. We conducted interviews with 27 collaborative group participants and Forest Service personnel, in addition to participant observation of collaborative meetings and field site visits. Interviewees described five major categories of factors that impacted their ability to participate in the implementation of the CFLRP projects: agency-wide structural factors, factors related to individual agency personnel, collaborative group characteristics, local economic conditions, and aspects of biophysical conditions. We used this empirical work to build a framework that can be used to assess the factors that affect a group's ability to collaboratively implement projects on public lands. We propose that in future efforts to engage collaborative groups in the implementation of large-scale forest restoration projects, the factors identified in this study should be considered due to the role they may play in facilitating or impeding successful collaborative participation.