The Forest Landscape Restoration Act (FLRA) was passed in 2009 and established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). The purpose of the CFLRP is to “encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes” through a competitive funding program administered by the Forest Service.
The CFLRP uses a Common Monitoring Strategy of ecological and socio-economic monitoring questions and indicators required of all projects to determine their progress and areas for improvement. One core component of the CFLRP Common Monitoring Strategy relates to monitoring collaborative governance, which refers to the processes and structures of decision making and management that encourage people and organizations to cross boundaries, work together, and otherwise accomplish a public purpose that could not be done alone.
The Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) are working in coordination with CFLRP coordinators to develop, deploy, and report on a new monitoring indicator for collaboration as part of the CFLRP Common Monitoring Strategy. SWERI designed a collaborative governance assessment to monitor collaborative health, function, and resilience, as well as perceived outcomes of collaborative work for all currently funded CFLR projects to support program reporting and adaptive management.
Our objectives are as follows:
- Develop a rigorous, systematic, and longitudinal assessment of collaborative governance that is grounded in the science and practice of landscape-scale collaborative forest restoration.
- Support program-wide evaluation of collaborative progress and performance, and report on findings to USDA Forest Service staff and Congress.
- Facilitate project-level engagement, reporting, and peer-learning to inform local collaborative work and adaptive management.
- Contribute to the theory and practice of collaborative governance through the synthesis of findings and lessons learned.
The final project reports for each CFLRP project can be found below or here:
- Northern Blues
- Rio Chama
- Southwest Colorado Restoration Initiative
- Western Klamath Mountains Forest and Fire Resiliency
- North Central Washington
- North Yuba Forest Partnership
- Rogue Basin Landscape Restoration Project
- Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project
- Dinkey Collaborative
- Zuni Mountains
- Lakeview Stewardship
- Southern Blues Restoration Coalition
- Missouri Pine Oak Woodlands Restoration
- Shortleaf Bluestem Community
- Northeast Washington Forest Vision 2020
Additional SWERI resources on collaborative governance in the CFLRP are also available, including those listed below:
- Journal article: Developing reliable and valid measures for evaluating collaborative governance and adaptability: An example from the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program
- Journal article: Cultivating collaborative resilience to social and ecological change: An assessment of adaptive capacity, actions, and barriers among collaborative Forest restoration groups in the United States
- White paper: Developing and sustaining collaborative resilience in the face of change: A review of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program projects