The following summary was developed from two peer-learning sessions organized by Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition and Oregon State University Extension/the Ecosystem Workforce Program. The sessions in January and March, 2021, were attended by members of four landscape-scale, restoration-focused partnerships operating in northern Colorado, northern Arizona, southern Oregon and northeastern Oregon. These takeaways reflect our discussions about how to create and improve governance documents and structures to better support partners working together across large areas, particularly in considering potential or current CFLRP awards.

Participating partnerships:

Four Forests Restoration Initiative (AZ)

Front Range Roundtable (CO)

Northern Blues (OR)

Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative/Rogue Forest Partners (OR)

→ Determine the scale, scope and desired outcomes of the partnership’s work. Several partnerships found it helpful to develop an overarching framing strategy that helped guide their restoration work. This type of strategy, and the process of creating it, helped partners collectively define a vision for what they hoped to do and achieve across a landscape, draw on relevant science/information, and set a scope of work and general sideboards. Attendees said this type of document can also be useful for guiding prioritization of work in a transparent way and can inform public lands planning processes.

→ Know why you’re working together. Partners said it was important to clearly define the purpose of the partnership (e.g. peer learning, landscape prioritization, coordination, networking, political advocacy) and how it compliments, supports and interacts with other more localized or project-specific groups and activities.

→ Create multi-scalar structures. Each of the partnerships structured themselves with several interacting tiers and configurations of groups and people to connect more localized community-based or project-level work with landscape-level planning and coordination. In addition to large stakeholder groups for example, many collaboratives had some sort of executive committee or overall leadership team, and multiple topical or resource-focused working groups. They also incorporated or interacted closely with more localized project-focused groups or efforts.

Northern Blues structure: place-based groups tied to a certain project and geography; multi-partner “resource teams” focused on themes like private landowner motilization, monitoring, and communication; all-lands leadership team; and a larger stakeholder group associated with the Northern Blue Mountain Cohesive Strategy Partnership.
Front Range Roundtable structure: multiple place-based and/or issue-focused collaboratives/working groups; sub-groups of the FRRT collaborative focused on community protection and landscape restoration; FRRT executive team; and a larger stakeholder group.
4FRI structure: 4FRI topical working groups (focused on stakeholder engagement, final EIS, industry/biomass, multiparty monitoring, and comprehensive implementation); 4FRI steering committee; and a larger stakeholder group.
Southern Oregon structure: multiple community and valley-focused collaborative and partnership efforts; basin-wide implementation-focused partnership (Rogue Forest Partners); nonprofit entity (Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative) that represents a broad cross-section of interests across the Rogue River basin and works strategically across the basin to facilitate the Rogue Forest Partners and support strategic planning, zones of agreement, and collaboration.

→ Create some structure for how partners work together. Partnerships found value in establishing principles and standards for how the partners work together and make decisions (e.g., how communication happens, what engagement looks like, what mutual learning should occur, how to reach decisions or some level of agreement).

→ Define roles and responsibilities of partners. Some partnerships created specific documents detailing partner roles and responsibilities as they related to accomplishing specific tasks. Others used charter documents to outline more general roles and responsibilities for partners (e.g., communicate with the USFS, mentor new members, deliver recommendations, actively participate). Some people emphasized the importance of defining partner roles and responsibilities in such a way that partners can have different and evolving roles with various groups and projects while maintaining involvement in the partnership.

→ Document partners’ commitment. Partnerships emphasized the need to establish expectations for partners related to joining and continuing involvement in the partnership. Making those commitments clear can help maintain consistent engagement even as representatives from each partner organization cycle in and out.

Other takeaways...

→ Importance of adaptability and responsiveness. Partnerships recommended regularly revisiting and being willing to change partner roles and responsibilities, the purpose of the partnership, partnership focus, or structure. Questions to ask to prompt a reevaluation might include: are some working groups no longer relevant? Are the structures for working together no longer applicable to current scope or focus of work? Does the partnership look different with or without certain funding sources or programs like CFLRP? Partnerships have used surveys to evaluate the state of the partnership’s work.

→ Importance of intentional prioritization, planning, evaluation by the larger partnership to avoid random acts of restoration and competition among partners. This prioritization also has to navigate between the need to take advantage of opportunities (funding, shelf NEPA etc.) and being more intentional with design and prioritization.

One strategy is to map past, current, and planned restoration or wildfire mitigation activities across the entire area of the partnership’s work. This can reveal how or if the partnership’s work is achieving desired outcomes at the necessary scale and can also be useful to identify gaps in restoration across the landscape.
Strategic plans can also be useful for transparent and intentional prioritization.

→ Importance of documentation. Recording partner roles, commitment, standards for working together, and decision-making can be especially helpful if partners are operating in a low-trust environment. Documentation is also important to help maintain consistency through turnover.