Issues in Forest Restoration: What to Expect from Collaboration in Natural Resource Management: A Research Synthesis for Practitioners

Collaborative approaches to natural resource management have become increasingly popular since the 1980s in the United States, to the point where the federal government now mandates them for some federal activities and federally funded projects. For example, through the Healthy Forests Restoration Act and appropriations for the National Fire Plan, Congress has directed that federal land management agencies should make the states and local governments full partners in collaborative resource management, and work closely with citizens and governments at all levels. (Public Law 108-148) In August 2004, President Bush released an Executive Order calling for "cooperative conservation, with an emphasis on appropriate inclusion of local participation in federal decisionmaking, [including] collaborative activity among federal, state, local, and tribal governments, private for-profit and nonprofit institutions, other nongovernmental entities and individuals." (Bush 2004) ... In order to address the need for more clarity about the expected outcomes and characteristics of effective collaborative resource management, we reviewed the literature on collaboration, including theoretical, prescriptive, and empirical research literature. In the first part of this paper, we identify what collaboration is––and what it is not. We then turn to comparative empirical research on collaborative resource management to identify outcomes that are commonly reported (and, therefore, can reasonably be expected from) collaboration, and, lastly, to identify best practices and guidelines for effective collaborative resource management