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If you are involved with a multi-partner, cross-boundary land management project or effort and think it would be valuable to share lessons learned with others, please contact us! 
See our Project Overview and read below for more information.

A Review of the Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy

The Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy emphasizes partnership with the states, tribes, and other collaborators to identify priority areas for management, coordinate work across jurisdictions, and leverage diverse capacities. Since 2018, the Forest Service and states have been translating these principles into action, building upon existing state and regional efforts and partnerships.

We are conducting a longitudinal research project looking at perceptions of the Strategy and the nature of its implementation across states. In 2020, we conducted nearly 120 interviews across the Western US states and with national-level land managers and partners to understand how Shared Stewardship is being interpreted, what opportunities the Strategy presents, how its implementation is playing out across states, potential challenges, and needs for new organizational approaches to support successful implementation.

In 2021, we conducted similar interviews in eight Eastern, Southern, and Midwestern US states with Shared Stewardship agreements. We also developed case study research using in-depth research into specific Shared Stewardship projects and partnerships to understand the partners involved with each project, the prioritization processes that each project utilized, and the institutional factors influencing each project’s design and trajectory.

For the next stage of this longitudinal study, we will focus on understanding how efforts undertaken as part of Shared Stewardship are facilitating fuels reduction and forest restoration work. The objective of this phase is to investigate investments in current priority landscapes outlined in the Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy (USFS 2022) and examine how these projects are leveraging past partnerships across state, federal, and local agencies, and with other partners. 

Products

Publications

Aldworth, T. and Schultz, C. 2023. Institutions That Influence Cross-Boundary Forest Management: Four Cases of Shared Stewardship in Practice. Journal of Forestry. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jofore/fvad030. Available for download here.

Kooistra, C., Schultz, C., Abrams, A., Huber-Stearns, H. 2022. Institutionalizing the United States Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy in the Western United States. Journal of Forestry. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jofore/fvac010

Briefing Papers

Schultz, C., Kooistra, C., Huber-Stearns, H., Abrams, J., Kee, D., Aldworth, T. (2021). Assessment of the Implementation of the U.S. Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy. CSU Public Lands Policy Group Briefing Paper #7, Fall 2021. PLPG Briefing Paper #7.

Practitioner Papers

Aldworth, T., Schultz, C., Huber-Stearns, H, Abrams, J., and Kooistra, C. (2022). Field-level implementation of the US Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship strategy: Six case studies of large-scale cross-boundary forest management. Public Lands Policy Group Practitioner Paper no. 10. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO.

Kee, D., Aldworth, T., Abrams, J., Kooistra, C., Schultz, C., and Huber-Stearns, H. (2021). Early Implementation of the US Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy in the Eastern United States. Public Lands Policy Group Practitioner Paper no. 12. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.

Kooistra, C., Schultz, C., Huber-Stearns, H., Abrams, J., Greiner, M., & Sinkular, E. (2021). Assessment of early implementation of the US Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy. Public Lands Policy Group Practitioner Paper no. 10. Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.

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