Collaboration
Sierra Forest Legacy is involved in numerous new collaborative efforts with the Forest Service and other stakeholders, scientists, and agencies. These cooperative efforts have grown out of a mutually recognized need and concern to move beyond the never ending stalemates that have characterized the last fifty years in response to a century of logging and mismanagement of publicly owned, national forest resources. Searching for common ground and the common good, much progress has been made in recent months.
You can read our policy on collaboration, "Best Practices for Collaboration" compiled by Sierra Forest Legacy, The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club and Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center.
Several new initiatives have helped to facilitate this new change. In 2009, Congress enacted the Forest Landscape Restoration Act, or FLRA, which pledged dedicated funding to forge new collaborative efforts based on ecologically principled science, and focused on restoration priorities for national forest projects. In 2009 under Title IV of Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (PDF, 40 KB), Congress established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP).
The purpose of the CFLR Program is to encourage the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority forest landscapes.
A USDA press release on February 2, 2012 announced that three out of the 26 projects nationally that were chosen for funding in 2012 are in California: the Dinkey Project in the Southern Sierra; the Cornerstone project on the Stanislaus and Eldorado NFs, and the Burney-Hat Creek Basins project on the Lassen NF.
In the coming months, look for updated information about each of these proposals as they develop into full fledged restoration projects. The following is a list of collaborative projects where Sierra Forest Legacy is currently working to ensure that science and established conservation principles are fully integrated into the projects from inception to completion.
Current Collaboration Project Proposals
Dinkey Collaboration Project (1.7 MB PDF)
Burney-Hat Creek Basins Project (1.75 MB PDF) Hat Creek Ranger District, Lassen National Forest
Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group - El Dorado and Stanislaus National Forests
Sagehen Experimental Forest - Truckee Ranger District, Tahoe National Forest ...coming soon
Stanislaus National Forest "South Zone" ...coming soon