The role of collaboration in stewardship contracting

Kathie Mattor
Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, CSU

LSC 213-215

Stewardship contracting was introduced over 10 years ago as a way to simultaneously address national forest management goals and community needs through collaborative processes. However we do not have clear measures of the extent to which collaboration is used in these processes, the outcomes associated with varying levels of collaboration, or the factors influencing the use of collaboration in stewardship contracting. This presentation will provide an overview of stewardship contracting on US national forests and research findings on the extent to which collaboration has been used in these processes. I will outline specific details of collaboration in stewardship contracting - including the number of interests involved, the role of the community, the outreach mechanisms used, and the perceived levels of collaboration and associated outcomes by participants - over time and across regions. This understanding contributes to further research identifying the outcomes of and the contextual factors influencing the use of collaboration in U.S. Forest Service stewardship contracts. A better understanding of these factors will help inform the development of environmental governance approaches that seek to simultaneously achieve resource management and community objectives. Kathie Mattor is a PhD Candidate in the Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Department at Colorado State University and part of the second cohort of Center for Collaborative Conservation Fellows. She is a research assistant for the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, assisting with socioeconomic monitoring for landscape scale collaborative efforts, and the program coordinator for the Environmental Governance Working Group’s Intermountain West initiative. Kathie received an M.S. in Forest Policy from Colorado State University in 2004 and a B.S. in Environmental Studies from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse in 1998. She has conducted both forest vegetation and social science research across the interior west and parts of the northeast. Her current research interest is the interrelationship between national forest policies and community well-being in relation to collaborative public involvement in national forest management.