Partnerships

The Partnership and Collaboration Team (PaCT) are relationship builders and navigators between the Region, Zones, and Forests. We work collaboratively with partners – including Federal agencies, State agencies, and private and non-profit organizations – as well as Tribal governments to address complex land management challenges that span multiple jurisdictions. By leveraging the strengths of different organizations in this way, we can increase the impact of our restoration work. We also work with our partnership community to help make the critical connections between partnership opportunities and funding, identify and provide resources and guidance on programs and trainings, and to support the field by coordinating, developing, and managing Regional Agreements. In particular, we are focused on supporting forests in increasing the pace and scale of forest health restoration and wildfire resiliency work, and to achieve Regional Priorities.

Supporting Partner Relationships Across Boundaries

• In the Pacific Southwest Region, our commitments to working cooperatively to facilitate Shared Stewardship and to maintain and restore healthy forests and rangelands are formalized with Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with California and Hawaiʻi.
• We serve as lead contact with the National Partnership Office and connect most often with partners to identify collaborative opportunities, provide resources and support, and implement cross-boundary forest health and resiliency projects.
• We work directly with partners to provide guidance, develop, and enter into appropriate agreement instruments for different projects, such as Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) and Stewardship Agreements. For more information, you can review this Agreement Decision Tree and Partnership Authorities brochure, which help identify what type of partnership agreements may work for your project, and describes many of the authorities governing our partnership work.
• We also work directly with partners and forest-level staff to develop proposals and compete for funding for cross-boundary programs, such as the Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Program.
• We provide admin and field trainings for partners to support them in their forest management work and prepare them for managing grants and agreements.
• We support Shared Stewardship Advisors in their work with the USDA Forest Service and partners across the state to identify collaborative opportunities and implement cross-boundary forest health and resiliency projects.

Supporting Partnership Communities on National Forests

• We support partnership communities on national forests by sharing resources, training, and guidance; executing and managing agreements, and providing collaborative and facilitation support. We work internally to support our local partners and share knowledge of funding and partnership opportunities.
• We facilitate a monthly webinar series with the intent to build our regional partnership community of practice and to share and learn more about the various programs and funding opportunities that enable Shared Stewardship.
• We partner with entities to offer services to partners, Tribes, and national forests aimed at building and enhancing collaborative capacity.
• We manage and execute Regional and Zone-level Good Neighbor Authority and Stewardship Agreements, which allow for forest health and wildfire resiliency work to take place across multiple forests and landscapes.