Shared Stewardship Case Study: Montana
In April of 2019, the Director and State Forester of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) and Forest Service Northern Regional forester signed a Shared Stewardship Leaders’ Intent Letter to coordinate closely wildfire response, increasing the resilience of forested landscapes, and making communities more fire-adapted to reduce the threat from catastrophic wildfires. They agreed to focus on projects to bolster landscape scale restoration and help protect and enhance wildlife and aquatic habitat, watersheds, communities and infrastructure while producing fiber.
Following the release of the letter, state and Forest Service leaders in Montana took intentional action to establish alignment between their agencies on how they would proceed together. They held strategy meetings to cultivate a shared understanding of Shared Stewardship within their agencies and brought together thought leaders from both agencies to discuss a collective approach. The Forest Action Plan was identified as a primary vehicle for implementing Shared Stewardship in Montana.
In May of 2019, the Governor signed an executive order creating the Montana Forest Action Advisory Council to assess the state’s forest conditions, prioritize landscapes, amplify collaborative efforts, measure success, and develop an implementation plan. Co-chaired by the State Forester and the Regional Forester, the Council’s membership represents state, federal, local, and tribal governments; conservation organizations; forest products industry; collaborative and watershed groups; conservation districts; private landowners; recreation and tourism members; and other relevant partners. The group has already presented to several other groups, including the Montana Wood Products Association, Forest Service Northern Regional Directors and Forest Supervisors, and the Council of Western State Foresters.
The state and the Forest Service are coordinating to ensure models and data sets utilized in the process are comparable across all lands regardless of jurisdiction. The agencies are also using data from the same sources such as wildfire risk assessment, insect and disease and water quality data. Millions of acres have been identified by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Montana Forest Advisory Council as high priority; of these, the majority are on National Forest System lands. The DNRC is currently finalizing this acreage.
State and Forest Service regional geospatial staff have developed a geospatial model to help determine where forest health and wildfire risk conditions are most critical and identify priority landscapes. This model is similar to the Forest Service’s Scenario Investment Planning Platform. The model draws upon both state and Forest Service data and is being used to identify where resources should be invested. So far, users have found strong alignment between state and Forest Service data and priority projections.
While the Region has not hired additional staff to support Shared Stewardship, the current cross boundary coordinator supports Shared Stewardship as part of her program of work.
The Region has begun working through the outyear planning and NEPA process for a few preliminary projects identified as high priority. They have also actively solicited additional GNA projects and plan to use a variety of cross-boundary authorities to implement work, including Joint Chiefs’ funding, GNA, Wyden Authority, CFLRP, stewardship contracting, Tribal Forest Protection Act, Reserved Treaty Rights Lands grant, Hazardous Fuel Reduction grants, Landscape Scale Restoration grants, Forest Stewardship grants, Forest health Protection funding, and Western States Wildland Urban Interface (through Western Forestry Leadership Coalition).
Council members have also begun to discuss implementation strategies and performance measures. Forest Service regional staff have already pulled together FACTS data and overlaid work with state partners. They are looking at long-term options for states to enter FACTS data.