Collaboration at Arm's Length: Navigating Agency Engagement in Landscape-Scale Ecological Restoration Collaboratives

In 2010, the USDA Forest Service created the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) to fund implementation of landscape-scale ecological restoration strategies. The program requires landscape projects to engage in collaboration throughout implementation over a 10-year period. A central tension in the program is the extent to which the Forest Service can engage in the collaborative process while retaining authority for management decisions on Forest Service lands and adhering to statutory guidance on collaboration. Drawing on comparative research of the first 10 projects enrolled in the CFLRP, this paper describes how Forest Service personnel navigated this tension and played roles in each collaborative categorized as leadership, membership, involvement, and intermittence. It concludes by suggesting that agency staff engage in collaborative dialogue on substantive issues while operating from an “arm’s length” posture procedurally. This approach can minimize time and energy spent dealing with procedural concerns while allowing agency employees and collaborators to share knowledge, information, ideas, and perspectives to make better-informed decisions as they undertake landscape-scale ecological restoration work.