Findings and Recommendations Task J Findings and Recommendations
J3 Finding
Recommendation Incentivize tribal participation and empower tribal leadership for the duration of landscape level projects. ■ Compensating tribal investment adequately and appropriately in joining collaboratives is imperative to the success of projects. Compensation can be in the form of training and development opportunities for staff, as well as financial. It is imperative to allow tribes to retain receipts on Good Neighbor Authority projects. ■ Allow tribes to leverage funding opportunities to accomplish landscape level project work. ■ Additionally, there is value to the tribes in empowering their people and leadership for cross-boundary projects where the authority and leadership is removed from the USFS or other partners that have frequent turnover. This may incentivize tribes by providing leadership, decision discretion and funding control to the members of the collaborative that invest in the long-term, seek deeper relationships and promote action.
Significant financial investment and diverse expertise is required from tribal staff to implement landscape level projects. ■ Many tribes that enter cross-boundary projects with neighboring lands have put forth significant investments in time and resources to gain collaboration (in some cases more than 90% of a staff member’s time). This includes going to meetings, establishing relationships and rapport as well as contributing to reports and writing documents, following through on implementation, and monitoring as well as managing budgets, timelines, and resources for managing multi-year, large scale projects. ■ Also, for example, TFPA projects are very complex in nature and tribes face challenges because of the diversity of disciplines including but not limited to aquatics, wildlife, fisheries, forestry, etc. and the USFS specialist opinions. This further complicates and adds time to the process, makes it inconsistent region-by- region as well as requires a specific amount of time and resources as processes are long and drawn-out.
“The distinction between co-management and co-stewardship — terms the federal government uses for agreements to collaborate on land management with tribal nations — is subtle but important. “Co-stewardship” covers a broad range of collaborative activities like forest-thinning work in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest in partnership with the Hoonah Indian Association, where Indigenous knowledge can be included in federal management. But “co-management” is more narrowly defined. In those instances, tribal and federal governments share the power of legal authority in decision- making of a place or a species. This is the case with Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument in New Mexico, which is co-managed by the Pueblo de Cochiti and the Bureau of Land Management, and with the salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest.” From High Country News : What does the nation’s commitment to tribal co-stewardship mean for public lands? (Tribal co-stewardship takes shape) — High Country News – Know the West (hcn.org)
192 Assessment of Indian Forests and Forest Management in the United States
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator