Findings and Recommendations
V2 Finding
Recommendation Tribal forestry programs should renew and invigorate mechanisms for communication with, and input from, tribal membership. ■ A frequent theme in focus groups was a lack of communication between tribal forestry and tribal membership. Tribal members expressed a desire to understand the reasons and rationale for forest management decisions. ■ For their part, forest managers have acknowledged the need for better outreach but generally lack the capacity to engage tribal members and have been frustrated with turnout on the occasions where they have tried tribal public meetings. IFMAT IV encountered innovative examples of tribal member engagement including field trips with elders, surveys, engaged use of social media, and informal gatherings. ■ The team would encourage organizations such as ITC to hold a symposium workshop or other vehicle to gather “best practices” for tribal member engagement. Thirty years of documented dissatisfaction with grazing, protection from trespass and poaching and other underserved values can be used to inform funding and support requests both with the Bureau and Congress. Recommendation Tribes are very interested in being involved in their treaty lands or ancestral lands that are adjacent to the reservation. The tribes support opportunities to be more involved in management of these lands and these opportunities should be fostered.
During the last decade, tribal membership satisfaction with most aspects of forest management has declined, although overall dissatisfaction has not increased.
V3 Finding
Tribal members strongly support the management of adjacent federal lands by tribal resource managers. ■ The primary reasons given for this were to strengthen treaty rights, provide management that enhanced culturally important plants and game, and to protect forests from insects, disease, and fire. In the few cases where a tribal member explained that the tribe should not be involved in managing federal land, it was mainly due to concerns about tribal staff capacity.
Vision: Tribal Member Values, Perceptions, and Priorities 33
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