The Four Forest Restoration Initiative is a collaborative effort more than 20 years in the making. 4FRI is the flagship of the Forest Service’s national Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program which sought to achieve the collaborative, science-based ecosystem restoration on unhealthy forest landscapes. This project is considered one of the most massive restoration projects in the nation. Stakeholder collaboration and consensus was central, as the values of restoration are complex. Stakeholders were a broad cross-section of more than 100 organizations, including federal, state, and local government, timber industry, preservation, and environmental interest groups, and citizens. The collaborative had often been divided deeply on specific issues and struggled to achieve consensus. Within four years, the collaborative turned over five different facilitators before turning to Logan Simpson. From 2012 to 2015, Logan Simpson guided the group through several complex challenges. Where possible, we brought electronic polling and modern collaborative planning tools into the 4FRI mix. The group’s success with Logan Simpson included revised decision rules (unanimously adopted); revision of the behavior-related ground rules of the Charter; revisioning/strategic planning each year; consensus comments on a draft EIS for the first analysis area; and successful collaborative leadership leading to broad-based support for the final EIS, which has moved to implementation without litigation. Logan Simpson managed and facilitated the collaborative with steering committee calls, facilitated meetings, problem-solving and conflict resolution.
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