What Is a Collaborative, and Why Does It Matter for Land Management?

If you’ve driven through Lassen, Plumas, or Butte County recently, you’ve likely passed a forest that has been thinned, a meadow that has been restored, or a stream crossing that has been improved. Some restoration work is more visible than others, but every project has a story that began long before equipment arrives on site. The work we see in the forests these days is built through years of planning, engagement, and relationship-building among a diverse group of partners who do not traditionally work for the same organization. These groups are made up of landowners, federal agencies, Tribal representatives, timber company partners, biologists, and community members; to name just a few. Through collaboration and finding common ground, these partners help shape restoration projects that reflect shared goals for healthier forests, watersheds, and communities.

In the In forest and natural resource management, these groups are known as forest collaboratives.

The South Lassen Watershed Group during a field tour of the Robbers Creek Project near Westwood, CA

The Vocabulary: Collaboratives, Subcommittees, and Networks

People tend to use these words interchangeably, but they describe different things, and it’s worth being precise before we introduce the specific groups Sierra Institute works with.

A collaborative is the most formal term. The U.S. Forest Service, which works directly with many of these groups, defines one fairly specifically: at least two distinct organizations, in addition to the Forest Service, working together over the long term on a defined landscape, meeting regularly, and open to new members. In practice, that means a standing, multi-year partnership built around a specific forest or watershed, with agencies, Tribes, landowners, and nonprofits participating alongside one another. None of them replace existing authority. The Forest Service still has to follow federal law, Tribes retain their sovereign authority, and local communities and landowners retain their own decision-making authority. What a collaborative provides is a place where those separate authorities can talk before they act, share information, and coordinate instead of working in isolation.

A subcommittee is not a collaborative in its own right. Rather, it is a smaller working group established by a larger collaborative to focus on specific topics or technical issues that cannot be addressed in depth during regular collaborative meetings. Subcommittees carry out detailed work like developing grant proposals or advancing project planning—and then bring recommendations back to the full collaborative for discussion and decision-making.

A network connects collaboratives and partners across geographies to share knowledge, lessons learned, resources, and best practices.

None of these are strict legal categories, and the lines blur in practice. What they describe is a spectrum, from tightly defined regional partnerships to broad, statewide networks, that all serve the same underlying purpose: getting the right people talking regularly enough that the land benefits.

The SLWG Hydrology and Aquatic Habitat Subcommittee (HAH) tours a pile burn near Mill Creek, CA

Why These Groups Exist

Landscape restoration collaboratives exist because the challenges facing our forests and watersheds do not follow property boundaries. Across the West, national forests, Tribal lands, private timberlands, and small private parcels often exist side by side, while wildfire, drought, and watershed health issues affect them all. Cross-boundary challenges require cross-boundary management.

Collaboratives also emerged in response to the history of forest management. Restoration efforts were often slowed by competing interests, conflict, and lengthy disagreements over how public lands should be managed. Recognizing that large-scale challenges required a different approach, Congress established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) in 2009 to support locally driven partnerships that advance restoration through collaboration.

What They Actually Change On The Ground

Collaboratives help turn shared priorities into on-the-ground restoration, from improving forest resilience and watershed health to reducing wildfire risk and supporting community priorities. But their greatest impact is often found in the process behind those projects. A treatment that appears on a project map is rarely the result of a single decision—it often reflects months, years, and sometimes decades of conversations among agencies, Tribes, landowners, and community members who bring different experiences, knowledge, values, and priorities to the table.

For many years, natural resource decisions were often shaped through processes where public involvement occurred later, after many ideas and approaches had already been developed. Collaborative groups yielded a different model: one where people with an interest in the landscape could engage earlier, share information openly, raise concerns, and help shape solutions before decisions were finalized.

Collaboration does not mean everyone always agrees. Bringing together people with different perspectives and interests often requires difficult conversations and thoughtful problem-solving. The difference is that these conversations happen in a setting built around trust, understanding, and a shared commitment to finding solutions that support forests, watersheds, wildlife, and communities.

The result is more than a restored meadow, a healthier forest, or a completed fuels reduction project. Collaboration creates a lasting framework for stewardship—one where the people who live, work, and care about these landscapes have a meaningful role in shaping their future.

Members of the SLWG Hydrology and Aquatic Habitat Subcommittee (HAH) look at a post-Dixie Fire stream project in the Upper Butte Creek Watershed