MY TURN: Hope for Idaho forests
The Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership (IFRP) wishes to thank Idaho Governor Brad Little for appointing us to the state’s Shared Stewardship Advisory Committee, which will hold its first meeting in Coeur d’Alene on December 3, 2019. IFRP is a state-wide collaborative network dedicated to supporting local stakeholder groups focused on restoring the health and resiliency of Idaho’s forests. We have been tracking and supporting these collaborative groups in Idaho for over a decade.
Grassroots collaborative organizations, each with unique membership and geographic focus, began forming all around the state more than a decade ago to address Idaho’s forest health crisis. These groups made up of various forest stakeholders, including loggers and environmentalists, have moved beyond long-standing disputes and weathered the hard road of building consensus agreements around forest management.
There are currently ten self-formed collaborative stakeholder groups in Idaho working to design and implement a broad spectrum of forest projects in partnership with the US Forest Service. These groups are determined to make Idaho forests healthier and more resilient to insects, disease, wildfire, and climate change through a variety of treatments, including commercial timber harvest, hazardous fuels reduction, prescribed fire, and watershed improvements. They have been instrumental in the development of more than 50 forest restoration projects to date ranging from a few hundred acres to more than 80,000 acres.
The state’s new Shared Stewardship Initiative is the next phase of collaborative forest management in Idaho. It is an opportunity to leverage the skills and resources of federal, state, tribal, and private landowners at an even greater scale to accelerate and expand forest restoration and fuels reduction treatments on priority landscapes across the state. And, perhaps more importantly, to coordinate forest management investments to improve outcomes across land ownership boundaries. These efforts will help make Idaho’s forests and adjacent communities more resilient to mounting threats like wildfire and climate change through effective and adaptive management.
The proven track record of local forest collaboratives in Idaho creates potential for larger wins through efforts such as Shared Stewardship and creates hope for the forests that provide Idahoans clean water, clean air, abundant wildlife, and unparalleled recreation opportunities, as well as jobs and rural community economic stability. We appreciate this opportunity to help craft actions that will build on this track record and accelerate the restoration of the forests Idahoans love so much. To learn more about Idaho’s forest stakeholder collaboratives and IFRP visit our website at www.idahoforestpartners.org.