Case Study 2 : JOINT STEWARDSHIP OF FEDERAL LAND
What do you get when multi-purpose land management agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and tribal nations have to share decision making with a single-purpose agency like the U.S. Department of Defense? Often, you get disputes or stalemate.
The Department of Defense currently manages approximately 24 million acres of land, a majority of which is "borrowed" - with Congressional approval - from other federal agencies. The non-military agencies retain an interest and legal responsibilities for the environmental stewardship of the transferred parcel, even if the land is currently under Department of Defense management. Because each of the agencies involved has a different mission, culture, values and constituency there is considerable potential for disputes to arise between the agencies. Yet the military service and nonmilitary land management agencies all have stewardship responsibilities that must be accommodated.
Over the past several years senior officials from DoD and the land management agencies have been working to develop a "joint stewardship" approach to resource management. Joint stewardship involves a much higher level of cooperation and collaboration than normally occurs among agencies. Experience shows that a "joint stewardship" approach is effective in achieving stewardship of the land.
An inter-agency committee decided a training course was needed to introduce Joint Stewardship to people in the field who must work together to manage resources. Jim Creighton was retained to develop the course, working with a committee with representatives from the Forest Service, BLM, Department of Energy, and the military services. That course is now complete and is ready to be used in the field. Creighton also recently completed an instructor training guide. He will also conduct a pilot version of the course, then revise the training material as needed based on the experience with the pilot course.
The target audience for this course is interagency teams who work together now, or will work together in the future. These teams will complete the course as a group. The course is designed to be experiential. There are short lectures and case studies, but most of the course consists of team exercises designed to replicate each step in a joint stewardship "model process." There are also exercises and structured activities in which participants plan a stakeholder involvement program and reach agreements on how to work together more effectively during team meetings.
Creighton has just begun work on a second training course for planners from DoD agencies and environmental regulatory agencies who must work together to develop Integrated Natural Resource Natural Management Plans as required by a federal law called the Sikes Act.
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