Bringing together social and political scientists who have been involved in CFLRP, this book addresses what has been learnt through this new way of managing national forests.

This book assesses the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) and identifies lessons learned for governance and policy through this new and innovative approach to collaborative forest management. Unlike anything else in US public land management, the CFLRP is a nationwide program that requires collaboration throughout the life of national forest restoration projects, joining agency partners and local stakeholder groups in a kind of decade-long restoration marriage. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the governance dynamics of the program, examining: questions about collaborative governance processes and the dynamics of trust, accountability and capacity; how scientific information is used in making decisions and integrated into adaptive management processes; and the topic of collaboration through implementation, an underdeveloped area of collaborative governance literature. Bringing together chapters from a community of social science and policy researchers who have conducted studies across multiple CFLRP projects, this volume generates insights, not just about the program, but also about dynamics that are central to collaborative and landscape approaches to land management and relevant for broader practice. This volume is a timely and important contribution to environmental governance scholarship. It will be of interest to researchers and students of natural resource management, environmental governance, and forestry, as well as practitioners and policy makers involved in forest and ecosystem restoration efforts, and collaborative natural resource management more broadly.

"CFLRP has shown us a path forward in this era of declining resources and escalating environmental challenges. It was a wholly unique policy experiment that helped us understand changing practice as we cope with increasing complexity in public lands management. The work in this volume captures the lessons learned, and points to the policy and practice implications and theoretical contributions for collaborative environmental governance. Regardless of whether the program continues, understanding the lessons learned and capturing the experience of these projects is an essential component of the ongoing, collective project of fostering collaborative approaches to forest management that can support work across landscapes to manage fire, water, commodity production, and recreation opportunities within and surrounding US public lands." - Laura McCarthy, take from the Foreword