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Summary

A wide variety of innovative, efficient restoration practices being utilized on individual National Forests of central and eastern Oregon. The purpose of the Forest Restoration Implementation Efficiencies Workshop was to address the need for peer-to-peer learning opportunities between forest industry, contractors, collaborative groups, and Forest Service staff to utilize these new, innovative, efficient approaches, techniques, and strategies to project development and implementation. The workshop was developed, organized, and hosted by Central Oregon Forest Stewardship Foundation through funding provided by the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Federal Forest Restoration Program through an agreement with The Nature Conservancy (ODF-2191A #10). Other sponsoring partners included: the Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project and Ochoco Forest Restoration Collaborative.

This multi-day workshop (November 1-3, 2016) engaged forest industry, contractors, forest collaborative members, and Forest Service staff in high-level, technical conversations and peer-to-peer learning opportunities related to understanding the benefits and challenges of innovative implementation efficiency and effectiveness approaches, techniques and strategies to project development and implementation. This workshop helped participants engage in conversations around: reducing costs per acre of restoration, increasing trust and transparency, and increasing collaborative engagement in implementation processes.

Over 150 participants heard from more than 30 guest speakers from private industry, collaboratives, conservation groups, and federal managers presented in 31 presentations, panels, and break-out sessions. This workshop: (1) provided peer-to-peer learning between individual National Forests of central and eastern Oregon; (2) shared lessons learned (successes/challenges) among forest industry, contractors, Forest Service staff, and forest collaborative groups; and (3) encouraged collaborative engagement throughout implementation and planning.

The workshop focused on innovative forest restoration implementation efficiency and effectiveness strategies to successfully increase the quality, pace, and scale of dry forest restoration treatments. Long-term desired outcomes include: (1) increased efficiency of per-acre costs of restoration making implementation funds available for more on-the-ground restoration work; (2) increased trust and transparency through increasing collaborative engagement throughout implementation; and (3) increased understanding of implementation processes by collaborative members.

Download the Workshop Proceedings document

How to Use this Document

Included in this document are the proceedings of the workshop: key points, notes, and the questions and answers for each presentation and panel. Throughout the document, you will find hyperlinks (in blue and underlined). Click on any of these to access additional information (speaker’s bio, abstracts, additional information) on the workshop website. The information contained in this document is from the notes taken during the presentations and questions and answering period. The content has not been edited or approved by the presenters. There may be mistakes, and we apologize for any errors. Please feel free to send corrections or edits where needed to tseager.tnc@gmail.com.