Our Purpose—We are engaged in the process of creating and expanding partnerships to restore and to build resiliency in landscapes and resources that are culturally, environmentally, spiritually and politically important to Tribes.
Our work occurs across several dimensions:
1. Across the landscape. We are working across legal jurisdictions to organize “collaboratives” that include Indian tribes, federal and state agencies, and other land holders that operate beyond current reservation boundaries. Tribes are pivotal in this endeavor since they not only have an interest in restoring the health of their own forest lands but an interest and retained rights on their ancestral lands which are today managed by federal land management agencies
2. Immediate and Long-Term Results. We are working for immediate results and for results that will materialize over the long-term. We are convening joint intertribal and interagency workshops in which collaborative projects are identified and scheduled for implementation over the next five years and longer. This includes supporting tribes to participate in agency land management planning processes that will result in land allocations, reformulated budget priorities, and management prescriptions lasting 10 -15 years.
3. Sustainably. Recognizing that tribes and others can only sustain their commitment to proper forest maintenance and restoration if there are sufficient resources to pay for such activities, we are promoting an “integrated wood utilization strategy’ that makes optimum commercial use of the biomass material that is generated by thinning, and other forest restoration activities. Simultaneously, we are exploring the supply side of the equation, namely, how can the government agencies and private forest owners make available a sufficient and predictable supply of this biomass feedstock to support the operations of forest-based enterprises that transform it into marketable products.
