Practicing Collaborative Natural Resource Management with Federal Agencies: Keys to Success across Partnership Structures

The agencies of the US federal government, particularly those of the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, are entrusted with management of federal lands. Although each agency's authority has distinct geographic boundaries, necessary management activities often extend across those borders. Given current landscape-scale restoration goals and budget constraints, those agencies have identified collaborative resource management as a useful strategy to achieve positive outcomes in natural resource stewardship. Since the early 2000s, numerous partnerships have been formed with varying degrees of success. Six partnerships that have united federal, state, and nongovernment organizations to accomplish natural resource management projects were examined here using a case-study approach. Data from published resources and first-person interviews of key players in each partnership were synthesized to produce recommendations for effective cross-boundary projects.