Community-based forestry on federal lands in the western United States: A synthesis and call for renewed research

An approach to community-based forestry (CBF) on federal forestlands in the western United States consists of a number of informal civil society institutions for communities to better organize internally and interact with government. We review the body of research on this topic, which has an explicit focus on the three interlinked aspects of democratic governance practiced to provide community benefits and ecological sustainability. We situate its prominent concepts and themes relative to the global literature on CBF, and initiate new conversation about what CBF may mean within the context of contemporary federal forest governance in the US. Drawing on our collective research and practice experience, we then propose premises and questions for a vision of a contemporary research agenda around CBF in the western US that is influenced by salient questions from the global community forestry literature, and current social and policy trends in federal lands governance.