| Western Wyoming Resource Conservation
and Development, the Teton County Conservation District
and the State of Wyoming’s Governor’s Office
are teaming up to offer a two-day workshop on stewardship
contracting, an alternative available to federal agencies
which locally reinvests harvested timber value for services
to improve resources, such as wildlife or recreation.
The two-day workshop, which runs Oct. 2-3,
2007, at the Camp Creek Inn, approximately 17 miles south
of Jackson Hole in Wyoming, will kick off with a speech
by Dale Bosworth, the recently retired Chief of the Forest
Service on Oct. 2.
Bosworth promoted stewardship contracting
at the national level during his tenure as U.S. Forest
Service chief and will be speaking at the workshop to
encourage the local use of stewardship contracting. His
talk will address the use of stewardship contracting in
relation to climate change, the growing forest fire threat,
biomass utilization, carbon sequestration, sustainability,
and shifting trends in global forest product supply and
demand.
"The future and key to successful
– Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal
Stewardship contracting takes advantage of
local resources to enhance ecosystem health and community
infrastructure. In the traditional U.S. Forest Service
approach, timber sales receipts are sent back to U.S.
Treasury in Washington D.C. and service work projects
(e.g., wildlife and fish habitat and recreation improvement)
are contracted separately.
Funding for service work is dependent on
fluctuating annual funding which has been on the decline
in recent years and is projected to continue on a downward
trend, leaving the Forest Service with fewer resources
for much needed management. The principle and value behind
stewardship contracting is that 100 percent of the value
of forest products is traded in exchange for locally conducted
services, such as fisheries or wildlife enhancement, or
recreation development improvements.
"Stewardship contracting is a tool
– Randy Williams, Executive
Director
Teton County Consevation District
The upcoming Stewardship Contracting Workshop
will explore possibilities for collaboration on management
of specific project areas. With the long-term effects
of fire suppression, warming climate trends, and growing
insect activity in forests, many landscapes are primed
for large intense wildfires. While fire has long played
a natural role in the Rocky Mountain region, mixed ownership,
past land management legacies, and land use patterns have
decreased landscape resiliency to large-scale disturbance.
It is in these circumstances that opportunities for collaboration
between government agencies, special interest groups,
and the public have come about.
Gibson Hartwell
is an Environmental Scientist for Ecosystem Research Group,
a consulting company based in Missoula, Mont. His work
experience includes historic vegetation disturbance studies
in the Rocky Mountains, and sustainable forest land use
planning and policies. At Ecosystem Research Group, Gibson
has worked on coordinating three Stewardship Contracting
Workshops in Wyoming and has performed collaborative planning
on six National Forests in the Rocky Mountain West.
Randy Williams has served as Executive
Director for Teton Conservation District (TCD) since September
of 2000. He is responsible for TCD's 12 programs, District
staff and fiscal administration. His career involves over
25 years of extensive on-the-ground and policy level natural
resource management, as both a public agency employee
and as a private sector planner. He has worked with 11
different National Forests in forest plan revisions, numerous
NEPA processes, and associated project level efforts.
His positions have included Conservation District Director,
County Planner, Planning & Economic Development Director,
and Tribal Rights Protection Specialist. |
