Fall River Resource Conservation District

 

Monitoring is integral to the success of the Burney-Hat Creek Basins Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) Project. Forest Service managers and stakeholders use monitoring to measure progress toward restoration goals, objectives, and desired conditions; identify ways to improve project design and implementation; and assess the ecological impacts on resources of concern. Monitoring is also an essential tool for demonstrating and communicating successes, as well as areas in need of improvement, to stakeholders involved in the collaborative process.

 

In 2014, the Burney-Hat Creek multiparty monitoring working group (MMWG) set out to build upon these efforts by providing a more cohesive, overarching monitoring framework. This framework was developed by the Burney-Hat Creek MMWG over a three year period. The intent of this strategy is to provide questions that are focused, practical, and feasible to implement, and will also produce meaningful outcomes. It is our overarching goal that this strategy will be a springboard for development of collaborative monitoring partnerships, where resource specialists and stakeholders have strong ownership in the monitoring process.

 

Monitoring Strategy Objectives

• Develop questions with measurable indicators and meaningful outcomes

• Build a feasible monitoring program that can be implemented

• Incorporate flexibility to adapt to new opportunities (unforeseen questions) and altered conditions (e.g. fires, drought, tree mortality)

• Focus on questions that are important learning opportunities, don’t monitor just to monitor

• Reduce redundancy; don’t waste time doing something that we already know the answer to another group is monitoring