engage youth and increase community awareness and involvement. Other best practices included taking the time to understand needs, establish relationships, and make knowledge available to these communities. Several attendees cited the benefits of using collaboration specialists to ensure underserved and underrepresented communities are included in planning processes. Other attendees acknowledged the need to recognize historic cultural communities associated with land grants and involve these groups in the planning process.

##### Innovations

The El Yunque National Forest conducted a socio-economic assessment that took into consideration the cultural heritage of the people surrounding the forest during the assessment phase and used local social scientists to identify community needs to be addressed in the plan. The Sierra National Forest developed a consortium to promote environmental literacy in underserved communities and hired youth to work on the forest during summer breaks. Region 5 worked with a GIS specialist to identify potential underserved and underrepresented communities around the forests including youth, minority, low-income in order to cultivate relationships with these populations early on to begin foundational conversations.

##### Challenges

Challenges discussed by the group included the difficulty of getting low income populations, as well as subsistence hunters and tribes, interested and educated about the planning process so they can meaningfully contribute.

#### 3.1.3 Public Engagement Breakout Group on Developing Strategic Relations with Federal, State, Local, and Tribal Governments

##### Lessons learned and best practices

Establishing relationships with federal, state, local, and tribal governments can allow the Forest Service to increase its capacity and resources during forest plan revision. In Region 1, there were several forests at different phases in the planning process; staff working with these forests said it was valuable to establish agreement among all the forests in the region regarding the scale and timing of involvement of cooperating agencies. Emerging best practices included the following: providing a regional communication strategy to explain what was being done on individual forests and publicize how cooperating agencies could be involved at each stage; clearly identifying roles for planning team members in external communication; and working with county and local government to support communication between the forests and the public. Staff said that upfront coordination with the state is important, but so is recognizing the limitation of local government to coordinate with every forest in the state. Also, creating Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with local governments gets them involved and provides a way to establish roles and responsibilities of involved parties. Collaborative coordinators at regional and forest levels also have been helpful. Some said it is valuable to invest in the state forest action plans that each state needs to conduct.

##### Innovation

The Inyo National Forest used an innovative approach by entering into a cooperative agreement with Inyo County, formalized through an MOU, to focus on the economic aspects of plan revision. The agreement included an emphasis on economic issues and a clear agreement with the associated counties to provide comments on the wilderness inventory and the species of