Federal efforts to use collaboration, broadly, and collaborative resource management more specifically have their roots in natural resource and environmental law, litigation, and alternative efforts to resolve environmental conflicts. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s as environmental concerns over species, wilderness preservation, and air and water pollution heightened and legislation to protect different resources followed, litigation over land and resource use became more common. In the 1980s and 1990s, a number of factors, including court decisions and regulatory and economic changes, resulted in decreased timber harvests and increased scrutiny of grazing on public lands. In the 1990s, concerns over pollution and resource problems that cross property lines—such as water quality or endangered species—increased, and sometimes resulted in litigation. Also during this time, development of private lands posed increased threats to habitat, water quality, rural lifestyles, and wildlife, including threatened and endangered species. Over the same time frame beginning in the 1970s, environmental conflict resolution began to evolve as an alternative way of dealing with environmental disputes outside of the courts. This approach uses facilitation, mediation, and other methods to negotiate solutions among disputing parties. It also involves collaborative efforts to solve problems and conflicts before they have a chance to fully develop. In the 1990s, as these alternatives to litigation became more established, two laws were enacted authorizing their use by federal agencies and the U.S. District Courts—the Administrative Dispute Resolution Act of 1996 and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Act of 1998. Also in 1998, legislation created the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, a federal institute to assess, and assist in resolving, conflicts related to federal land, natural resource, or environmental management. Throughout the 1990s, some communities facing natural resource problems decided to use alternative approaches to solving associated conflicts, forming grassroots groups of diverse stakeholders to discuss the problems and develop solutions. The collaborative groups that formed often included federal land and resource management agency representatives as participants. Recognizing the value of these groups, the federal land and resource management agencies began developing programs in support of such efforts. The agencies have been working collaboratively with communities for a long while, but placed increased emphasis on collaboration in the 1990s. Specifically, in 1997, the Forest Service began a partnership program to gather guidance and information on how best to work with local communities. In 2003, Interior began an effort to focus on working cooperatively with local communities on conservation activities, both on public and private lands. In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a program, called Partners for Fish and Wildlife, to work with private landowners to provide technical and financial assistance in protecting threatened and endangered species on their lands. More recently, the federal land and natural resource agencies have been authorized by specific legislation to collaborate with nonfederal parties on specific resource problems. For example, both BLM and the Forest Service received authority to use stewardship contracts—which allow them, for example, to use the value of products sold, such as timber, to offset the cost of contracted services such as removing small trees and brush from the forest—to achieve national forest land management goals that meet local and rural community needs. In 2004, the President signed Executive Order 13352 introducing the Cooperative Conservation initiative to increase the use of collaboration and other processes for managing land, natural resource, and environmental issues. The order directed the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, and the Interior, and the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to carry out natural resource and environmental laws in a manner that facilitates “cooperative conservation.” The order defined this as “actions that relate to the use, enhancement, and enjoyment of natural resources, protection of the environment, or both, and involve collaborative activity among Federal, State, local, and tribal governments, private for-profit and nonprofit institutions, other nongovernmental entities and individuals.” The Executive Order is being carried out by CEQ, in its role coordinating federal environmental efforts and working with agencies in the development of environmental policies and initiatives. Also involved is OMB, in its role overseeing the preparation of the federal budget and supervising executive branch agencies. OMB evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, as well as ensuring that agency reports, rules, testimony, and proposed legislation are consistent with the President’s budget and with administration policies. In addition, OMB oversees and coordinates the administration’s procurement, financial management, information, and regulatory policies. While collaboration refers broadly to the way different groups work together to achieve a common goal, collaborative resource management efforts involve multiple parties joining together voluntarily to identify environmental and natural resource problems and goals and to design activities and projects to resolve the problems and achieve their goals. The federal agencies work with collaborative resource management groups using partnership tools, which are cooperative or voluntary agreements among the federal and nonfederal groups to share resources and achieve the objectives of all parties. Each of the four major federal land and resource management agencies—BLM, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service within Interior and USDA’s Forest Service—has a complex mix of legislative authorities that allow it to create and fund partnerships. In the simplest form, a partnership can exist without any exchange of funds or items of value from the federal agency to a nonfederal group and a memorandum of agreement or understanding is used to describe the details of the arrangements. In cases when federal funds or property are provided to nonfederal entities as part of a partnership, the agencies use different instruments such as grants or cooperative agreements to document the agreement and work to be done. Collaborative resource management efforts can involve any mix of the nation’s 2.3 billion acres of federal, state, local, private, or tribal land. Historical settlement and development of the nation resulted in the intermingling of lands among these different entities. As shown in figure 2, about 60 percent of the nation’s land, or almost 1.4 billion acres, is privately owned and managed, while more than 27 percent, or about 628 million acres, is managed by the four federal land and resource management agencies. More than 43 million acres, representing almost 2 percent of the nation’s land, are owned and managed by the federal government for purposes such as military installations and water infrastructure. About 8 percent of the nation’s land, or 195 million acres, is owned and managed by state and local governments and more than 2 percent, or about 56 million acres, is held in trust by the federal government for Native American tribes. Collaborative efforts are governed by a framework of federal, state, and local laws, as well as federal Indian law and tribal law, that determine how management activities, including collaborative management activities, are carried out. These efforts often involve coordinated decision making for management activities that the collaborative groups undertake. Each land and resource manager or landowner, including federal agencies, retains decision-making authority for the activities that occur on their respective lands and follow applicable requirements to implement them, although the federal agencies may work with other group members to develop and consider plans and gather information and community input. When collaborative activities occur on private lands, individual landowners make decisions about the activities that occur subject to applicable federal, state, and local laws, and decide whether and how to share information related to their lands with members of the group. Collaborative management activities on federal lands are governed by federal resource and environmental laws. Overall, the four federal land management agencies manage their lands for a variety of purposes, although each agency has unique authorities that give it particular responsibilities. Specifically, both BLM and the Forest Service manage lands under their control for multiple uses and to provide a sustained yield of renewable resources such as timber, fish and wildlife, forage for livestock, and recreation. On the other hand, the National Park Service’s mission is to conserve the scenery, natural and historic objects, and wildlife of the national park system so that they will remain unimpaired for the enjoyment of current and future generations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under its authorities, manages refuges for the conservation, management—and where appropriate—restoration of fish, wildlife, and plant resources and their habitats within the United States, for the benefit of present and future generations. Other federal agencies—including the military services in the Department of Defense and the power marketing administrations in the Department of Energy—have land and resource management responsibilities that may cause them to become involved in collaborative efforts. The military services—the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force—use their lands primarily to train military forces and test weapon systems, but are required under the Sikes Act of 1960 to provide for the conservation and rehabilitation of natural resources on military lands. The power marketing administrations—which include the Western Area Power Administration, Bonneville Power Administration, Southwestern Power Administration, and Southeastern Power Administration—sell and deliver power within the United States on hundreds of miles of transmission lines across public and private land using rights-of-way. Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, transmission owners, including the power administrations, must maintain the reliability of their transmission systems, which includes establishing and maintaining the vegetation on these rights-of-way so that power lines are not compromised. Lines may be at risk from trees falling on them, electrical arcing from a power line to a tree or other objects in the right-of- way, or forest fires. Other agencies, such as the Department of Transportation and state transportation agencies, conduct activities that affect land and resources, and collaborate with agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage the effects on wildlife and habitat. Management activities that occur on federal lands, including those developed by a collaborative group are subject to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. NEPA requires that federal agencies evaluate the likely environmental effects of proposed projects and plans using an environmental assessment or, if the action would be likely to significantly affect the environment, a more detailed environmental impact statement.