Forest Service-Community Relationship Building: Recommendations

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Abstract
Relationship building between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and communities near national forests is a necessity for ecosystem manage ment and forest planning, as well as for community revitalization. Based on interviews with 119 subjects, the authors designed recommendations aimed at promoting the building of such collaborative relationships. Recommendations were presented in a survey to the same subjects for verification purposes and were found to be well supported. Recommendations, organized by audience (district rangers, forest super visors, National Forest System Deputy, Rural Community Assistance [RCA] leaders, RCA coordinators, and community leaders), focus on the need to prioritize Forest Service-community relationship building, ensuring funding and legal authority for relationship building, providing adequate training opportunities, cultivating intra- and interagency working relationships concerning community work, using the RCA program to build relationships while assisting communities, and building community capacity for participation in agency-community collaborative efforts.

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