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Friday, 2:00pm

Discuss how to develop management plans across ownership boundaries and land types, and share tools and examples from local initiatives. 

Panelists will provide a brief introduction to their project, including the history and rationale for forming their collaborative group.  Panelists will share their rationale for participating and their perceived value of the process.  This panel is designed as a round table discussion and we plan to use the majority of the time allocated allowing participants to inquire about the process or addressing any other specific questions for the panelists.  The panelists have been encouraged to express frustration, hesitancy, etc. as well as successes, to used the session as an honest sharing forum.

Speakers

• Betsy Bloomfield, East Cascades Forests Program Director, The Nature Conservancy
  Dry Forests of the East Cascades
  
• Phil Rigdon, Deputy Director, Yakama Nation Department of Natural Resources
• George Shelton, Assistant Region Manager for Proprietary Programs, Washington Department of Natural Resources
• Randy Shepard, District Ranger, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, US Forest Service
  
• Jeff Tayer, Regional Director, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife
  
  

• Gary Burnett, Executive Director, Blackfoot Challenge
  
• Ali Duvall, Program Coordinator, Blackfoot Challenge
  Watershed initiative map
  Land ownership map
  Community conservation area map
  
• Hank Goetz, Lands Director, Blackfoot Challenge
  
• Jim Stone, land owner, member, Blackfoot Challenge
  

Facilitator

Lynn Decker, Director, US Fire Learning Network, The Nature Conservancy

Recommended Readings

Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative, Washington. U.S. Fire Learning Network.

Blackfoot Community Conservation Area, Management Plan for the Core.  Blackfoot Community Conservation Area Council, Blackfoot Challenge.

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Betsy Bloomfield

Betsy Bloomfield is the Conservancy's East Cascades Forests Program Director in Washington state.  She has been focused on implementing a long-term collaborative effort to restore fire-adapted ecosystems in the east Cascades, based on deploying priority conservation strategies that anticipate climate change, attract innovative markets, and create new ways for old stakeholders to share a common value in the flow of natural goods and services.

Gary Burnett

Gary Burnett grew up in rural Illinois, the son of a farm advisor and teacher.  He joined the Blackfoot Challenge as the Executive Director in May 2007.  Gary received a B.S. from the University of Illinois in 1977, and a M.S. in wildlife biology in 1982 from the University of Montana.  He has worked for Plum Creek Timber Company and the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, assisting both public and private landowners/managers in land protection and management.  He organized over 130 fund raising events; developed and directed annual fund, major gift and planned giving programs for Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, National Forest Foundation, Missoula Children’s Theatre and Montana Meth Project; and volunteers in his community.

Ali Duvall

Ali Duvall, Program Coordinator for the Blackfoot Challenge, has provided staff support to the Conservation Strategies Program since 2002.  She coordinates the forum for private landowners, public agencies, non-profit groups to cooperate in landscape-level conservation and stewardship efforts that will enhance, conserve, and protect the natural resources and rural lifestyle of the Blackfoot watershed.  Ali received a B.A. from Northwestern University and an M.S. in environmental science from the University of Montana with a focus on community-based and collaborative natural resource management, and the interface between ecological and social sustainability in the Rocky Mountain West.  Since 2005, Ali has also provided staff support to the Blackfoot Community Conservation Area, an innovative effort involving community forest ownership and cooperative ecosystem management across 41,000 acres of public and private lands in the heart of the watershed.

Hank Goetz

Hank Goetz, Lands Director for the Blackfoot Challenge, provides oversight and coordination for the Blackfoot Community Project in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy to purchase 89,000 acres from Plum Creek Timber Company and resell it to a variety of public and private interests according to a community-based plan.  Hank graduated from the University of Montana in 1963 with a B.S. in Forestry.  After three years in the Army, including a year as an infantry officer in Vietnam, he worked for the Northern Pacific Railway Company as a forester in Seeley Lake, Montana.  In 1969, Dean Arnold Bolle of the Forestry School asked Hank to become the first Resident Manager of the Lubrecht Experimental Forest.  Lubrecht is the School’s 21,000-acre research/demonstration forest located 30 miles east of Missoula in the Blackfoot Valley.  In 1989 when the School acquired the Bandy Ranch in Ovando, Hank was responsible for the operation of both facilities.  He retired from the day-to-day operations at Lubrecht and Bandy in June 2005.  During his tenure with the University, Hank was involved in numerous cooperative natural resource projects in the Blackfoot including the Blackfoot River Project, Walk-In Hunting Areas, Cross-Country and Snowmobile Trails, and recreation planning along the entire Blackfoot River.

Phil Rigdon

Philip Rigdon has been the Yakama Nation Deputy Director of Department of Natural Resources for the last three years.  DNR Programs work to manage, co-manage, and protect the Yakama Nation’s ancestral, cultural, and treaty resources.  Programs within DNR include Yakama Nation Fisheries, Forestry, Wildlife, Environmental Management, Cultural Resources, Tribal Historic Preservation Office, Water Resources and other related natural resource programs.  

Previously Phil worked within the Yakama Nation Tribal Forestry program as the Fuels Manager, Timber Sale Administrative Forester, and Forest Development Forester.
Mr. Rigdon obtained a B.S. in Forest Management from the University of Washington in 1996 and earned a Master of Forestry from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2002.

George Shelton

Employed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources for over thirty three years.   Currently, Assistant Region Manager for Proprietary Programs, on approximately 950,000 acres within the Southeast Region.  Manage all forestry related programs on approximately 360,000 acres of forest land.  Directly supervise, the region’s special lands programs including the Natural Area Preserves, Natural Resource Conservation Areas and the region’s recreation program.

1975 Graduate of the University of Washington, in Forest Management and a graduate of Washington Agriculture and Forestry Education Foundation..Class XII

Strong believer in relationships and communication.  Have been involved in numerous complex projects including: The first Amendment to the DNR’s HCP in the Klickitat Palnning Unit, Completion of the largest land exchange in DNR’s history and DNR’s participation in the Tapash Collaborative.

Randy Shepard

Randy Shepard came to the Naches District Ranger on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in July of 1999.  Prior to that, he served as District Ranger on the Packwood District of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State and the Van Buren and Eleven Point Ranger Districts on the Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri beginning in 1985.  With the exception of temporary assignments, his entire 35 year career has been at the ranger district level of the Forest Service.  A native of west-central Illinois, he earned his Master and Bachelor of Science degrees in forestry from the University of Illinois at Urbana.  He is married with a blended family of six children and four grandchildren.

Jim Stone

Jim Stone is a native Montanan, graduated from Montana State University in 1983, and took over his family's ranch in Ovando in 1984.  Jim has been a member of the Blackfoot Challenge from the beginning and currently serves as its Chairman.  Jim Stone is an essential rural community leader serving on the local fire department, school board, county planning board of adjustments, Powell county Weed Board, Future Fisheries Commission, among other volunteer efforts.  Today, the Blackfoot Project is widely touted as a national model for landscape-scale conservation, in large part thanks to Jim Stone' vision, leadership and hard work.

Jeff Tayer

Jeff Tayer has worked for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for the past 32 years. For the past 14 years he has been a Regional Director for WDFW in Eastern Washington. These duties cover the range of WDFW responsibilities but special areas of focus have been tribal relations and agreements, large land acquisitions, salmon recovery and endangered species issues. Mr.Tayer is the President of the Board of the Kittitas Conservation Trust, a local land trust and is heavily involved in land protection issues in Central Washington.

Recently renewable energy issues have been an area of agency and individual focus and Mr. Tayer is the WDFW representative on the Washington Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council and a principle participant in developing WDFW current wind power mitigation and site selection guidelines.

Lynn Decker

Lynn Decker has been the director of The Nature Conservancy’s Fire Learning Network since 2003.  The Network links 60-70 community-based landscape groups across the U.S. and fosters a collaborative science-based process to restore fire adapted ecosystems at ecologically meaningful scales, while managing fuels to abate current threats related to altered fire regimes.  Lynn facilitates the design of regional networks and workshops, advises site-based project teams and links them to external sources of support, and communicates regularly with agency staff and other partners about the innovations and learning generated by the network.

Before joining the Conservancy, Lynn worked for 20 years in Forest Service Research and National Forest Systems Management, primarily in the areas of fisheries, aquatic ecology, riparian and watershed science and management.  She spent the last three years of this time as an Aquatic Ecologist, working on integrating fisheries and watershed and wildlife concerns into the National Fire Plan.