Wednesday, September 9th

Training: Taking Action with the Forest Resilience Planning Guide | 1pm – 5pm | Western Colorado University, University Center Ballroom | Move your collaborative from vision to implementation using the Colorado Forest Resilience Planning Guide. Through peer discussion, hands-on exercises, and real-world examples, you’ll explore practical tools and strategies to advance forest collaboratives. Bring your own experiences and challenges, and leave with ideas, resources, and next steps you can take back to your partnership to keep momentum moving forward. Ticket price includes a hard copy of the Colorado Forest Resilience Planning Guide and refreshments. Hosted by CDR Associates and the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute. | $50

Training facilitators:

• Abby Hall, Senior Program Manager, CDR Associates
• Ch’aska Huayhuaca, Senior Program Manager, Collaborative Adaptive Management, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute
• Laura Hickey Danz, Knowledge Synthesis, Communications, and Applications Specialist, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute

Welcome Social | 6-8pm | Western Colorado University, Art Gallery | Welcome to Gunnison! Join us for an evening of networking, food, and drink. Heavy hors d’oeuvres and one drink ticket will be provided; cash bar available for additional drinks. | Included with base registration cost.

Thursday, September 10th

The Colorado Forest Collaboratives Summit (the main event!) | 8am – 4pm | Western Colorado University, University Center Ballroom

8am – 9am | Coffee, pastries, & unstructured mingling (coffee & pastries provided)

9am – 9:30am | Welcome to Summit!

• Featuring members of the Summit Planning Team
  

9:30am – 12pm | Colorado Cafe – table discussions and case studies that align with the 30-Year Vision for Forest Health in Colorado | Featuring an introduction by Rebecca Samulski (Executive Director, Fire Adapted Colorado) and Courtney Young (Forest Health & Wildfire Mitigation Program Administrator, Colorado Department of Natural Resources)

Confirmed table topics include:

• Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force updates & discussion
  Facilitated by Christina Burri (Deputy State Forester, Colorado State Forest Service) and Alison Lerch (Assistant Director, Forest Health and Wildfire Mitigation, Colorado Department of Natural Resources)
• Resilient collaboratives
• Collaborative mapping
  Facilitated by Rebecca Dannels (GIS Specialist, Colorado State Forest Service) and Phoebe Bauer (GIS Analyst, Colorado State Forest Service)
• Mitigation Success Stories with Fire Adapted Colorado
• Wildfire and Watershed Initiative for Resilient Colorado updates & discussion
  Facilitated by Julie Shapiro (Director, Center for Natural Resources, Keystone Policy Center)
• Inviting New Allies to the Table
  Facilitated by Robert Scott (Campaign Manager, Protect What Matters) and
  Jon Rosborough (Campaign Manager, Protect What Matters)
• Colorado Forests Carbon Sequestration
  Facilitated by Ashley Prentice (Forest Resource Analysis Specialist, Colorado State Forest Service) and Audrey Miles-Cherney (Upper South Platte Partnership Watershed Coordinator, Colorado State Forest Service)
• Climate Adaptation
  Facilitated by Rob Addington (Forest Program Director, The Nature Conservancy) and Andrew Slack (Applied Adaptive Management Specialist, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute)
• Collaboratives engaging with the timber industry
  Facilitated by Megan Maxwell (Executive Director, Colorado Timber Industry Association) and Amorina Lee-Martinez (Program Assistant, Dolores Watersheds Collaborative)
• More to be confirmed soon!

12pm – 1pm | Lunch (included with registration)

1pm – 2:30pm | Stages of Readiness workshop featuring a case study of the Upper Gunnison Shared Stewardship Council

2:30pm – 2:50pm | Break

2:50pm – 3:40pm | Agency leadership panel

Confirmed panelists:

• Christina Burri, Deputy State Forester, Colorado State Forest Service
• Alison Lerch, Assistant Director for Forest Health and Wildfire Mitigation, Colorado Department of Natural Resources
• More to be confirmed!

3:40pm – 4pm | Closing

4pm – 6pm | Happy hour (heavy hors d’oeuvres included + a drink ticket for those who submit a survey)

Friday, September 11th

Field trip | Collaboration and Climate Adaptation in the Taylor Park area | $50 (includes lunch)

Stop 1: Bertha Gulch Stewardship Project

The Bertha Gulch Stewardship Project is a perfect example of “collabor-action”, collaboration in action. This recently completed 155-acre cross-boundary stewardship project consisted of 20 acres on private property and 135 acres on USFS lands, that involved multiple different partnerships including the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS), US Forest Service, National Forest Foundation, and private landowners, and was funded using Healthy Forests Vibrant Community (HFVC) state grant funding. The HFVC fund in Colorado provides state financial support administered by the CSFS to reduce wildfire risks, promote watershed resilience, support local wood products businesses, and combat emerging forest health threats like the mountain pine beetle. This priority area was identified by the Upper Gunnison Water Conservation District, Gunnison County Community Wildfire Protection Plan, and the Taylor Adaptive Management Group. From a landscape scale view, this section of land was the missing piece of the puzzle, so to speak, between previously harvested ridgetop fuel breaks on US Forest Service lands and defensible space/hand thinning projects on private lands. CSFS capitalized on previously built relationships, collaboration, and momentum from prior projects to gain access to this private parcel and surrounding landlocked US Forest Service land to implement Lodgepole pine clear cuts, overstory removals, and hand thinning treatment methods. By connecting multiple projects together, Taylor Park, Tincup, and the surrounding wildland-urban interface communities are better protected from this new era of uncharacteristic wildfires.

Stop 2: Taylor Park, Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change Site

The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network is ‘a collaborative effort to establish a series of experimental silvicultural trials across different forest ecosystems in the United States and Canada.’ One of the 14 ASCC sites, designed to test out silvicultural practices for climate adaptation, is Taylor Park, CO. In 2022, a team of experts collaboratively identified desired future conditions, objectives, and tactics for resistance, resilience, and transition in the Taylor Park area. You can learn more about the ASCC Network HERE, and about the Taylor Park site HERE. After years of planning, the project is now in the implementation phase. On our field trip, we’ll visit the Trail Creek project in Taylor Park, discuss the prescription and goals, and learn about what it took to get this site from planning to implementation.

Other field trip information: We will depart from Western Colorado University at 8am, and plan to return back to Western Colorado University at 2pm. There will be an opportunity for folks to park and ride closer to the project sites if you are heading home to the north and don’t want to go all the way back to Gunnison at the end of the field trip, but the main portion of the field trip will require carpooling as the sites we are visiting can only hold a small number of vehicles. Field trip registrants will receive detailed logistical information via email as we get closer to the day of the field trip.

Field trip speakers:

• Jonathan Coop, Professor of Environment & Sustainability and Biology, Western Colorado University
• Dylan Eimer, Lead Project Forester, Colorado State Forest Service
• Maddie Herro, Rocky Mountain Region Program Manager, National Forest Foundation
• Mike Tarantino, Supervisory Forester, Colorado State Forest Service