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

1pm – 2:30pm | From Planning to Action: Understanding Collaborative Readiness Through the Upper Gunnison Shared Stewardship Council

Featuring an introduction and facilitation by Ch’aska Huayhuaca (Colorado Forest Restoration Institute) and Laura Danz (Colorado Forest Restoration Institute)

What does it take to move a collaborative plan off the shelf and into action? Learn from the Upper Gunnison Shared Stewardship Council’s experience building readiness for implementation across a complex landscape.

Panelists:

• Lisa Bickford, Emergency Management Director, Gunnison OEM
• Sonja Chavez, General Manager, Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District
• Jarod Dunn, Socio-Economic Analyst, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute
• Briget Eastep, Director, Center for Public Lands, Western Colorado University
• Scott Morrill, Chief Operations Officer, West Region Wildfire Council
• Tim Pinnow, Executive Director, West Region Wildfire Council
• Gretchen Rank, Wildfire Resilience Manager, Colorado River Sustainability Campaign

2:30pm – 2:50pm | Break

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

We’ll learn about how land management agencies are working toward the Colorado 30 Year Vision, and how forest collaboratives can get involved. Then, we will ask a few questions developed day-of based on Colorado Cafe table discussions.

Facilitated by Audrey Miles-Cherney (Upper S. Platte Partnership Watershed Coordinator, Colorado State Forest Service)

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