Resources Library

The Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative (TCSI) is a partnership among the
USDA Forest Service, California Tahoe Conservancy, Sierra Nevada
Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, National Forest Foundation,
California Forestry Association, and University of California Sagehen
Creek Field Station, and eight forest collaboratives. TCSI partners are
accelerating the restoration of forest and watershed resilience
through innovative planning, investment, and management across
the 2.4-million-acre landscape.

This document was adapted from a product developed in 2020 for
the Sierra Nevada Conservancy for the TCSI and funded by the
California Climate Investments

Meeting Goals

1. Introduce Cutting the Green Tape as one of Secretary Crowfoot’s four pillars and build shared vision for this effort.
2. Establish approach to advance this vision, including broad process and timeline.
3. Establish goals and conditions for collaboration that will result in transformational yet feasible recommendations by Earth Day to achieve permitting efficiencies and other improvements.

January 6, 2020
10:00am-3:00pm
Putah Creek Lodge, Davis CA

Meeting Goals

1. Introduce Cutting Green Tape as one of Secretary Crowfoot’s four pillars and build shared vision for this effort.
2. Establish approach to advance this vision, including broad process and timeline.
3. Establish goals and conditions for collaboration that will result in transformational yet feasible recommendations by Earth Day to achieve permitting efficiencies and other improvements.

Invasive plants don’t see our property lines. The five partners that make up Marin County’s One Tam partnership know this, and they teamed up to create an Early Detection Rapid Response (EDRR) program tasked with identifying and managing weeds spanning the jurisdictions on Mt. Tamalpais. The EDRR team released this full report on its work from the first survey cycle, offering deep analysis of survey efforts and offering detailed strategies for addressing the mountain’s most formidable weeds. The early detection work is a cornerstone to One Tam’s efforts to protect the mountain’s iconic landscapes, and the plants and animals that call them home.

Sponsored and initiated by the Mammoth Lakes Trails and Public Access Foundation (MLTPA), the CALREC Vision project is working to highlight the essential, multi-benefit role that outdoor recreation plays in California. MLTPA has been engaged with local and regional issues of sustainable recreation and collaboration in California's Eastern Sierra since its inception and provides technical support to a regional public/public recreation-based solution, the Eastern Sierra Sustainable Recreation Partnership. Given its role employing collaboration to improve the social, environmental, and economic impacts of recreation in the Eastern Sierra, MLTPA invites you to visit mltpa.org to learn more about our work.

In launching the CALREC Vision Project, MLTPA engaged counsel from an array of federal, state, and regional agency and organizational experts as an Advisory Committee. Participants in the Advisory Committee generously shared their time, perspective, and advice on these topics through a series of facilitated, virtual meetings from May 2020 through July 2020. The results of those productive meetings were focused discussions and agreement about the need for cross-jurisdictional collaboration, as virtually every participant expressed encountering similar challenges. Participants also helped identify areas where collaboration can advance sustainable outdoor recreation goals within their respective agencies and organizations and throughout California.

Meeting notes, including summaries of speaker remarks and small group discussions, from the Better, Stronger, Faster roll-out at the UC Davis Mondavi Center on December 18, 2019.

Over the course of 2018-19, many of you approached the California Department Fish and Wildlife separately or in small groups to discuss improvements to our processes. The Department wants to share with you our thinking on reforms to help make our work “better, stronger, and faster.” We would like your feedback on improvements to our processes.

December 18, 2019
10:00am-12:30pm

Meeting Goals

1. Share the vision for Cutting the Green Tape
2. Determine shared approach for the initiative
3. Establish process and confirm timeline

December 18, 2019
12:30pm - 4:30pm

Meeting Goals

1. Introduce the CDFW Better, Stronger, Faster Concept and Recommendations, including process and timeline, and link to advancing Secretary Crowfoot’s Cutting the Green Tape Initiative.
2. Acknowledge the participation and contributions of all of the meeting participants in helping inspire and share the recommendations.
3. Gain feedback, identify shared priorities, commitments and timeline for advancing the recommendations.
4. Establish a process, approach, and conditions for collaboration that will result in achieving priorities.

Fundamental to understanding how to manage and steward the natural world, raise awareness, or inspire action is being able to describe how your resources are faring and what needs intervention, and to do so in a credible and compelling way.

One way that natural resource-based agencies, organizations, or partnerships may choose to do this is through an assessment of the state of their resources. While these “ecological health assessments” are often initially developed to create a baseline against which future change can be measured, they can also focus management priorities, educate the public, generate action, and/or increase financial or political support.

The process described here is based on what we did for Mt. Tamalpais. This is one approach you can use, but because every effort will be different, we have tried to make the process scalable—describing a more comprehensive and involved method followed by possible alternative approaches. Each reader will need to assess how, or if, to apply this advice to their own project. That said, we have called out key decision points for elements we feel are truly fundamental, no matter what approach you choose to take.