Multi-Party Monitoring will play an important part in gaging the success of stewardship restoration projects. Photo by Tim Love of the Lolo National Forest.

The Blackfoot Clearwater Landscape Stewardship Project would set aside 50,000 dollars a year for on-the-ground monitoring of locally contracted restoration projects. These monitoring efforts will go hand in hand with project implementation and ensure that forest management goals are met while creating the capacity for adaptive land management.

Monitoring is typically conducted by the Forest Service as required by Forest Plans and other environmental documents and contracts. However, Forest Service guidelines direct district rangers to develop stewardship contract projects in collaboration with multiple stakeholders, and this most commonly takes shape through the creation of multiparty monitoring committees.

In the Upper Blackfoot, these multi-party monitoring committees will incorporate a diverse cross-section of interests from community groups and non government organizations, to local workers and business owners. The use of multi-party monitoring allows agencies to not only target projects towards community needs, but to also meaningfully engage community input and further develop trusting relationships.

Monitoring committees will be responsible for evaluating the overall effectiveness of the Landscape Stewardship project by tracking, for example, the economic benefits of stewardship contracts and the ecological effects of restoration projects. Legislation would require, within 30 days of filing an appeal of a stewardship project, that the appellants meet face-to-face with Forest Service decision-makers and the monitoring committee, to attempt to resolve the appeal.