Get reliable rangeland science

Addressing persistent and complex ecosystems problems to restore landscape resilience requires good science but must also consider the complexities of management and the people involved in decision-making. Collaboration is a word that is used generously and defined loosely in recent years but is recognized as a growing trend.� Agencies, including regulatory agencies, conservation groups, landowners and communities continue to seek out a participatory approach to solving complex issues. Collaboration comes with a host of expectations that include reducing delays in restoring ecosystem health, shoring-up rural economies and communities. The promise of collaboration has funders increasingly interested in funding partnerships that are high-performing and address landscape scale issues that cross management boundaries.� In our experiences, we believe engaging in a collaborative, solutions-oriented process with relevant stakeholders is the only viable and lasting means to address contemporary natural resource, social and economic issues facing communities. It is difficult to put criteria around what makes partnerships high-performing but one key is effective collaboration.� Collaborative partnerships require substantial upfront social capital to build relationships.� Additionally, resources are needed to support the process such as building relationships, facilitation and communications. The High Desert Partnership is an organization that has pioneered successful collaborative initiatives in Harney County for over 10 years by advocating for a process where solutions are economically, socially, and ecologically sound and are developed by all stakeholders.� We have found there is no one recipe to make a collaboration work.� However, there are some guiding principles that have emerged across several very different collaborative efforts in our region. Principles include, neutral party guiding the process, groups must be empowered to make decisions and shared understanding of the problem. As collaboration continues to expand as a process to solve natural resource issues there is interest in understanding the shared qualities that ensure success.