Overview
In August 2018, the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) released “Toward Shared Stewardship Across Landscapes: An Outcome-Based Investment Strategy” (Strategy). In the Strategy, the Forest Service calls for a new way of doing business, and notes particular concerns around longer wildfire seasons, increasing wildfire risk and severity, invasive species, insect and disease epidemics, and growing risks to local communities.
The Forest Service suggests that the past approach of uncoordinated treatments and lack of projects at the right size cannot meet the scale needed to improve forest health conditions across landscapes. To implement the Strategy, the Forest Service envisions partnering with states, tribes, and other stakeholders to define mutual goals, share decisions, and identify collective priority landscapes for targeted treatments. The Forest Service proposes this framework as a way to mobilize the right work in the right place and at the right scale to address these urgent natural resource concerns.
The release of the Forest Service National Active Forest Management Strategy in 2025 reaffirmed Shared Stewardship as a critical focus area for meeting the agency’s goals of increasing active management to improve forest health and reduce threats of wildfire, insects, and disease.