Collaborating for longleaf pine: A case study

Abstract

Since the mid 1990′s collaborative landscape management, involving varied land users and interest groups, has increased substantially but the utilization of this practice on private land has been sparsely studied. Alongside this increase in collaborative landscape management, there has been an increase in attention on longleaf pine restoration. Once spanning over 93 million acres in the southeastern United States, these trees were reduced to an estimated 3% of their historic range. In response, in 2009, 22 government agencies and independent organizations formed America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative. The initiative functions in part through local implementation teams, established throughout the range and focused on private as well as public land. To learn more about collaboration and private land, we studied one of the teams, the Sewee Longleaf Conservation Cooperative, in South Carolina.Drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, a well-established model for analysing policy structures and change, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with partner organizations to analyze the group’s functions and the frames through which stakeholders view the coalition, their role, and the mission. We found that it has successfully made itself into the policy subsystem for the area and a venue that encompasses all relevant stakeholders. The stakeholders frame longleaf restoration as a positive, at least a secondary belief, and there is minimal conflict surrounding core beliefs. These stakeholders see the collaboration as positive, laud the group’s ability to facilitate access to resources, and utilize the relationship to establish connections, broaden outreach, and develop policy. But while this is a successful collaboration, its successes may be challenged by future events from outside the policy subsystem