The past two decades show undeniable warning signs that Colorado’s forests are becoming breeding grounds for uncharacteristically large wildfires. The state’s 20 largest wildfires have all occurred since 2002. Infestations of bark beetles and other insects and diseases have created panoramas of brown and gray dead trees in dense, overgrown forests.
Looking for solutions, the U.S. Forest Service started a pilot program with the Colorado State Forest Service in 2000 to flesh out a new idea for forest management – one with partnership eclipsing land boundaries. This experiment has turned into a movement across the country with an extended pilot program leading to permanent expansion in the 2014 U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Bill. The bill also now includes the Bureau of Land Management, counties and tribes as partners that can work on Good Neighbor Authority (GNA) projects, along with state forestry agencies like the CSFS, to complete critical restoration services such as forest management projects on federal lands.
The GNA program has been used across 38 states, according to the National Association of State Foresters. It provides efficiencies and benefits including pooling federal, state, tribal and county resources, strengthening partnerships, fostering collaboration and conducting larger scale, cross-boundary projects.
“Increasing the pace and scale of forestry work across lands that are managed by different agencies is difficult if each entity is trying to do their own thing,” Diana Selby, manager of program delivery for the CSFS, explained. “Each agency only has so much capacity, and the resources required to get large projects done are not always there, so if we can partner, we can get more done. GNA helps in that regard.”
What’s good for Colorado’s forests is also good for residents. The GNA program lets the CSFS manage and administer landscape-scale projects across federal, state and private lands. Coupled with the CSFS’ longstanding history of working cooperatively with state, tribal and private landowners, GNA paves the way to funding more projects that reduce wildfire risk, particularly for residents living in the wildland-urban interface.
“We’re not looking at one little piece of forest management anymore. Everyone’s on board and we’re working together to get it done,” Selby said.
A tally in November 2023 by the Council of Western State Foresters cited 149 active GNA projects with the U.S. Forest Service and 17 with the BLM across 13 western states. In Colorado alone, GNA agreements have helped the CSFS and federal partners treat almost 9,500 football fields worth of forestland (over 12,000 acres) in the past decade.
The country’s historic desire for fire suppression has contributed to a landscape of crowded, unhealthy forests. With fewer natural fires, overgrown forests became buffets for insects and disease infestations and tinderboxes of dead timber that usher in the types of uncharacteristically large wildfires seen across Colorado in 2020. Cooperative thinking and the ability to work across fences are critical tools gaining a foothold for forest management in this landscape.
Through GNA, federal partners bring funding and resources; the CSFS offers forestry services, labor and state contracting methods, which streamlines the bidding process for timber contractors.
“We recognize that treatments need to be cross-boundary,” Selby said. “When the CSFS can manage projects like these, it makes it more cost effective. We see more activity from contractors bidding on jobs since it’s much easier for them to place bids for a whole project. Without GNA, they would have to bid separately on federal and state and private parcels within one project area.”
The GNA program has helped improve relationships between federal and state partners, said Selby, who began her CSFS career 19 years ago as a forester. She started supervising the GNA program for the CSFS in 2018.
“We’ve always communicated with other agencies. But now we’re having regular conversations to talk about our priorities and their priorities and how we can align,” she said.
Since Colorado’s first GNA project in 2015 – an aerial spraying to halt Douglas-fir tussock moth spreading in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest – the CSFS has been able to complete more forest health projects with funding and resources that aren’t available outside the GNA framework. As of early 2024, the CSFS has around 30 active and planned projects and 48 staff dedicating at least part of their time to GNA work.
Federal partners are also drawing on the benefits of partnership. What the CSFS offers in forestry knowledge is just what some federal partners are seeking. When Scott Nilson, a fire management specialist for the BLM Rocky Mountain District, was looking to reduce wildfire risk around popular recreation areas along Poncha Pass near Salida, he knew CSFS foresters would be an asset.
“Although over my career I’ve been involved in a lot of forestry practices, I’m not a forester,” Nilson said. “So that’s when we talked about trying to link up with the Colorado State Forest Service to provide the forestry expertise and general forestry services to help get this project off the ground.”
The Good Neighbor Authority authorizes many types of forest health projects, loosely defined to include activities that reduce wildfire risk, protect watersheds and water supplies, and meet other forest management objectives set by the U.S. Forest Service and BLM.
“For the CSFS, GNA work means primarily fuels mitigation, timber sales and planning efforts throughout the state,” Selby said. “But there’s a lot of flexibility to do whatever the [U.S.] Forest Service or BLM is interested in.”
The CSFS has helped with a variety of GNA work, from growing seedlings at the CSFS Nursery for restoration projects, to setting up a Timber Strike Team of interns to conduct forest inventories in northern Colorado. In northwest Colorado, CSFS Lead Forester Carolina Manriquez is working with the U.S. Forest Service on the North Routt GNA project to reduce wildfire fuels near Steamboat Lake.
“GNA has been huge for us,” she said. “We have strong partners who are interested in figuring out how we get this work done together. It’s been positive because we have these critical partners on the federal side to address what our community has wanted to address for a long time.”
Across the West, timber sales can be drivers for GNA program sustainability, largely because states get to keep revenue generated from GNA timber sales. Frequently, those profits are rolled back into the GNA program to expand a project or invest in more staffing.
Some states – like Idaho, Oregon and Washington, where climate helps trees grow prolifically – have generated more than $10 million each in revenue from such sales. Colorado, with a harsher climate and forests ravaged by insects and disease, has amassed a little over $1.1 million in revenue, which has been rolled back into the state’s GNA program.
“Here in Colorado we don’t have high-value timber on the landscape like in other places,” Selby said. “Here, timber sales are not going to carry the GNA program. It still takes support from the state and federal partners to keep it maintained at the level we’re at now.”
Last year saw an influx of funding for GNA across the country, allowing the U.S. Forest Service to invest more than $20 million. The program’s first funding was $200 million, appropriated as part of the initial Bipartisan Infrastructure Law agreements for GNA projects from 2022-2026; $160 million went to the U.S. Forest Service and $40 million to BLM.
Those initial BLM funds directly impacted Colorado forests and local jobs on the Poncha Pass project near Salida, which employed multiple Colorado contractors to cut and haul timber to a local mill. Nilson, the BLM fire specialist, recognized how federal funding, combined with the CSFS partnership, sent a positive ripple through the community.
“By injecting some of those federal monies over to the state forest service to implement contracts for us, they [CSFS] were able to work with local vendors in a way that, essentially, we were taking some of that federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law money and getting it out to local vendors treating local lands – which is really special,” he said.
An idea borne within the U.S. Forest Service and officially enacted as part of the 2014 Farm Bill, the Good Neighbor Authority program has seen two major expansions since it began. The program was bolstered soon after it began to allow additional tribal and county agencies to work with the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management on projects that improve forest health, lower wildfire risk and protect watersheds.
One of the first large nationwide investments into the GNA program was through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, appropriating $200 million to GNA agreements for 2022-2026, $160 million to the U.S. Forest Service and $40 million to BLM.
In 2023, further Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding helped the U.S. Forest Service invest more than $20 million into GNA to “fund projects and leverage state resources across 18 states to protect communities, improve forest health, reduce invasive plants and improve watersheds, while creating job opportunities for state crews in rural areas,” a U.S. Forest Service press release states.
The annual forest health report details the current state of the health and condition of Colorado’s forests. Learn how the milder conditions in 2023 affected wildfire risk and forest pest activity.
The GNA program lets the U.S. Forest Service enter into agreements with state forestry agencies to pool resources to complete critical, cross-boundary work that improves forest health, reduces wildfire risk and protects watersheds. In north Routt County, partnering with the CSFS helps the U.S. Forest Service access land-locked federal forest, reachable only with agreement of residents whose private lands surround it.
With the help of multiple partners, the Colorado State Forest Service led an effort that drastically improved forest conditions at Poncha Pass in southwest Colorado. See how they made it happen.
