Shared Stewardship
Why Shared Stewardship Matters Now
The Forest Service is committed to healthier, more resilient forests; safer, thriving communities; and a stable forest products economy. Our success depends not only on the volume of work accomplished, but on the long-term vitality of the land—an outcome that requires working together.
Shared Stewardship translates shared priorities into meaningful, on-the-ground results: delivering saw logs to mills, reducing hazardous fuels, maintaining trails, repairing culverts, and restoring landscapes. This approach reflects our commitment to shared resources, shared planning, and shared outcomes.
Working Together for Better Results
Collaboration allows us to align resources and priorities across entire landscapes, accelerating and improving the predictability of forest management work. By fully leveraging existing tools—such as Good Neighbor Authority—we can coordinate work more effectively across boundaries.
This cooperative approach delivers multiple benefits: reduced wildfire risk to communities; stronger rural economies and forest product markets; and enhanced recreation and public access. Through Shared Stewardship, we can develop unified priorities and strategies that honor local needs, state objectives, tribal sovereignty, and federal responsibilities—a unified roadmap for action.
Shared Stewardship strengthens our collective capacity by pooling funding, coordinating investments at the right scale, using authorities more strategically, and upholding statutory and government-to-government responsibilities.
Shared Ambition in Action
National Forests in Alabama are advancing Shared Stewardship through:
- Good Neighbor Agreements with the Alabama Forestry Commission
- Cooperative Fire Management with the Alabama Forestry Commission
- Prescribed burning on private lands under Wyden and Stevens' Agreements
- Conservation education, including Smokey Bear and prevention programs
- Forest health and sustainability efforts, including Southern Pine Beetle management, with the Alabama Forestry Commission
- State Forestry Action Plan = Forest Land and Resources Management Plan
- Control of non-native, invasive plant and animal species