Title

Responding to a forest catastrophe: The emergence of new governance arrangements in Southern California

Authors

Brian Peterson, Western Michigan University
Adam Wellstead, Michigan Technological UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-20-2014

Abstract

The San Bernardino National Forest in southern California experienced an unprecedented bark beetle outbreak in the early 2000s. The outbreak, coupled with a looming threat of catastrophic wildfire, droughts, changing forest management priorities, and a legacy of poor forest management practices coalesced to create a challenge that existing institutions and management agencies could not address. In response, an interagency collaborative effort, the Mountain Area Taskforce (MAST), was initiated. Based on key informant interviews, this paper details how this new governance organization emerged and how it effectively addressed a landscape scale forest challenge. Forest governance analyses often focus attention on macroscales, overlooking the microlevel arrangements that set MAST apart from other responses to bark beetle outbreaks. Interagency collaboration has taken on greater importance in efforts to address forest management at landscape scales and this case study provides important insights into the challenges and opportunities of these new governance arrangements.

Publisher's Statement

© 2014 Brian Petersen and Adam M. Wellstead. Publisher's version of record: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/982481

Publication Title

ISRN Economics

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Peterson, B., & Wellstead, A. (2014). Responding to a forest catastrophe: The emergence of new governance arrangements in Southern California. ISRN Economics. http://doi.org/10.1155/2014/982481
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/social-sciences-fp/5

Version

Publisher's PDF