The Role of Local Communities in the Development of Agreement or Contract Plans through Stewardship Contracting -State, tribal, local Govt.

Interview Questions

First we would like to ask you a few background questions about your experience with stewardship contracting:

1. How many SC projects have you been a part of?

2. What is your role in THIS project?

3. How long have you been involved with this project?

4. Would you consider yourself “local” to the project area?

1. From your perspective, what are the project objectives and anticipated outcomes of this project?

2. In the next group of questions I want to ask are about who participated in (name specific project) and how they participated.

2.a. Who are the primary (e.g. people who have participated the most) nonagency stakeholders in the project (ask agency people and get contact information; then read that list to non-agency folks and ask if there is anyone they would add; be sure to get additional contact information.) Are there other stakeholders who have participated at some point? If yes, ask who and how they participated.

2b. For each interviewee, list primary nonagency folks in the table below to keep track of who the primary nonagency stakeholders are and to organize their responses.

Then for each primary nonagency stakeholder ask about their involvement in project stages.

If the interviewee says that a person or group participated in a phase, ask them to explain how or what they actually did

Example: You listed Tribal Nation X as a nonagency participant in the project. What project stages/parts of the project were they involved in…

How did Tribal nation X participate in scoping? What exactly did they do?

The following list of example nonagency roles is here to help you probe rather than walk through every stage for every nonagency stakeholder:

• Conceiving of the project idea/approaching the agency with the idea

• Project planning

• NEPA scoping (Example probes: Did the agency do a schedule of proposed activities notification? Were there public meetings?, field tours?)

• Project implementation

• Project monitoring

2.c. For each primary nonagency stakeholder, do you think their participation:

• Resulted in improved decision making about the project? Please explain why ….

• Resulted in getting the project implemented on the ground? Please explain why….

2.d. You listed several parts of (name SC project), that nonagency stakeholders were involved in. like (list a few from 1b above)……

• Which of these kinds on involvement that you listed, do you believe are most important for engagement of nonagency stakeholders?

• You said that you believe that (example : monitoring) is most important? Are you satisfied with the level of involvement of nonagency stakeholders in this project in ( monitoring)? Please explain why or why not.

3. The next set of questions are about relationships and communication between the Forest Service and nonagency stakeholders.

3.a. Do you think relationships between (list primary nonagency stakeholders) and the Forest Service have changed as a result of their participation (nonagency stakeholder) in this SC project?

If yes, please explain what factors led to this change and give examples.

Probe: If they DON’T mention communication, ask: Specifically, has this project changed the way the Forest Service communicates with stakeholder X? Explain.

3bb. Overall, based on your experiences with stewardship contracting what things do you think contribute to the quality of the relationships between (stakeholder X, Y, Z) and the Forest Service either positively or negatively?

4. a. Has the involvement of nonagency stakeholders influenced the size/ scale of this project? Please explain.

b. Has the involvement of nonagency stakeholders influenced the complexity/scope of this project? Please explain.

5. What do you think is most challenging about non-agency stakeholder participation in the stewardship contracting projects? Please6explain…examples?

6. In your view, is/was (name specific SC project) a success? Explain why or why not.