Henry's Fork Watershed Council

Location:

Eastern Idaho and western Wyoming, on the Henry's Fork of the Snake River

Case description (read more)

The Henry's Fork Watershed Council (the Council) coordinates an innovative effort to address land management issues, coordinate research, and help develop natural resource policy in the Henry's Fork Basin. The Council is a diverse collection of scientists, federal, state and local agencies and concerned nonprofit organizations who have entered into an unconventional consensus-building process that enables formerly adversarial groups to work productively together.

What is fostering progress? (read more)

• Willingness to Try Something New: The participants believed that they had tried every other approach to peaceful coexistence and resource allocation; none had accomplished positive results, they were willing to try a different approach.
• Credible Facilitation: Two individuals from "opposite camps" volunteered to co-facilitate the process and received facilitation training.
• A Deliberate, Transparent Process for Funding Projects: Using a collaborative process, the Council instituted an explicit project evaluation process to be used when determining whether or not the Council would endorse and/or fund a project.
• Effective Process: The Council conducts regular, well organized meetings and communicates openly and often with all participants.

What challenges were faced and how were they overcome?

• A History of Conflict: Historically poor relationships among the environmentalists, agricultural interests, and agencies were overcome by designing the Council as a forum for discussion rather than as a formal planning body.
• Comfort with the Collaborative Process: Each meeting opens with a time for silence and then for people to speak what is on "in their hearts and minds" without rebuttal from others. Some participants and observers of the Council are uncomfortable with this process as an element of the regular meeting agenda.  Each meeting still draws a large number of participants and the coordinators believe that this agenda item has served to strengthen personal relationships in the Watershed.
• Staff Transitions: When one of the original coordinators left the Henry's Fork Foundation, another staff members who had experience in the Council was prepared to take her position, which smoothed the transition and allowed the Council to proceed without a pause in its regular schedule.

What lessons can be drawn?

• Start with Discussions, Not Decision Making: If relationships between the parties are poor, consider creating a forum for discussion and relationship building rather than a formal planning organization - at least until some trust has been established.
• Use Transparent Criteria for Making Choices: Establish clear criteria for endorsing projects; criteria that takes a cross-section of interests into account.
• Use Training: If members of the collaboration facilitate meetings, consider training the facilitators in facilitation and collaborative process.
• Expand Involvement: Involve the community as much as possible by creating a place for "citizen participants" -people who do not have a formal role in management of the ecosystem but are interested because it is in their community.

Learn more about related lessons from a broader set of partnerships

• Why developing a vision or common mission statement may be needed to get a project off the ground
• How projects can be sustained over time

Related Links

• Henry's Fork Foundation homepage
• US Department of Energy Smart Communities Network write-up of Henry's Fork
• Forest Service article, "Partnerships are Saving the Native Cutthroat Trout"
• "Founders of a New Northwest" Henry's Fork write-up, 1997
• Outdoor Idaho "On the Henry's Fork" trout fishing information and Idaho Public Television show transcript

This site was developed by the Ecosystem Management Initiative through a partnership with the US Forest Service and the US Department of Interior. Read more.