 As a first step, the Service secured the independent assistance and impartial expertise of the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (external link) to assess the feasibility of a collaborative approach to recovery planning using the structure of Regional Working Groups, and then if appropriate, design, convene, and facilitate a process aimed at reaching agreement on regional recovery action plans and achieving broad stakeholder support for a scientifically credible recovery plan. The assessment would help identify the challenges that would need to be addressed in designing and conducting an appropriate collaborative recovery planning process and determine whether there was interest among other agencies and stakeholders in participating in such a process. The assessment team presented preliminary findings to the Desert Tortoise Management Oversight Group (MOG) on August 15, 2006, and the assessment report (.8 MB PDF) was completed in September.
 In analyzing the findings from >100 interviews to determine whether key conditions exist for successful collaboration, the assessment team did find support for a collaborative process. However, the assessment team’s best professional judgment was that the Service should not proceed to establish regional working groups until and unless it is able to confirm the availability and commitment of adequate funding and staffing resources to support the proposed collaborative process. In addition, the assessment team reported significant uncertainty among stakeholders about the science underlying recovery efforts and recommended establishing a broadly accepted and scientifically credible base of information as the basis for developing recovery action plans, prior to convening regional working groups. The process proposed by the assessment team expanded the concept originally proposed by the Service and anticipated a draft revised recovery plan by March 2009.
Unfortunately, funding resources among agencies to commit to a fully collaborative process are unavailable in the short term. Also, since recovery of the desert tortoise will be a long-term process, the MOG determined that an expedited recovery plan revision was prudent. Therefore, the Service has initiated a modified approach to work directly with the MOG to complete a revised draft recovery plan by September 2007. This approach would necessarily limit broad-scale collaboration as described in the assessment report, but only in the short term. The Service does commit to immediately begin implementing recommendations in the assessment report in order to build stronger collaborative relationships for recovery implementation and future five-year reviews and recovery plan revisions.
|
