• Funding: It is critical to follow-through on projects that have been developed at the local level, especially with state/federal support.
• Local planning: watershed, fire/fuels, etc. need to be better integrated into local planning process (e.g., fuels reduction and fire response planning.
• Data and information: needs to be more
  • accessible,
  • understandable (i.e., use of metadata, indexing, etc.) and
  • affordable.
• Agency representation and public participation: should be closer in knowledge and style to the local groups they work with.

(Organized roughly in order of the key issues above)

• Use non-profits more for project planning and implementation. Features of using non-profits often are:
  • greater trust level with public
  • more fiscally effective in some cases
  • provide tax incentives for private contributions
  • less red tape in fiscal and personnel management
  • Financing conservation measures: make sure tax and fee structures create incentives, not disincentives, to change land use or make improvements for public benefits.
  • Encourage member agencies to work closely with local government in watershed planning processes.
  • Integrate fire and fuels planning with the county General Plan.
  • Improve land management agencies' understanding of local planning mandates, abilities and constraints.
  • Improve local planners' understanding of public agencies' mandates, abilities and constraints.
  • Work with counties and local planning agencies to acquire and develop baseline data at the appropriate scales (e.g., at the parcel level).
  • Put more information on line!
  • Assist rural areas in developing on line access.
  • Provide on-line access and training to local agency personnel. Some useful objectives would be to:
    • increase public agencies' abilities to provide timely and accurate information to local group processes; and
    • support non-agency participants in improving on-line information research skills.
  • Support cooperative clearinghouse functions to accumulate experiences, research, contacts, data, etc. (e.g., California Environmental Resources Evaluation System [CERES], California Rivers Assessment [CARA], and California Watershed Projects Inventory [CWPI]).
  • Ensure that publicly-funded data development remains in the public domain (i.e., DO NOT support development of proprietary data with public funding).
  • Support metadata training and development at the local level.
  • Train locally knowledgeable people in the "language" of data development (e.g., the Eel Swap program).
  • Create more situations where local landowners can address their interests.
  • Increase private sector buy-in by letting the private sector "drive" the process.
  • Encourage member agencies to focus more on demonstration projects that build trust in the process and provide examples for others.
  • Ensure continuity of agency participation; document the process to make it easier for a new agency representative to take over when transfers are necessary.
  • Try to ensure that agency representatives are:
    • knowledgeable about agency procedures, obligations and limits; and
    • empowered to make at least some decisions in the agency's behalf.
  • Provide paid staff, or the financial means to hire paid staff (at least part-time), to coordinate projects.
  • Place increasing emphasis on education programs (also related to completing successful demonstration projects).