Whole Systems

Collaboration

Goal Setting

FUNDING MANAGEMENT AND RESTORATION

Regional Context

Monitoring and Adapting

Optimism for the Future

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The SNEP strategies focus primarily on technical or planning aspects of management and restoration. Generally they do not attempt to specify cost or funding source. The fire and ALSE strategies propose some harvest of timber and biomass. These activities will produce income but may not cover the full cost of the strategies. None of the strategies are likely to succeed unless they look beyond nearby commodity outputs to identify the full range of beneficiaries of their actions and to devise mechanisms to recover a portion of that benefit. For instance, for those activities in the fire strategy that seek to reduce the likelihood of large, severe wildfire, specific beneficiaries that should be included are local property owners, distant metropolitan water consumers, regional air-quality boards, fire-control agencies, and national disaster relief agencies, among others. Successful projects depend on equitable allocation of costs to appropriate beneficiaries and use of appropriate mechanisms to recover those costs.
Arrangements for funding and cost recovery associated with implementation of the strategies will require innovative approaches that might include establishing fees or markets or allocating rights to be traded. Enabling these mechanisms may require legislative involvement even while retaining local flexibility. Equally, legislative proposals to permit local or regional cost allocation and recovery should provide opportunities for site-specific experimentation and further modification as these arrangements mature or as the local and regional conditions and objectives change.

REGIONAL CONTEXT

Translation of SNEP strategies into actual policy may proceed more easily through development of regional policies for the different regions of the Sierra. These regions differ in population levels, density, and growth, and in the manner in which they incorporate costs of resource use and environmental risk, governmental coordination, and activism. The pattern of employment, commodity production, and services directly dependent on the Sierra Nevada ecosystem varies greatly across the range; economic linkages clearly define distinct regions within the Sierra. SNEP strategies emphasize different issues in different regions. For instance, the air-quality strategy is important in the southern Sierra, the fire strategy emphasizes the west-central Sierra, and the grazing strategy focuses on the Modoc country and eastern rangelands. Consequently, agencies and other institutions that are critical to the resolution of ecosystem management problems in one region may be much less important in others. Similarly, funding arrangements are likely to vary significantly from region to region. It is, therefore, unlikely that a single model or policy would apply equally well across all regions, except perhaps one that encouraged widespread institutional innovation toward ecosystem stewardship.