The Lead Partnership Group.

When President Clinton concluded his 1993 Forest Summit with an appeal to replace fighting and litigation with collaboration, leaders from the highest levels of federal agencies to the tiniest small-town coffee klatches greeted his challenge with enthusiasm. Few, however, knew how to develop partnerships, much less make them succeed through time.

For a handful of groups working separately in isolated communities in northern California and southern Oregon, Clinton's call for cooperation was a herald. They sent representatives to a gathering at the base of Mr. Shasta to discuss the barriers they had faced and the strategies they had found successful in improving forest management in their own back yards. This consortium of 10 local groups became the Lead Partnership Group.

At first the Lead Partnership only wanted to offer federal agencies input on the collaborative process and show them how to involve rural communities in resource management decisions, But the local network has grown into a model for groups across the country working to resolve conflict. In the course of solving their own internal problems, the Lead Partnership members pioneered procedures that have helped break down roadblocks within other collaborative groups and between communities and federal land management agencies, particularly the U.S. Forest Service.

The Partnership's ability to anticipate emerging issues has thrust it into the heat of conflict. In 1995 the group hosted a roundtable in Blairsden, California to discuss local involvement in resource management, particularly on federal land. Their guests were well-known spokesmen of the nation's most prestigious environmental organizations and their most powerful rivals in the timber industry.

It was a tumultuous two days. The range and fervor of the arguments made it clear the forest management issues the roundtable raised struck a deep nerve. in establishing a dialogue between community and national groups, the Lead Partnership built bridges to groups that didn't even want bridges built to them, says Jonathan Kusel, Lead Partnership coordinator who does community forestry research from Taylorsville, California.

A focus of the Lead Partnership Group is all-party monitoring, assessing the condition of a watershed by drawing on the information and expertise of everyone - individual or organization, local or not. Partnership members are developing on-the-ground strategies to help agencies, industry, and community stewards understand the challenges.

As a voice for resolution amid a chorus of conflict, the Lead Partnership offers a process that is sometimes viewed as a target. "We absorb a lot of slings and arrows but our objective is always resolving conflict to improve the health of communities and the land," says Kusel.