Stronger Together: How Partnership Sustains Key Programs in the Rocky Mountain Region

Stronger Together

Photo by: James Tsui

Photo by: Chris Gubbels

As Regional Saw Program Manager, Brian helps coordinate saw training, evaluation, and certification throughout Region 2, which encompasses national forests and grasslands across Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. His work supports not only Forest Service employees but also partners, volunteers, and cooperators (such as Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado) who perform saw work within Region 2.

Within the U.S. Forest Service Saw Program, a cooperator is an approved organization that works under a formal agreement to provide training, evaluations, and/or certification programs in accordance with National Forest Service standards and requirements.

For the U.S. Forest Service, keeping trails and public lands accessible across millions of acres requires more than agency staff alone. It takes volunteers, nonprofit partners, cooperators, and skilled professionals working together to make sure the people doing that work have the training they need to do it safely.

That's especially important when chainsaws and crosscut saws are involved.

"The reality is, whether it's crosscut or chainsaw, this work is dangerous," said Brian.

Ensuring all of those sawyers have access to high-quality training presents a significant challenge. "We've learned over the years that there's only so much that our agency staff can handle in the world of saw training, evaluation, and certification," Brian explained. "We have limited staff capacity, especially during the summertime when wildland fire season hits, to meet the training needs not just for our own employees, but for our partners, cooperators, and volunteers."

Finding a Better Way Through Partnership

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) had previously used other approaches to supplement its internal training capacity, but the complex and highly specialized nature of saw training made finding the right model challenging.

The agency began looking for a partner closer to home in the Rocky Mountain region, one that understood the realities of fieldwork and had the administrative infrastructure to support regional saw trainers. That's where Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado (VOC) came in.

"VOC rose to the top," Brian said. "[VOC] has the infrastructure in place to meet that need and understands our program. We've had a close working relationship, not just through the saw program but with the trails program and beyond, for a number of years. It just seemed like a perfect fit."

Photo by: James Tsui

The partnership offered another significant benefit: cost. Through VOC, the U.S. Forest Service – Region 2 found it could support the program at roughly one-third of what it had been spending through its previous approach.

"The move to hosting our regional saw trainers at VOC made logistical sense, it made financial sense, and it strengthened our partnership," Brian said.

Those efficiencies extend to when trainings can be offered. While most USFS employees work during the traditional workweek, many volunteers and partner organizations need training opportunities on weekends. Providing those training courses exclusively through agency staff could require overtime and significant additional costs.

Working with VOC gives the program greater flexibility for people seeking certification while making better use of limited resources.

Photos by: James Tsui, James Tsui, Phil Demosthenes

Capacity and Consistency

The benefits go beyond dollars and logistics. By increasing training capacity, the partnership helps more people develop the skills they need to perform saw work safely. For Brian, maintaining high and consistent standards is particularly important regardless of whether someone works for the Forest Service or alongside it.

"We don't want the agency training to be at one level and the volunteer training at another," he said. "Through this partnership, I think we've achieved that, and now we just have really good, safe sawyers operating out there. It doesn't really matter what patch is on your sleeve."

That shared standard ultimately supports the work happening on the ground. Trained sawyers can help clear fallen trees, maintain trails, support wildfire response, and increase the collective capacity to care for public lands through stewardship projects.

"We're able to serve a lot more people through this partnership than we would if we were just trying to do it on the backs of our workforce that has dwindled in size over the past couple of years," Brian said.

Photo by: Phil Demosthenes

A Model Worth Replicating

The partnership is also attracting attention beyond the Rocky Mountain Region. Brian has shared the model with the National Saw Program and other regional Saw Program Managers, and he said there has been significant interest in whether similar partnerships could work elsewhere.

"This is pretty unique to Region 2," he said. "I'm learning that there’s an appetite for this. Given the changes to the agency over the last year and a half, it’s been more challenging to promote that kind of action, but it doesn’t change the fact that people see the value in this model."

Photos by: James Tsui

For other regions, the exact partnership may look different. But the larger lesson is one familiar to VOC: no single organization has to accomplish this work alone. "No individual organization, whether it's a federal agency or a nonprofit like VOC, can function alone," Brian said. "We all need help. Just like anything in life, we all need partnerships and relationships to optimize our success."

It's an approach that extends far beyond saw training. Land managers bring expertise and responsibility for public lands, and nonprofits like VOC can provide administrative capacity, volunteer engagement, training infrastructure, and flexibility.

Built on Relationships

For all the logistical and financial advantages of the partnership, Brian pointed to something less easily measured as one of the biggest reasons it works: trust. "Organization to organization, this has been successful, but that success rests on the personal relationships that we've built along the way," he said. Those relationships have developed over years of collaboration between VOC and the Forest Service. They have created the trust needed to try a different approach and, in this case, one that is helping both organizations use their resources more effectively while supporting safer stewardship across the region.

Photo by: Phil Demosthenes

"We want to protect our public lands. We want to open up access for the enjoyment of these lands," Brian said. "We line up so well that it just seemed like kind of a no-brainer partnership."

As the need to care for public lands continues, partnerships like this demonstrate what can happen when organizations look beyond traditional ways of working and find creative ways to share their strengths. For VOC and the U.S. Forest Service, that means making limited resources go further, maintaining high standards for safety, and helping ensure that the people doing critical work on the ground have access to the training they need.

It's a reminder that sustaining the programs that care for our public lands doesn't fall to any one organization. It takes all of us working together.