Authored by Leena Visnak
Western Forest Legacy Program (FLP) partners gathered September 16-18, 2025, in Fort Collins, CO, for the 2025 Western Forest Legacy Training Summit.
This Summit, hosted by the Colorado State Forest Service with assistance from the Council of Western State Foresters (CWSF), brought together 36 attendees from 13 states, American Samoa, representatives from seven regions of the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service), and Forest Service Washington Office representatives. Partners in attendance included the American Samoa Department of Marine & Wildlife Resources and Neorr Consulting.
The Summit provided a valuable opportunity to examine challenges, share successes, build and strengthen relationships, and discuss ideas for expanding the document library of tools and training resources.
Over three days, attendees engaged in discussions, including developing ideas to improve outreach with partners and landowners, building a peer learning network by cultivating a robust document library, and scheduling monthly learning activities around collective learning questions. Additionally, participants worked on developing best practices both as individual states and across the Western region.
Day one opened with a welcome from Colorado State Forester Matt McCombs. McCombs underscored the importance of collaboration among FLP staff and went on to discuss how this group looks to the future while still prioritizing leaving things better than they found them.
A highlight of the Summit included a series of lightning round sessions, where states shared projects from across the western region. Examples included an American Samoa presentation on flying foxes, information on Wyoming fence law nuance, and Oregon’s virtual reality tour of a remote FLP property. These presentations encouraged conversations and helped to showcase the various ways states are working with landowners, land trusts, and partners under FLP.
On September 17, attendees ventured out for a field tour to check out the Ben Delatour Scout Ranch Forest Legacy Project, where the group explored the following topics:
- Developing conservation easements that support landowner interests and state FLP goals
- Building sustainable relationships between state staff and landowners
- Forest health treatments and fire at Nicol Lodge,
- Fuel breaks and forest management at the Cameron Peak Fire, and
- Riparian management at Elkhorn Creek.
Seeing these projects firsthand provided a powerful visual for the importance of fuels mitigation. The Cameron Peak fire, which stands as the largest wildfire in Colorado history, was stopped by the landowners' fuels treatments on the land. The symbiotic relationship between the landowner and the conservation easement state staff was a huge success story and served as inspiration for many in attendance.
The final day of the Summit included discussions on appraisal requirements and questions surrounding them, talks on the lifecycle of an FLP project, and, additionally, Summit participants dedicated time to identifying action items to support the continued improvement of FLP.
To learn more about the Forest Legacy Program, visit https://www.thewflc.org/partnerships/forest-legacy-program and https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/private-land/forest-legacy.
Photos: Leena Visnak and Aaron Lumley
