ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, federal agencies, natural resource-dependent communities and many environmental groups in the western US have sought out more collaborative, participatory and community-based forms of forestry. This approach to forestry calls for a devolution in resource management as decision-making moves from the strict purview of the federal government to include local-level communities and other groups concerned about the management of public lands. The underlying assumption is that people who depend upon forests for a livelihood have both an inherent interest in, and are key to, the sustainable management of our natural resources. However, not all groups are readily recognized as legitimate stakeholders in community forestry collaborations (McLain and Jones, 1997; Baker and Kusel, 2003). Immigrant and minority forest workers, in particular, have largely been excluded from decision-making about natural resources (Brown, 2000).
