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Committee highlights stewardship foresters' role and suggests qualitative follow-up to explain compliance results
Summary
Members urged that stewardship foresters be involved in landowner outreach and support for small owners, and proposed adding qualitative methods (interviews, surveys) post-pilot to understand causes behind compliance patterns; staff agreed to consider process-focused follow-up after the pilot.
Committee members emphasized that stewardship foresters are critical to successful compliance monitoring, particularly for small forest landowners who may lack the resources to project watershed conditions or interpret rule requirements. Adam noted the department gives stewardship foresters the opportunity to contact landowners on the program's behalf to avoid damaging trust.
Several members proposed qualitative follow-up (surveys or interviews) to answer the "why" question when pilots identify patterns of noncompliance or unexpected outcomes. Amanda said quantitative metrics alone may not reveal whether low compliance stems from guidance, supply-chain constraints for materials, or other factors affecting on-the-ground decisions. "We don't always get the why with just the quantitative components," she said, arguing a qualitative component helped explain results in a previous reforestation study.
Staff acknowledged the distinction between process analysis and outcome analysis and said the pilots will help identify what targeted qualitative questions would be useful. They flagged supply-chain constraints and training gaps as possible noncompliance drivers and said these points will be tracked in pilot observations.
