| Public participation in natural resources has a long history of being legally mandated, with legislation in place since at least 1946. This process of participation however, has been painfully slow and has not been effective.; In response to past participation shortcomings, the Department of Forestry at Michigan State University, in conjunction with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the USDA Forest Service, undertook a project to address these shortcomings. The project had two components. The first was a series of workshops. The objectives of the workshops were to bring forestry professionals together with people who would be considered unengaged in natural resource issues, to find out what people want from urban and community forestry, to find out why people are not involved and finally, to find out how these people would like to be involved.; The second component was an evaluation of the workshops. The objectives of the evaluation were to find out if people thought a process using small group discussions was a good way for citizens and natural resource professionals to work together on decision-making issues and to determine the participants' views on the format for the workshops.; The overall goal of the project was to develop a model that forestry and other natural resource professionals can use to better work with citizens. This thesis describes the workshops and presents the results of the evaluation. |
