USDA Forest Service, Eastern Region

Special Programs

In addition to the traditional organizational structure, the Eastern Region has several special groups that cross functional and geographic boundaries. They are described below:

Urban Connections

In late 2000, the National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, and Forest Service Research in the East committed to jointly reach out to urban audiences. The result is a unique and newly formed “urban arm” of the Eastern Region, the Urban Connections program, which addresses the information needs and values of urban citizens. UC aims to increase the involvement of underrepresented urban groups in Forest Service activities, and through partnerships with national forests, other federal agencies, and state and local organizations, bridge gaps between rural communities and city dwellers.

Multicultural Team

The Region’s Multicultural Team represents protected groups established under the 1964 Civil Rights act as amended in 1972 and 1992, and advises the Regional Leadership Team on matters affecting the employment, training, and advancement of these groups in the workforce. Protected groups include women, Hispanics, African-Americans, American Indians, Asian-Americans, and persons with disabilities. The team consists of four special emphasis, collateral-duty positions: an African-American history coordinator; Hispanic coordinator; women’s program coordinator; and a persons with disabilities coordinator.

The team sponsors presentation focusing on different cultural perspectives, including traditional storytellers, conducts workshops on groups’ history and cultural contributions, and commemorates national observances, such as Black History Month. The team also provides civil rights training for managers, and advises personnel on affirmative employment and how to avoid Equal Employment Opportunity complaints. The team encourages employees to be proactive, and works to solve issues early on and outside the formal grievance process.

Labor/Management Partnerships

The Eastern Region currently has one Eastern Region joint partnership, and six active labor/management partnership committees (Chequamegon/Nicolet, Hiawatha, Huron-Mainstee, Ottawa, Shawnee, and Superior National Forests.) Each partnership, composed of equal numbers of management and labor representatives, meets quarterly, and is also on-call to address issues as they arise. The Regional Office employs one labor relations specialist.

After President Bush retracted President Clinton’s Executive Order mandating labor management partnerships, the Region’s partnerships agreed to maintain relationships built over the years and to continue operating in a collaborative manner. Through interest-based problem solving and facilitated negotiations, the partnerships resolve issues and concerns at the lowest organizational level possible, increase collaborative resolutions, and lessen third-party adversarial actions.

Currently, the Eastern Region has no outstanding labor relations actions or grievances. In the past year, the Region’s partnerships have won two major awards: the USDA Secretary’s Award for Labor Management Partnership, and the Society of Federal Labor Relations Labor Management Cooperation Award.

Human Resource Service Centers

In FY 1998, the Eastern and Southern Regions began a cooperative effort to improve human resource program delivery and efficiency. The result was establishing Human Resource Centers. The centers provide human resource management services in the Eastern Region, such as employment, classification, benefits, and payroll. Each center is staffed by 15 to 30 employees, and includes a director who reports to a board of supervisors. Currently, there are four centers:

The Northeastern HR Service Center, located in Newtown Square, PA, serves the Northeastern Research Station, Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry, the Allegheny, Monongahela, Green Mountain and Finger Lakes, and White Mountain;

The North Central HR Service Center, located in St. Paul, MN, serves the North Central Forest Experiment Station, and the Chippewa and Superior;

The Western Operations Center, located in Hot Springs, AR, serves the Mark Twain with five Southern Region forests in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas;

The Midwest HR Service Center, located in the Regional Office in Milwaukee, WI, serves the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, Shawnee, Wayne, Chequamegon-Nicolet, Ottawa, Hiawatha, Huron-Manistee, Hoosier, Blackwell Job Corps Conservation Center, Golconda JCCC, and the Eastern Region Regional Office.

Engineering Shared Technical Services

Engineering Shared Technical Services is a true “virtual organization” that shares specialized skills and expertise across the Eastern Region. Instead of operating from a central location, 19 shared service positions work throughout the Region, and are each administratively supervised by an individual forest supervisor. This allows each forest to receive all specialized technical skills without incurring the costs of funding an entire team.

The group of technical specialists—architects, landscape architects, engineers, and engineering technicians—performs many tasks such as recreation project design, landscape and soil projects, transportation system planning, and the construction and maintenance of facilities, dams, bridges, and other structures.

Eastern Safety and Health Enterprise Zone

Established in 1996, the Eastern Safety & Health Enterprise Zone (ESHEZ) implements and guides the development of Safety and Health (S&H) and Office of Workers Compensation (OWCP) programs for the Forest Service in the eastern United States. The Zone’s goals are to provide a safe and healthy workplace for employees, visitors, and cooperators, and to reduce accidents, injuries, property damage, and their related costs. In addition, ESHEZ offers program consultation, education, technical assistance, and customer service to FS units.

Comprised of six members from the Eastern and Southern Regions, ESHEZ assists units in meeting legal requirements in safety and health; reviews units and facilities; investigates accidents, injuries, and property damages; provides training; and develops communication materials and information resources, such as the S&H web site.

ESHEZ has been, and will continue to be, successful. Its long-term case load reduction program has saved OWCP an excess of $1,000,000 to date. The Zone’s FY 2002 Program of Work increases focus on communications, training, and OWCP program management; introduces the Integrated Safety Program; and institutes a database of accident, injury, and property damage reports.

Eastern Area Coordination Center

Located at Ft. Snelling in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Eastern Area Coordination Center (EACC) is the geographic area coordination center for the 20 northeastern states, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other cooperating agencies.

The EACC provides safe, cost effective, and timely coordination of area resources for wildland fire emergencies through communications and planning; monitoring area situations, coordinating projected agency needs; and expediting resource requests. EACC also provides logistical support for natural and human-caused disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, and for planned land management activities, such as prescribed fires.

Eastern Area Coordinating Group

The Eastern Area Coordinating Group (EACG) was established under the 1982 Joint Powers Agreement to implement interagency fire management direction in the Eastern Geographic Area; and to further interagency cooperation, communication, and coordination between the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Forest Service (Regional Office and Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry). The EACG is composed of the lead fire manager or designee from each of the organizations, as well as a representative from the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Compact, the Middle Atlantic Interstate Forest Fire Protection Compact, the Great Lakes Forest Fire Compact, and the Big Rivers Forest Fire Management Compact.

The EACG recommends a unified course of action and provides oversight in all aspects of wildland fire and incident management to geographic agency and organization administrators and the Eastern Area Coordination Center. In addition, the EACG functions as a communication link between local, state, tribal, and federal entities, and manages an Eastern Area Type I incident command team.

Tribal Relations Program

The Region’s Tribal Relations Program ensures that effective government-to-government relations are maintained and that Forest Service decision-makers address treaty rights and trust responsibilities as they manage national forest lands. National forests work with nearly 90 federally recognized tribes in the Eastern Region’s 20 states. Fifty-four of these tribes work with individual forests, while 34 work with multiple forests. Ten forests in the Region have ceded territory within their proclamation boundaries. Off-reservation treaty rights exist on more than 7.5 million acres (62%) of National Forest System land within the Region.

In 1999, the Region entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with 10 Indian tribes of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. This MOU established consistent standards by which the FS and the tribes recognize and implement tribal ceded territory rights guaranteed by the Treaties of 1836, 1837, and 1842. Affected lands are in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Since 1997, approximately 400 Regional employees have been trained in tribal relations, including cultural awareness and more technical topics. Several of the training sessions have been presented through partnerships with tribes.

USDA Forest Service - Eastern Region
Last modified: Tuesday, 16 September 2008 http://www.fs.fed.us/r9