I work quite closely with one of my former students who is a community adviser. He's a DFO employee now and he connects with these local stewardship groups. A lot of them are running shoestring operations.
We closed down the Vedder River gravel removal, which was a nonsensical thing for flood protection by the City of Chilliwack this last summer. I probably spent two weeks analyzing the data. When we presented the data to the agencies, including DFO, they said we knew that stuff way better than they did. Eventually, it was so embarrassing they pulled it.
One of the things that stewardship groups can benefit from probably is some funding, but the other thing is going back and giving capacity to your own line staff, opening back up those offices. Those feet on the ground are really super important. They are the people I teach in my classes.
Support feet on the ground and they can interact with the local stewardship groups.