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• The CFLRP is generating collaborative benefits suggesting that this policy has been effective at facilitating collaboration. • The efficacy of the CFLRP is likely a result of a policy framework that affords stability and legitimacy while providing space for flexibility and adaptation at the local level.. • We found evidence of second-order outcomes under the CFLRP, such as increased pace and scale of restoration, the diffusion of practice beyond project boundaries, and leveraging of resources. • While the mandate to collaborate helped formalize collaboration on projects, ultimately, there needed to be a level of informal collaboration in-place before project selection. Collaborative governance and landscape approaches have become a more prevalent in public land management in the United States in the face of increasing ecological and societal complexity and decreasing government resources and capacity. In this era of devolution and social-ecological change, there is a growing need for policy approaches that facilitate partnerships and participatory approaches to land management. One unique policy that emphasizes collaboration and large-landscape restoration on US federal forestlands is the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), established in 2009 to accelerate the pace and scale of forest restoration. The policy included novel characteristics such as a decade-long commitment to landscapes and formal requirements for collaboration. This program presented an opportunity to assess how this policy affected collaboration and the factors that led to differential policy implementation. We conducted 89 interviews across all 23 CFLRP projects with internal agency staff and external collaborators on each project. We found that the CFLRP generated a variety of benefits related to collaboration, including increased trust and stronger relationships, increased collaborative partner influence, decreased litigation and conflict, and increased capacity to accomplish work; however, there were also challenges associated with the program, including thetime-intensive nature of collaboration and the lack of industry or contractors. Various local factors affected collaborative outcomes under the policy, including staff turnover and capacity, local leadership, and collaborative history. Successful collaborative outcomes were widespread under the CFLRP, and from this, we draw implications for the broader environmental governance literature about the policy characteristics that facilitate collaboration and the other institutional variables that may require attention in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]