Eric Tonn

Eric Tonn serves as a key procurement lead within the Stewardship Contracting Branch of the U.S. Forest Service, managing complex, landscape-scale stewardship contracts designed to advance ecological restoration and wildfire risk reduction. His role centers on executing integrated forest management acquisitions that align timber harvesting with watershed protection, habitat improvement, and infrastructure maintenance. Tonn specializes in performance-based contracting under the Stewardship Contracting Authority, ensuring projects deliver measurable ecological outcomes while maintaining compliance with federal environmental and procurement regulations. He routinely handles multi-year, task-order-based agreements that require coordination across multiple disciplines and stakeholders. Tonn maintains consistent working relationships with a core group of specialized contractors including BRINK BROTHERS INC., PEAK ENGINEERING LLC, MILLER TIMBER SERVICES, INC., AZ HAMMER DOWN, LLC, and DENNIS KIRBY. These vendors are selected for their proven expertise in ecological restoration, forest thinning, fuel reduction, and forest road maintenance. His contracting approach emphasizes long-term partnerships with firms possessing technical capacity in silvicultural operations and environmental compliance, fostering reliability and performance consistency across multi-year project cycles. Tonn’s procurement portfolio reflects a strong preference for open competition, with 100% of awards issued under no set-aside status. While he does not prioritize socioeconomic set-asides such as 8(a), HUBZone, or SDVOSB programs, his approach ensures full and open competition to secure the highest technical capability and operational readiness required for complex forest stewardship tasks. This strategy prioritizes mission effectiveness over socioeconomic categorization, aligning with the branch’s focus on large-scale ecological outcomes. The branch’s acquisitions are exclusively focused on NAICS 115310—Support Activities for Forestry—encompassing forest thinning, prescribed burning, debris removal, erosion control, and forest road rehabilitation. Tonn’s expertise lies in procuring services that integrate ecological science with field operations, ensuring contracts deliver tangible improvements in forest health and resilience across national forest landscapes.