Melanie Cota

Melanie Cota serves as a key procurement professional within the Stewardship Contracting Branch of the U.S. Forest Service, supporting the agency’s mission to advance landscape-scale ecological restoration through strategic contracting. She manages acquisitions aligned with sustainable forest management, overseeing contracts that integrate timber harvesting with watershed protection, wildfire risk reduction, and infrastructure maintenance. Her work centers on stewardship contracting instruments designed to deliver ecological outcomes while generating forest products, ensuring alignment with the Forest Service’s long-term resilience goals. She routinely handles complex, performance-based agreements that require multi-objective outcome metrics and collaborative planning with stakeholders. Cota 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 recognized for their technical expertise in forest restoration, mechanical thinning, fuel reduction, and silvicultural operations. Her contracting patterns reflect a preference for established, field-experienced firms with proven capabilities in executing ecologically informed forestry work across diverse terrains, often under multi-year, task-order arrangements that prioritize adaptive management and site-specific outcomes. Cota’s procurement portfolio exhibits no set-aside preferences, with 100% of awards issued under full and open competition. This reflects the branch’s operational emphasis on technical capability and proven performance over socioeconomic classifications, though small businesses remain eligible and competitive within the open market. Her approach prioritizes mission-critical expertise and operational readiness, ensuring that contract awards are driven by technical merit and demonstrated success in complex forest environments. Her primary procurement focus is on NAICS 115310—Support Activities for Forestry—encompassing services such as prescribed burning, brush management, road maintenance, and invasive species control. She specializes in acquiring field-based ecological restoration services that require specialized equipment, trained personnel, and compliance with environmental regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and forest plan standards.