This issue of Many Voices...A Common Vision leads off with a look at the wide range of exciting activities taking place across the country in the wake of the Seventh American Forest Congress. Action seems to have heated up with the arrival of the cool autumn weather!
Since the June newsletter, organizers in Florida, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Washington have contacted the Forest Congress Information Center to report that they are planning to reconvene roundtables in their states. Other local activities that have occurred or been planned since the last newsletter include:
Among the Montanans who participated in the teleconference were twenty people who participated in the pre-Congress roundtable in Libby, Montana and who have continued to meet as the "Kootenai Forest Congress Follow Up Committee". The group is composed of people on several sides of the forest management debate who "had been at each other's throats" in the years prior to the Libby Roundtable, but who have learned to respect and work with one another to find common ground as a result of sticking with the Forest Congress process. In addition to convening a number of public meetings to discuss issues like fire management, the group examines timber sales on local National Forest lands, works through the issues specific to each sale to come to agreement within the group, then advises the Forest Service based on their agreement. The KFC Follow Up Committee has contacted the Secretary of Agriculture, the Montana delegation to the U.S. Congress, and the Forest Service to explain the goals of their group, state their frustration with continued "management by directive" from Washington, D.C., and express their hope that communities such as theirs will be empowered to work with agencies to affect the fate of the natural resources around them. For more information, contact Colleen Snyder at 406-293-8844.
As reported in the June newsletter, the Georgia Forest Resource Council (contact Bob Izlar, 770-416-7621) focuses on a specific issue at each of its meetings, reaches agreement as to its stand on the issue, and relays its position to relevant authorities. For example, at their August meeting, the Council discussed the proposed regulation of prescribed burning in the Atlanta area and decided to petition for an exemption to allow prescribed burns for forest management similar to an existing exemption for agriculture.
The Texas Committee on Forest Issues meets on a regular basis in an effort to resolve conflicts before they lead to litigation. "Nothing like this has been done before in Texas" says Paul Risk, a member of the group, who can be reached at 409-468-2492.
As reported in the June newsletter, the Yale Forest Forum, in cooperation with the Izaak Walton
League, held a meeting in July 1996 to discuss the use of stakeholder dialogues as a technique
for addressing specific forest policy and management issues. A number of topics for stakeholder
dialogues were considered, refined and put into priority categories. Dialogues which are
currently
being developed and the groups developing them include:
An addition to the many documents related to the Seventh American Forest Congress available
from the Forest Congress Information Center is a free, four page summary of the results of the
Seventh American Forest Congress. If you would like a copy of the summary, which originally
appeared in the April 1996 issue of the Society of American Foresters' newsletter The
Forestry Source, send a stamped, self-addressed envelop to the FCIC. Multiple copies of the
summary can be obtained by contacting the Information Center.
Two recent papers by William Bentley are also available from the Information Center:
Five national implementation committees have been established to carry the vision of the
Seventh
American Forest Congress forward in the topical areas of forest Communities, Education,
Management, Policy, and Research. The recent and planned activities of these committees is
summarized below.
The Communities Committee will hold its next meeting in Baltimore, Maryland
on November 14 - 17, 1996. The meeting will focus on the connections between urban forest
resources and community empowerment and development, and will give Committee members
the
opportunity to interact with local community organizers, neighborhood groups, and project
implementation teams. The group will learn about the grassroots activities of Baltimore's Parks
and People Foundation and the Revitalizing Baltimore project, which is a joint undertaking of the
U.S. Forest Service and local agencies. The meeting will include tours of local project sites, a
workshop on environmental justice, and discussion of how to better involve the full
Communities
Committee membership (currently about 170 people) in the work of the Committee. For more
information about the Baltimore meeting, contact Sandra Hill at 202-645-7075. More
information about the Communities Committee is available from Lynn Jungwirth at
916-628-4206
or on the Community
Committee's World Wide Web homepage.
The Education Committee will hold a strategy session on November 12 during
the upcoming national convention of the Society of American Foresters in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. The Committee is considering concentrating its efforts on two key activities to support
improvements in forest education in the U.S.--i.e., raising money for selected, existing, high
priority educational programs that deal with forest issues and supporting the further development
of one or more existing educational homepages on the World Wide Web. Contact Dennis
LeMaster at 317-494-3590 for more information.
A broad-based steering committee has been formed to determine the direction to be taken by the
Management Committee. The steering committee is considering what specific
on-the-ground management issues the Management Committee might constructively address,
what sort of assistance the Management Committee might be able to give to the other national
implementation committees, and which organization would be the most appropriate host of the
Committee. John Heissenbuttel of the American Forest and Paper Association is chairing the
steering committee and will report its findings at the December meeting of the executive board of
the Society of American Foresters, which is serving as the interim host organization of the
Management Committee. For more information, contact Bill Banzhaf at 301-897-8720.
The Policy Committee is moving ahead with its exploration of how best to carry
the Seventh American Forest Congress vision and principles into the U.S. forest policy arena.
Committee chair Perry Hagenstein has taken part in several meetings over the past few months
that have considered the National Forest Management Act and other forest policy issues. The
Pinchot Institute for Conservation, which is hosting the Policy Committee, is sponsoring a
conference on November 19 - 20, 1996 entitled "Evolving Toward Sustainable Forestry:
Assessing Change in U.S. Forestry Organizations" which will use the results of the Forest
Congress as a basis for some of the discussions. The Policy Committee anticipates the pace of
its
activities will pick up following the November elections. Contact Perry Hagenstein at
508-358-2261 for more information.
The Research Committee met in Portland, Oregon, in late September. The
meeting reaffirmed that the committee should be a mix of researchers and users of science-based
information. The committee began a diagnostic about what is working and what is not working
in
the nation's forest research system. Among the topics considered were the agenda for research,
the mechanisms for transferring research findings, funding levels and sources, and organizational
structures.
Another meeting took place in Washington, DC in October which brought federal, university,
industrial, and NGO research specialists together to discuss partnerships as a structural device to
improve the targeting of forest research, the quality of results, and the quantity of available
resources. The group also conducted a diagnostic of the total forest research system. The
meeting was cosponsored by the USDA Forest Service, the Cooperative State Research,
Education, and Extension Service, Pinchot Institute, and Yale Forest Forum.
The next Research Committee meeting is scheduled for early January 1997 in Savannah, GA.
Please contact Bill Bentley or Gary Dunning at the Forest Congress Information Center for
details.
The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development held its
North American Public Hearing on September 30 - October 2, 1996 in Winnipeg, Canada. The
Hearing provided a forum for forest stakeholders from Canada, Mexico, and the United States to
participate in an open policy dialogue on local and global forest issues. The purpose of the North
American Public Hearing and the four other planned regional hearings is to build an agreed-upon
agenda for reshaping policies to safeguard the sustainability of the world's forests in the coming
century. Contact Gary Dunning at the Forest Congress Information Center for more information
about the WCFSD North American Public Hearing.
The 8th National Urban Forest Conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia in
September 1997. The theme for the conference will be "Cities By Nature's Design". For more
information, contact American Forests at 202-667-3300 or refer to their homepage on the World
Wide Web at http://www.amfor.org.
The Forest Congress Legacy Committee has been formed and has begun its work as "Keeper of
the Vision" developed by the Seventh American Forest Congress. The eighteen member Legacy
Committee includes representatives of the national implementation committees, some members
of
the former Board of Directors of the Forest Congress, and individuals who participated in the
February 96 Forest Congress gathering in Washington, D.C. The group, which represents the
wide range of backgrounds and interests forest stakeholders bring to forest issues, will provide
oversight, coordination, monitoring, and evaluation to local and national Forest Congress
activities.
The members of the Legacy Committee are:
To learn more about the Legacy Committee, please contact the Forest Congress Information
Center at 205 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, phone 203-432-5117, fax 432-3809,
email: yff@yale.edu
Forest Congress Results Summary Available
National Implementation Committees Update
News Briefs
Legacy Committee Formed
Bill Banzhaf Executive Vice President, Society of American Foresters (MD)
Lynda Beam Tree Farmer, Savannah, GA
Jim Brown State Forester, Oregon Department of Forestry
Joan Comanor Deputy Chief for State & Private Forestry, USDA Forest Service
(DC)
Jane Difley President, Society for the Protection of New Hampshire
Forests
Jo Ellen Force Professor, University of Idaho Department of Forest
Resources
Sharon Haines Manager of Natural Resources, International Paper Company (GA)
Sandra Hill Chief of Trees & Landscape Division, Government of the District of
Columbia
Mack Hogans Senior Vice President--Corporate Affairs, Weyerhaeuser Company
(WA)
Tom Isle Papermaker, Potlatch Corporation (MN)
Lynn Jungwirth Director, Watershed Research & Training Center (CA)
Maria Rivera-Maulucci Teacher, New York City Public Schools
Marshall Pecore Forester, Menominee Tribe (WI)
Lou Romero Facilitator, DeLaPorte & Associates (NM)
Bryant Smith Community Forester, Baltimore Parks & People Foundation (MD)
Larry Tombaugh Dean, North Carolina State University College of Forest
Resources
Laurie Wayburn Executive Director, Pacific Forest Trust (CA)
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