Immortalizing Trees: Q&A with Brian Kelley

July 9th, 2018|Tags: big trees, champion trees, champion trees national register, photography|

By Leah Rambadt, American Forests

“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a popular quote that, when true, is able to inspire awe in the viewer. It best describes the photographs Brian Kelley is beginning to compile for his Big Trees project.

Here at American Forests, part of our mission to improve the overall health of forests is explaining why trees and forests are important to our everyday lives, and to our future. But sometimes words aren’t enough.

That’s why we’re excited to partner with Brian in memorializing our nation’s champion trees, the oldest and biggest trees in America. By preserving the majesty of these champion trees on film and compiling them into an archive, he is able to capture the importance all trees and forests within a 4-by-5-inch frame.

I had the opportunity to ask Brian some questions to learn more about his reasons for partnering with American Forests on his Big Trees project. Keep reading to find out what Brian hopes to accomplish with this project, and why he’s just as excited as American Forests to be a part of it!

What inspired you to take on this project?

It was a combination of a couple of things, really. Over the last few years before this project, I was already interested in pursuing long term archival projects. I was doing New York Transit Authority and National Park maps… After I found out about the National Champion Tree program, and how there wasn’t a cohesive body of work or photographs that represented that archive, I saw that as an opportunity to make some sort of long term photo project. From there, I started learning about forests, learning about trees, and kind of going down that rabbit hole of environmental issues. I just became totally obsessed about the idea of trying to create something that could visually excite people, and gain interest in protecting and enhancing cultivation efforts with American Forests.

How has your photography work so far prepared you for this project?

I think it goes back with the archive work that I’ve been doing for the past six years, especially with the New York City Transit Authority. I just put out a book, and it basically showcases New York City Transit ephemera: random badges, patches, pamphlets, any coins, tokens… So I was already kind of preparing myself for the long term archive projects.

When I started this [project] up with National Champions, I was able to adapt to it pretty easily as far as how to organize it, how to come up with strategies; and then trying to create some kind of system on how to photograph all of these [trees] and how to make it cohesive. One thing I thought was, alright, if I shoot digital, and digital photography throughout the next ten years keeps getting better and better… I feel like you’re going see some discrepancies throughout the images. But with 4-by-5 photography, I saw that as just this “true photograph.” It was going to photograph [the tree] at its purest form, and the cohesiveness of the project would just be really, really tight.

What do you hope to gain as a photographer, and as a person, by undertaking this project? What are your overall goals for the project?

I don’t know if I want to gain anything other than the adventure side of it, which sounds real corny, but… I’m not looking to gain anything other than helping collect these trees and build an archive. The thing I hope to gain is an archive I can share and inspire. As far as me as a person, I think what I hope to gain are experiences and knowledge I can share.

The biggest goal of the archive is to be able to just show people that “this [the archive] exists.” One of the main goals of the archive is to build it and share it, because a lot of people don’t even know that half these species exist. I would say 80% of the species that are on the champion tree registry, the general public doesn’t even know they exist. I didn’t either, until I started getting into it all, learning about all of them and the importance they all play in our ecosystem of North America, or wherever. I guess also a big part is that people react to visuals, so being able to show really strong visuals of these trees to impress or inspire the people who might actually take the next step to learn more about the trees, I think that’s the first part. It’s almost like reverse psychology where, if you give someone a pamphlet about a tree, they’re probably not going to read it. But if you show someone a photo or a video of a tree, then they might be interested in learning more about that tree, and that’s when they might pick up that pamphlet.

Other than the van, what are you doing to prepare for this project?

Besides the van… Talking and working with American Forests, Padres and foresters all around the U.S. Talking with just normal people too, people in the cities or wherever… The more you can share an idea with people, the more they’re going to understand what you’re doing. And for me, being on the road… Trying to build some kind of network is important, I think. Just trying to share this project and let as many people that know [about it] or don’t know… To let them actually find out what the project is and the importance of it, and how they might be able to get in on it.

What message are you hoping people will get from your big tree photos?

I think inspiration… [To] inspire and educat[e]. I think those are the biggest things, and then from there stems a lot of other possibilities with the project. But I think, first and foremost, to inspire and educate is super important. If I was able to get into a school and share these images, and give a little backstory of what the project is and why trees are important, how to respect land ethic kind of ideas… You go into a middle school classroom or an early high school classroom when someone is trying to make the decision of whether they want to become a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer, and you give them the idea that, “Hey, you can go play in the woods all day and become a forester” or whatever, or an arborist… Just kind of letting people know that there’re these alternative [careers] out there… I think that’s kind of a cool idea, too.

Are you anticipating any kind of difficulties or challenges? If so, what are your plans for overcoming them?

I think a lot of it’s just going to come down to the amount of time that I have, and trying to figure out the best plan of attack [in order] to achieve as much as I can within this first year that I’ll be on the road. Not becoming overwhelmed by the amount of trees I have to photograph. Getting to locations and, maybe I can’t find the tree, or the GPS coordinates were off, or maybe the tree went down in a storm… Just being able to be prepared for those moments, because they do happen, and they already have happened. It’s not the most satisfying thing, but it also reassures that what you’re doing is actually important. When you go to a location and the tree is no longer there, that kind of makes you feel like you were too late, and makes you feel that maybe you’re going to get the next one before it disappears.

Why did you choose to collaborate with American Forests on this project? What do you hope to achieve with this collaboration?

Well, I first chose American Forests just because of… I mean they were the owner of the National Champion Tree program. They were the first ones who came up with it, and they hold the official registry of all the champion trees in the U.S. so my first idea was to just try to reach out to them. And then, upon doing that, and meeting some of the other people over there, finding out about its history… [American Forests has] just got such great history and it’s still around, so I think it’s really special to actually try to be part of it and contribute in any way that I can.

Is there anything else you think people should know about the project?

Hit up myself, or hit American Forests up if you want to try to become part of the project in any way that you would like to, whether it’s donating, or whether you have locations, or if you have a tree… Or even if you have a spare room that I can sleep at while I’m on the road.

The post Immortalizing Trees: Q&A with Brian Kelley appeared first on American Forests.

Jad Daley named President & CEO of American Forests

.fusion-fullwidth-1 {
padding-left: px !important;
padding-right: px !important;
}

Washington, D.C. (July 9, 2018) — Chairman of American Forests’ Board of Directors, Bruce Lisman, announced that Jad Daley has been named President and CEO of American Forests, the 40^th head of the nation’s first nonprofit conservation organization, founded in 1875.

“For decades American Forests has embraced the principle of ‘right tree, right place,’” said Lisman. “Jad is the embodiment of ‘right leader, right place’ for American Forests. Under his leadership, the organization will help leverage our forests to address the monumental challenges of our future, like slowing climate change and creating greener and more equitable cities.”

Daley has been Vice President of Conservation Programs at American Forests for a year. In that time, Daley has reshaped the organization’s programs to more directly address issues such as climate change and social equity, and has helped advance the organization’s recent policy victories on Capitol Hill such as enactment of the long-awaited “Fire Funding Fix” to the U.S. Forest Service budget.

Daley has nearly two decades of experience leading diverse forest sector coalitions and partnerships. This includes ten years leading the Forest-Climate Working Group, which he co-founded in 2007, and serving as the founding director for the Eastern Forest Partnership.

“Jad has been one of the most effective and consequential advocates for the management, conservation and restoration of forests in the United States over the last decade,” said Robert Bonnie, Rubenstein Fellow, Duke University and former Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment, US Department of Agriculture. “He has built bridges between environmentalists, the forest industry, conservation agencies and local communities. He is a great choice to lead American Forests forward.”

In his first year at American Forests, Daley secured major new grants for climate leadership and social equity from philanthropies such as the Doris Duke Foundation. The Doris Duke funding has enabled American Forests to establish a lasting partnership as technical advisor to the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 16 states that is seeking to lead on climate action, including through forests.

This week, American Forests and the Forest-Climate Working Group will host an unprecedented “Learning Lab” in Washington, D.C. for teams from each of the 16 states in the Alliance to develop advanced strategies for capturing carbon emissions in forests, farms and other lands. Many of these states are expected to announce their plans at the Global Climate Action Summit to be held in San Francisco in September of this year, chaired by California Governor Jerry Brown and former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg.

“The American Forest Foundation is a longtime partner and admirer of American Forests, so we could not be more pleased to welcome Jad Daley as the next CEO,” said Tom Martin, President and CEO of the American Forest Foundation (AFF). “Jad is also a close partner of AFF and will bring great creativity and energy to American Forests. He is a thought leader in the interplay between forests and climate, as well as restoring forests across broad landscapes. Our nation’s forests are under incredible stress right now and we look forward to working with Jad and the American Forests team as partners in conservation.”

Daley’s previous position was with The Trust for Public Land, as Vice President for Program Development and holding the endowed Martha Wyckoff Fellow. In his nine years with the Trust, Daley created the organization’s climate change program, including groundbreaking efforts to create “Climate-Smart Cities” by integrating science, spatial planning, policy and on-the-ground implementation to help U.S. cities advance green infrastructure for carbon reductions, climate resilience, and more equitable protection for disadvantaged communities from the dangers of climate change.

Daley’s current leadership also reflects his long history with leading coalition efforts and developing federal policy. Daley was the founding director of the Eastern Forest Partnership, which he led from 2000 through 2008. Daley has also played a lead role in authoring multiple pieces of federal legislation for forests, including the enabling language for the U.S. Forest Service Community Forest Program and Community Wood Energy Program that were enacted as part of the 2008 Farm Bill.

Daley’s writing has been featured in media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, HuffPost, U.S. EPA Environmental Justice blog, GreenBiz.com, and the American Planning Association’s Recovery News blog.

Daley is a graduate of Peddie School, Brown University, and Vermont Law School where he earned an M.S.E.L. degree summa cum laude. He also has a long history as a competitive athlete, having represented the United States on four occasions in international duathlon competitions and twice earning top-150 finishes in the New York City Marathon.

###

ABOUT AMERICAN FORESTS

American Forests inspires and advances the conservation of forests, which are essential to life. We do this by protecting and restoring threatened forest ecosystems, promoting and expanding urban forests, and increasing understanding of the importance of forests. Founded in 1875, American Forests is the oldest national nonprofit conservation organization in the country and has served as a catalyst for many key milestones in the conservation movement, including the founding of the U.S. Forest Service, the national forest system and thousands of forest ecosystem restoration projects and public education efforts. Since 1990, American Forests has planted more than 50 million trees in all 50 states and nearly 50 countries, resulting in cleaner air and drinking water, restored habitat for wildlife and fish, and the removal of millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

MEDIA CONTACT

Lea Sloan | Vice President of Communications | 202.370.4509 (direct) | 202.330.3253 (mobile) | lsloan@americanforests.org

The post Jad Daley named President & CEO of American Forests appeared first on American Forests.

Forest Digest: July 8, 2018

July 8th, 2018|Tags: climate change, conservation, recreation, wildfire|0 Comments

.fusion-fullwidth-1 {
padding-left: px !important;
padding-right: px !important;
}

Check out what’s happened this past week in forestry news!

Climate Change Is Making It Harder to Revive Damaged Land – Mother Jones

Due to changing climate, reviving damaged land has become difficult. Conservationists are now planting for the future instead of restoring the past.

Global warming may be twice what climate models predict – Phys.org

According to new climate change prediction models, the rate of temperature increase may be double previous predictions. The new data shows the dramatic impact of rising temperatures.

The West is burning, and it’s barely July – Grist

This year, wildfires across the country have increased in size and severity. The chief cause of these wildfires are human carelessness and a warming climate.

Some of the world’s poorest people are bearing the costs of tropical forest conservation – Science Daily

Research in Madagascar shows that conservation restrictions are imposing a severe cost to poorer populations.

It’s Official – Spending Time Outside is Good For You – Environmental News Network

According to new research from the University of East Anglia, living close to nature and spending time outside have profound health benefits.

The post Forest Digest: July 8, 2018 appeared first on American Forests.

Model Independence Day

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all models are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creators with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are a DOI, Runability and Inclusion in the CMIP ensemble mean.

Well, not quite. But it is Independence Day in the US, and coincidentally there is a new discussion paper (Abramowitz et al) (direct link) posted on model independence just posted at Earth System Dynamics.

What does anyone mean by model independence? In the international coordinated efforts to assess climate model skill (such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project), multiple groups from around the world submit their model results from specified experiments to a joint archive. The basic idea is that if different models from different groups agree on a result, then that result is likely to be robust based on the (shared) fundamental understanding of the climate system despite the structural uncertainty in modeling the climate. But there are two very obvious ways in which this ideal is not met in practice.

First, if the models are actually the same, then it’s totally unsurprising that a result might be common between them. One of the two models would be redundant and add nothing to our knowledge of structural uncertainties.

Second, the models might well be totally independent in formulation, history and usage, but the two models share a common, but fallacious, assumption about the real world. Then a common result might reflect that shared error, and not reflect anything about the real world at all.

These two issues are also closely tied to the problem of model selection. Given an ensemble of models, that have varied levels of skill across any number of metrics, is there a subset or weighting of models that could be expected to give the most skillful predictions? And if so, how would you demonstrate that?

These problems have been considered (within the climate realm) since the beginnings of the “MIP” process in the 1990s, but they are (perhaps surprisingly) very tough to deal with.

Ensemble Skill

One of the most interesting things about the MIP ensembles is that the mean of all the models generally has higher skill than any individual model. This is illustrated in the graphic from Reichler and Kim, (2008). Each dot is a model, with the ensemble mean in black, and an RMS score (across a range of metrics) increasing left to right, so that the most skillful models or means are those furthest to the left.

But as Reto Knutti and colleagues have showed, the increase in skill of the ensemble mean doesn’t keep increasing as you add more models. After you’ve averaged 10 or 15 models, the skill no longer improves. This is not what you would expect if every model result was an unbiased independent estimate of the true climate. But since the models are neither unbiased, nor independent, the fact that there is any increase in skill after averaging is more surprising!

One Model, One Vote

The default approach to the ensemble (used almost uniformly in the IPCC reports for instance), is the notion of “model democracy”. Each model is weighted equally to all the others. While no-one thinks this is optimal, no-one has really been able to articulate a robust reasoning that would give a general method that’s better. Obviously, if two models are basically the same but have different names (which happened in CMIP5), such an ensemble would be wrongly (but only slightly) biased. But how different would two models need to be to be worthy of inclusion? What about models from a single modeling group that are just ‘variations on a theme’? They might provide a good test of a specific sensitivity, but would they be different ‘enough’ to warrant inclusion in the bigger ensemble?

Model selection has however been applied in hundreds of papers based on the CMIP5/CMIP3 ensemble. Generally speaking, authors have selected a metric that they feel is important for their topic, picked an arbitrary threshold for sufficient skill and produced a constrained projection based on a subset or weighted mean of the models. Almost invariably though, the constrained projection is very similar to the projection from the full ensemble. The key missing element is that people don’t often check to see whether the skill metric that is being used has any relationship to the quantity being predicted. If it is unrelated, then the sub-selection of models will very likely span the same range as the full ensemble.

The one case where model selection was used in AR5 was for the Arctic sea ice projections (based on Massonnet et al, 2012) where it is relatively easily demonstrated that the trends in sea ice are a function of how much sea ice you start with. This clarity has been surprisingly difficult to replicate in other studies though.

So what should we do? This topic was the subject of a workshop last year in Boulder, and the new ESD paper is a partial reflection of that discussion. There is a video presentation of some of these issues from Gab Abramowitz at the Aspen Global Change Institute that is worth viewing.

Unfortunately, we have not solved this problem, but maybe this paper and associated discussions can raise awareness of the issues.

In the meantime, a joint declaration of some sort is probably a little optimistic…

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united Modelling Groups of the World, in AGU Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the model ensemble for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these modeling Centers, solemnly publish and declare, That these disparate Models are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent Codes, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to NCAR, GFDL and Arakawa, and that all algorithmic connection between them and the Met Office of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Models, they have full Power to run Simulations, conclude Papers, contract Intercomparison Projects, establish Shared Protocols, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Models may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine PCMDI, we mutually pledge to each other our Working Lives, our Git Repositories, and our sacred H-Index.

References

T. Reichler, and J. Kim, “How Well Do Coupled Models Simulate Today’s Climate?”, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 89, pp. 303-312, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-89-3-303
F. Massonnet, T. Fichefet, H. Goosse, C.M. Bitz, G. Philippon-Berthier, M.M. Holland, and P. Barriat, “Constraining projections of summer Arctic sea ice”, The Cryosphere, vol. 6, pp. 1383-1394, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/tc-6-1383-2012

Introducing Brian Kelley, Champion Tree Archivist

July 2nd, 2018|Tags: big trees, champion trees, champion trees national register, photography|

By Leah Rambadt, American Forests

American Forests is proud to introduce Brian Kelley, our new Champion Tree Archivist!

Brian is a photographer from Brooklyn, N.Y., who made a name for himself as a commercial photographer for brands such as Adidas and Nike. He is also an archivist, a skill that led to his current project with American Forests.

His recent obsession with champion trees inspired him to create a visual archive for all of the champion trees across the U.S. With this goal in mind, Brian reached out to American Forests, the creator of the one and only national register of champion trees.

Credit: Brian Kelley | National Champion Honey Locust Tree, Hudson Valley, New York

American Forests’ National Big Tree Program was created to draw attention to the beauty and magnificence of the largest-known trees of many species, and crown them as National Champion trees. There are more than 700 of them, all of which are listed on the register.

While trees and forests are incredibly beautiful, and often times awe-inspiring, a champion tree is in a category of its own. We are excited to work with Brian, because though it may not be possible to get everyone out to see a champion tree, a photograph is the next best way to capture the immense presence and beauty of these trees, some of which are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

Credit: Brian Kelley | National Champion Blue Gum Eucalyptus Tree, California

For the National Champion Trees archive, Brian plans to photograph all of the champion trees listed on the registry using 4-by-5-inch photography. His photos will allow millions of people who may never get the chance to stand under these trees, to experience them. He estimates this project will take him the better part of a decade.

Credit: Brian Kelley | National Champion Green Buttonwood Key West, Florida

This July, Brian will start his journey in southern California. He’ll be traveling in a customized studio-van to locate champion trees with the help of American Forests, and in some cases, the tree hunter who nominated the tree.

Stay tuned to learn more about Brian and his goals for this ambitious project!

The post Introducing Brian Kelley, Champion Tree Archivist appeared first on American Forests.

Unforced Variations: July 2018

This month’s open thread for climate science related topics. The climate policy open thread is here.

Forced Responses: Jul 2018

Open thread for climate policy and responses.

Forest Digest: July 1, 2018

July 1st, 2018|Tags: climate change, floods|0 Comments

.fusion-fullwidth-1 {
padding-left: px !important;
padding-right: px !important;
}

Check out what’s happened this past week in forestry news!

Rising seas: ‘Florida is about to be wiped off the map’ – The Guardian

In a new book, Elizabeth Rush details how the U.S. coastline will be dramatically different in coming years.

Tropical Forest Loss Slowed in 2017—To the Second Worst Total Ever – National Geographic

2017 was the second worst year on record for tropical forest loss. The main cause for this is the world’s dependence on palm oil, cattle, soy and wood products. It is estimated that a tract of land the size of 40 football fields was lost every minute last year.

London’s trees may store as much carbon as a rainforest – Mother Nature Network

Research on London’s urban forests yielded pleasant results. The trees measured combined to absorb nearly 178 tons of carbon per hectare.

How to effectively design for a biodiverse, urban future – Green Biz

With the world’s population steadily on the rise, the need for more biodiversity in cities is increasingly important. By observing new strategies, this becomes easier.

The post Forest Digest: July 1, 2018 appeared first on American Forests.

Natural Phenomena in the U.S.

June 26th, 2018|Tags: science|0 Comments

By Dorothy Hastings, American Forests

If you are anything like me, you often dream of traveling the world, traversing all seven continents and experiencing their great natural wonders. From its driest deserts to its iciest slopes, our world has so much beauty you could spend your whole lifetime exploring. However, some of the planet’s greatest natural phenomena are right here in the U.S., and you may not even know it.

Sea Sparkle

Credit: Kevin Baird

Along the coasts of the U.S., these bioluminescent organisms known as Noctiluca scintillans light up the sand and waves with their eerie glow. As you step or jump into the wet sand where the waves crash, tiny blue or green lights begin to flash in your footprints. Harmful algal blooms (or red tides) caused by the presence of too many bioluminescent organisms can also produce neon blue waves. Although the electric-colored waves are breathtaking, harmful algal blooms can be dangerous to humans and wildlife, so we wouldn’t suggest going for a swim.

Fulgurites

Credit: yoyoj3d1/Flickr.

These rare, glass formations are as close as you can get to holding lightning in your hand. They are created when lightning strikes the ground melting the sand on impact, and as the sand rapidly cools it solidifies into a rough lightning-shaped tube with a glassy inside. Fulgurites can also form on the surface of rocks and can be found in the deserts and mountain ranges of the western and southwestern U.S.

Light Pillars

Credit: Bryce Bradford

If you are venturing around the northern U.S. on a cold winter night, you may think you are about to be abducted by a UFO when you see this weather phenomena. Light pillars are usually found closer to the Arctic Circle, but have recently been spotted in the Lower 48. They look like lights stretching down from the sky and are formed when ice crystals in the air reflect surrounding light sources. They can even reflect a rising or setting sun, giving them a warm tinted glow. When they occur with the Northern Lights, they reflect its hypnotizing colors across the sky.

Synchronous Fireflies

Credit: Ryan Atkins

There is only one species in the U.S. who can match their flash sequences with each other, and the best place in the western hemisphere to witness it in all its glory is at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. Nineteen different species of firefly live in the park, and each have unique flashing patterns. Photinus carolinus is the species of synchronous firefly found in the eastern U.S., and they put on their show during the height of their mating season in late-spring. In the Smokies, these synchronous fireflies exist in heavy numbers and their shows are more impressive and climactic than in areas with notable light pollution.

Fly Geyser, Nevada

Credit: Ken Lund

Geysers are definitely some of the natural wonders of the U.S., with Yellowstone National Park containing around 500 geysers, spurting out boiling water at different heights, angles, shapes and speeds. However, Yellowstone isn’t the only place with these magnificent fountains. Although some may not classify Fly Geyser in Nevada as being a completely natural phenomena, nature has turned Fly Geyser into one of the most beautiful geysers in the world. Located in Fly Ranch in the Black Rock Desert, this geyser was accidentally created after an energy company drilled a well and then abandoned it as the boiling water underneath it was not suitable for their purposes. Overtime, mounds formed and a combination of minerals and algae from the water spewing out have turned the geyser into a surreal rainbow color. The geyser is about 5 feet tall and 12 feet wide, and is located on land owned by Burning Man Project, which has recently opened it up for public tours.

Rock Formations

Delicate Arch Trail, Moab, United States

They may be easy to overlook, but the rocks, boulders, and canyons all across the U.S. are awe-inspiring. Arches National Park in Utah is a rock paradise, with over 2,000 arches and a host of other geological wonders. These perfectly balanced arches formed millions of years ago and will continue to change with erosion. They form immense bridges, windows, sandstone walls and statues reflecting the orange and red glow of the sun. Keahiakawelo, or the “Garden of the Gods,” just outside Lanai City, Hawaiʻi, is another geologist’s dream; a red dirt desert strewn about with boulders and rock towers from centuries of erosion.

Ice Waterfalls

In the winter, many of the America’s spectacular flowing waterfalls freeze over and become towering ice statues and caves. There are plenty to behold across the northern U.S., and every winter thousands of ice climbers risk their lives to get to the top of these frozen falls.

The post Natural Phenomena in the U.S. appeared first on American Forests.

A Glance at the Forest Policy Landscape

June 25th, 2018|Tags: forest policy|0 Comments

.fusion-fullwidth-1 {
padding-left: px !important;
padding-right: px !important;
}

By Andrew Bell, American Forests

Summer has finally arrived after a long, cold winter, and many of us are chomping at the bit to get back outdoors. Whether it’s the next great hike or a simple walk in the woods, we’re dreaming of where we’ll take our backpacks next. Yet this season of outdoor activity is accompanied by one of political turmoil, casting shadows over the public lands and wildlife that we cherish so greatly.

In light of the complication surrounding issues of this nature, here is Part 1 of what we deem to be a “forest policy primer.” While it certainly isn’t an exhaustive analysis of the forest policy landscape, hopefully this insight will inspire and prepare you to join American Forests in fighting for our nation’s forests!

Let’s start with a simple summary of stakeholders in the forest policy landscape, which can be separated into two categories: congressional policymakers and organizational advocates.

Stakeholder Category I: Policymakers

You can quickly find the biggest names of congressional policymakers associated with environmental legislation by looking into these House and Senate committees:

House of Representatives:

Senate:

U.S. Capitol building, where the House and Senate committees discuss various policies.

To stay apprised of key legislative developments, keep an eye on the scheduled hearings of these committees and their corresponding subcommittees. It’s also a great way to find strategic targets for letters of concern or encouragement.

Stakeholder Category II: Advocates

These non-profit and private advocates play an integral role in shaping forest policy by offering topical expertise to lawmakers and organizing grassroots campaigns to influence their votes. Below are a few of the most prominent conservation organizations in the country, and even the world. Their work helps to protect, conserve and restore the forests that we love.

U.S. Conservation Organizations:

This list barely scratches the surface. Explore these organizations and others to find out what they’re fighting for and how you can help.

Land Use and Ownership

The ownership and use of our nation’s forests are managed by several government agencies. Each possesses a specific expertise or jurisdiction and delegates a variety of purposes for the land it manages.

Land Ownership Agencies:

Bureau of Land Management

According to the Bureau, they manage one-tenth of the nation’s land and nearly a third of its mineral sources.

U.S. Forest Service (USFS)

The USFS is the most forest-centric agency in its land-management mission. Credit: U.S. Forest Service

The USFS conserves and restores forests, ensures clean water supplies, fights wildfires, studies soil content and much more. It also engages private landowners, both rural and urban, in achieving goals that are beneficial for the planet and everything in it.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)

By protecting fish, migratory birds and their habitats as a whole, the USFWS plays an important role in forest conservation, including a 150-million-acre system of 560 national wildlife refuges and thousands more small wetlands.

National Park Service (NPS)

The premier name in outdoor recreation, the National Park Service owns many of the nation’s most treasured landmarks. From Yellowstone and Yosemite to Zion and the Grand Canyon, the NPS endears 275 million visitors to recreational heaven each year. Protecting these lands while teaching visitors young and old how to respect them is a tall task, and consistent government funding is vital to accomplishing it.

Department of Defense (DoD)

While the DoD is seldom associated with land management, it is responsible for the 30 million acres of land that houses thousands of military installations. While natural resource conservation activities are largely for the benefit of the military and its training purposes, the Department still aims to preserve the ecological integrity of the environment encompassing any installation.

In conjunction with the agencies listed, state, local and private landowners are all working together to preserve forests and their ecological integrity, not just for their own benefit, but for the benefit of everyone.

The post A Glance at the Forest Policy Landscape appeared first on American Forests.