Sustaining Pennsylvania's Private Forests concept paper

Dear Stakeholder,

Pennsylvania’s abundant forests are largely made up of privately owned forestland. The Bureau of Forestry has long recognized both the opportunities and challenges that private forest ownership provides for present and future citizens. Because of this, for the past fifty years the bureau provided technical assistance and educational programming to encourage private forest landowners to adopt sustainable forest management practices across the commonwealth. We are now taking a fresh look at our approach in order to increase the effectiveness of our work in the private forest context.

A decade ago, the Bureau of Forestry’s strategic plan clearly outlined the importance of the private forest resource to overall forest health and productivity within the Commonwealth. It also articulated the importance of sustaining the private forest resource to the Bureau’s overall mission, and outlined a general goal of more intentional and active leadership and involvement in private forest resource issues. Clearly, implementing a strategic planning process in which to institutionally formulate and develop objectives for our private forest programming was a necessary first step towards achieving this goal.

Considering this, it is my pleasure to share with you this concept paper entitled “Sustaining Pennsylvania’s Private Forests.” Generated from three stakeholder meetings this past winter, this paper represents our current understanding of the critical issues facing the private forest resource and critical roles for the Bureau to play within that context. I welcome your comments on the issues and understandings addressed in this paper as we continue to move our program planning forward. Thank you for the valuable contribution you have already made to this initiative, and I look forward to our continued work together on behalf of the sustainability of Pennsylvania’s private forest resources. Please direct comments to the Forest Resource Planning section.

Sincerely,

James R. Grace PhD
State Forester
Director, Bureau of Forestry

Sustaining Pennsylvania's Private Forests - Adobe PDF (105 Kb)