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Challenges · Solutions · Projects The Forest Guild's Northeast Region includes the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. The Guild's Northeast program promotes excellent forestry with the region’s extensive private forestland base as well as with state and federal public landowners. We develop future forestry leaders and support our current membership through field training programs, community forestry development, and advocacy for supportive forestry policies at the state, regional, and national levels.
| | Major Challenges in the Northeast - Forestry practices vary amongst the thousands of private landowners for whom there is a need to demonstrate and define excellent forestry.
- Forestland conversion to development is a threat across the region, putting at risk the future of forestry and the public benefits provided by forests.
- Climate change threatens the health and productivity of the forest and challenges us to identify appropriate uses of the forest for bioenergy and carbon sequestration.
- The turnover of the industrial forest base and the increase in working forest conservation easements provide opportunities to promote and secure excellent forestry.
Meeting the Challenges: Practicing and Promoting Excellent Forestry ^ - Community Forestry
The Forest Guild works in rural forest-dependent communities to reestablish the historic connections between citizens and surrounding forests. We emphasize the connections between the forests and sustainable, self-sufficient local economies by focusing on the role of wood energy in local energy production. We promote the increase in community wealth and quality of life when community forests, public forests, and private forests are used sustainably, efficiently, locally, and fairly.
- Ecological Forestry and Model Forests
The Guild’s Northeast Region features seven Model Forests for demonstrating excellent forestry to private, public, and non-profit landowners. We conduct public field tours and help landowners locate Forest Guild members to manage their forests. The Ecological Forestry Resource Center also provides guides to excellent forestry in some Northeastern forest types.
- Working Forest Conservation Easements
Our 2006 publication, Ensuring Sustainable Forestry through Working Forest Conservation Easements in the Northeast, offers an eleven-level evaluation system to guide landowners and non-profits developing conservation easements. Experienced Guild foresters are available through Find-A-Forester to help with this process.
- Climate Change
Our Northeast forests are facing changes from warming temperatures and increased disturbance events. Our 2007 publication, Climate Change, Carbon, and the Forests of the Northeast, outlines forestry techniques that keep forests healthy by making them more resilient, resistant, and adaptable. It also identifies those techniques that can best sequester carbon while also maintaining other forest values.
Northeast Region Projects ^
- Vermont Town Forest Project
Guild foresters and staff work in rural Vermont towns to bring excellent forestry to community owned town forests and to create new ones. As part of this project, we celebrate the people who work in the woods and the historic and present connections to the land.
- Community Wood Energy Projects: Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine
The Forest Guild is working with partners in Bristol, Vermont, and the Mahoosuc Region of Maine and New Hampshire to provide sustainable, efficient, local, and fair wood energy to schools and other municipal and private institutions. This project builds on the local forestry expertise of our members and the productive capacity of local family landowners to provide community energy services.
- Northern Forest Biomass Energy Initiative
The Forest Guild serves on the steering committee for this regional effort to set policy for the expanding wood energy market. The final recommendations were released in 2007 and include a set of principles for efficient, sustainable, and appropriately scaled wood energy production. We are now working with our partners to encourage state governments to implement these policies.
- Forestry and Climate Change Learning and Action Working Group
The Guild is a partner and member of the steering committee for this regional and national effort to develop and influence national legislation to combat climate change. The goal is to ensure that policies reflect the major role that forests can play in climate change adaptation and mitigation.
- Establishing Appropriate Forestry Offsets in the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
The Forest Guild is using its 2007 report on carbon and forestry and also working with an initiative led by the state of Maine to investigate how forest management and forest protection projects can offset greenhouse gas emissions. This information will be used in the upcoming Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional carbon cap and trade system know as RGGI.
- Defining Sustainable Biomass Harvesting Guidelines
The Forest Guild is working with the University of Maine and other stakeholders to establish a model set of state-based guidelines for forest biomass harvesting.
- Training Northeast Foresters in Excellent Forestry
Our regional outreach effort conducts field tours and indoor training sessions for Guild and non Guild foresters and associated resource managers. These state based field tours are thematically connected to our regional workshops and conferences.
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