By Bob Perschel, Executive Director of New England Forestry Foundation
I have to admit that when I got a call saying Prince Charles was interested in what the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) was doing on Exemplary Forestry, I thought it might be a marketing hoax. I passed the message along to NEFF’s communications team, and they quickly assured me it was the real deal. That’s when I began to get excited.
It turned out Prince Charles was planning to launch a new web video platform called RE:TV on September 21, the opening day of the 2020 NYC Climate Week; the platform would showcase inspiring stories of sustainability innovation and ingenuity that point the way to a more sustainable future, all in support of Prince Charles’ global Sustainable Markets Initiative. His team’s researchers had discovered NEFF’s success at setting Exemplary Forestry standards that maximize forests’ ability to mitigate climate change, and they wanted to devote a RE:TV featured video to NEFF.
We sprang into action and set up two socially distant video shoots at our Prouty Woods headquarters in Massachusetts and at our Chamberlain Reynolds Memorial Forest on Squam Lake in New Hampshire. We filmed for two days, and the final version of the video sugared off to about five minutes in length and was ready to go in time for the launch.
Here it is for your viewing enjoyment (it’s also available at re-tv.org/rebalance/restoring-woodlands):
We are really happy with the way this beautiful video turned out. With support and assistance from our community and partner organizations across New England, NEFF has blazed the trail on finding ways for forests to help battle climate change. We are beginning to receive some global attention and that’s perfect, because now is the time for little New England to set some global examples for the world to follow.
While our Exemplary Forestry practices are specific to certain New England forest types, their underlying framework—high-standards sustainable forestry that prioritizes ecosystem health while also maximizing forests’ ability to mitigate climate change and produce wood products—can be used worldwide as starting point that is then tailored to local forest types. We hope to someday see this concept adopted around the world, and Prince Charles’ RE:TV platform and global Sustainable Markets Initiative are a great first step in spreading the word.