Exemplary Forestry

Exemplary Forestry is a forest management approach created by New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) that prioritizes forests’ long-term health and outlines the highest standards of sustainability currently available to the region’s forest owners for three key goals: enhancing the role forests can play to mitigate climate change, improving wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and growing and harvesting more sustainably produced wood. Visit our Exemplary Forestry webpage for more information.

The Standards and Metrics for Central and Transition Exemplary Forestry

In winter 2021, NEFF released the standards and metrics for Central and Transition Hardwoods Exemplary Forestry. Get a feel for the technical details of how Exemplary Forestry should be implemented in much of southern New England, and read landscape-specific standards and metrics that show the practice’s impact. The overview is one page in length and is accompanied by an additional page of citations.

Exemplary Forestry for Central and Transition Hardwoods

This document provides an in-depth look at Exemplary Forestry practices for New England’s Central and Transition Hardwood Forests, as well as supplemental materials include Best Management Practices on topics like protecting soils, a summary of the process NEFF uses to evaluate an individual forest parcel’s habitat potential in the context of its landscape, and an analysis of how the standards will be implemented to address the challenges presented by climate change. Click here to download.