NEFF Attends the Forest Congress: Passing Our Resolutions, and Day 4

Thursday was a very productive day at the Forest Congress, in terms of approving draft Principles, editing and refining draft Resolutions, and building consensus. NEFF staffers spent most of the day in the “Resolution Room,” hashing out details and ensuring that the final products were reflective of NEFF’s core principles and priorities.

In a surprising development, following a very passionate discussion about whether even mentioning the term climate change would be too divisive, a Principle affirming the importance of considering climate change in forest management passed with overwhelming support.

Among NEFF’s successes on Thursday:

• NEFF Senior Forester Brian Milakovsky proposed and led a new dialog session to introduce and discuss NEFF’s proposed resolution on addressing invasive pests and disease. Through this process, the resolution was expanded to include native pests in order to address concerns from stakeholders around the country about how some native insects are posing new and expanded threats due to climate change.
• Our proposed resolution on climate was combined with several other proposals to create a powerful and comprehensive vision of how climate concerns should be integrated into all aspects of forest management, which passed with more than 90 percent approval.
• Our resolution on improved communications (see below) was moved forward for a vote by the full Forest Congress with only minor edits.

Friday morning, several of us from NEFF came back for an emergency 7:30 a.m. session to finish up the work of vetting the proposed resolutions. Through that process, we succeeded in moving NEFF’s remaining two resolutions on forest pests and communications through to a vote by the full Congress.

Now I’d like to share some background on the communications resolution and why it’s needed.

NEFF is known for its work managing and protecting forests. But working with people is a big part of what we do too. Forests provide a wide range of benefits for people, and people are essential to maintaining and stewarding forests into the future.

We believe it’s important for the public to understand the importance of active forest management for maintaining healthy forests and allowing forests to play an optimal role in addressing climate change. Public support is essential to enable the evidence-based management that’s needed on our public lands and to create public policy to support private landowners in maintaining and managing their forest lands that provide so many benefits to society at large.

Foresters are not always great at explaining what we do. There’s a joke often heard at professional meetings: “We didn’t become foresters because we like talking to people.” But we need to do better. We need to listen, understand public concerns about forest management, and better explain what we do in the forest and why.

At the Ninth American Forest Congress this week, NEFF introduced a resolution aimed at building momentum to do just that. We are proud to share that our resolution was passed by the Congress with 97 percent approval! Now we need to roll up our sleeves and do the work we all agreed is needed. NEFF hopes to continue our leadership on these issues through ongoing work with the New England Society of American Foresters.

Here’s the communications Resolution:

RESOLVED, to advance public understanding of the benefits forests provide and the essential roles of active forest management and conserving forests in maintaining these benefits through effective communication efforts. These efforts should:

• Involve governmental, non-governmental, philanthropic, community and private entities;
• Be based on a greater understanding of the sources of public attitudes towards forest management and how to inform them; and
• Use advanced analytics, modern communications practices, approaches and technologies, as well as powerful community centered storytelling, and personal engagement opportunities to help connect new audiences and sectors to the value proposition of investing in healthy and resilient forests.