Community Forests International’s Post

🌲Forest extension services empower land stewards and forest professionals with tools and knowledge to manage forestlands effectively 🌿 Recently, the University of New Brunswick hosted an exciting Forest Extension Summit, led by Dr. Tom Beckley of the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management. This event explored opportunities to develop a new forest extension program tailored to New Brunswick's unique needs. 🪓 Community Forests, alongside ACFOR Ltd., participated as speakers in the summit and presented our research and proposal for a forest extension program in NB. The summit included presentations from different professionals across Canada and the US, and left us with great connections and lessons learned about possible models for adoption here. Here are a few takeaways from the presentations: 1. An essential step in the development of forest extension services is clearly identifying the problems, so that we can design the right solutions. 2. There are many people who can make a management plan that focuses on ecological forest stewardship, but there are not many people who can implement such a thing. There is a knowledge gap on both sides, among both forest professionals and land stewards. 3. In NB, we already have a variety of organizations focusing on different issues and with different expertise. A key element in a forest extension program is having an impartial stakeholder who oversees program administration. So who who would best fill that role? 4. There are more than 40,000 private landowners in NB, including family forest owners, land trusts, and Indigenous land holding groups, each with various goals and interests for their forests. We need to improve communications and and connections with all of these land stewards to create a program that will be helpful and valuable to the different type of landowners. What do you think are the biggest needs that land stewards have? What do you most need support with? #forestry #forests #newbrusnwick #forestprotection

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