Striving for Forest Sustainability: A Better Way to Assess Progress

Trees in forestA new Mitchell Center project will explore efforts in Maine to promote sustainable forest management, including a newly implemented state policy that provides both incentives to landowners and a more scientific approach.

Erin Simons-Legaard, Assistant Research Professor in the School of Forest Resources, and a team of UMaine faculty, graduate students, and research scientists will be working with stakeholders to better understand the status of forest sustainability in Maine and how it is influenced by forest policy, including a recently implemented initiative. The team includes experts in ecological, economic, and social factors related to forest management.

Under the Outcome Based Forestry (OBF) initiative, first proposed in Maine by the Maine Forest Service in 1999 but only recently implemented for the first time in 2013, a landowner would agree to demonstrate measurable progress toward achieving the State of Maine’s Goals for Forest Sustainability. In return, the Maine Forest Service (MSF) would provide incentives, such as exemption from certain provisions of state forest policy. It is a different approach than the Maine Forest Practices Act (FPA), the longtime regulatory mechanism.

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