Our Purpose
Why is this landscape level conservation work so critical to the future of Massachusetts’ forests, wildlife, and rural communities?
Massachusetts’ State Forest Action Plan identifies 4 major threats to forests throughout the Commonwealth:
- climate change
- forest conversion for development
- invasive pests & plants
- disconnection between local wood production and consumption
The Massachusetts Dynamic Forest Restoration Initiative addresses all four of these threats - managing for forest age diversity and resiliency, keeping working forest landscapes healthy and intact through a landscape approach to forest management, mitigating invasive species and plants on private lands, and providing sustainable wood products from our habitat work that can supply local sawmills and forest processing facilities.
Our Plan
The Massachusetts Dynamic Forest Restoration Initiative is a collaboration on public and private lands within north central Massachusetts and the Berkshire Highlands region. We work together to enhances forest resiliency, restores fish and wildlife habitat diversity, mitigates invasive species, and creates a baseline model for long-term transboundary landscape-level planning. We acheive these goals throughout the region following these practices:
Forest habitat restoration– Identify, plan, and deliver sustainable forest management and invasive species treatments on public, private and conservation easement properties in a coordinated manner that accounts for both landscape-level conditions and property-level planning considerations.
Forest habitat resiliency – Incorporate strategies and frameworks that address climate change vulnerabilities and promote the adaptive capacity of forests to thrive under future conditions.
Public engagement & outreach – around climate, carbon, wildlife, and social benefits of forest habitat restoration work. Develop an outreach toolkit for landowners about the climate benefits of forest habitat restoration work and develop outreach strategies to effectively communicate complex management practices to the community.
Long-term landscape planning and technology transfer – develop a landscape level mapping model that can be used for long-term planning to inform priority areas for public and private lands habitat projects in the future and to be coordinated with partners like USDA NRCS and others.