In 1990 a group of foresters, environmental activists, landowners, loggers, natural resource scientists, woodworkers, and forest practitioners gathered in northern California to consider the challenging question of how to create a forestry model that would both protect and preserve all forest values.
Everyone shared a common belief that a body of management guidelines could be assembled that would enable a landowner to harvest trees without degrading stream quality, damaging fisheries, destroying wildlife habitat, precipitating erosion and slope failures, and upsetting the delicate balance of the forested ecosystem, even if prevailing industrial timber practices argued otherwise.
These conversations became The Ten Elements of Sustainable Forestry for the Institute for Sustainable Forestry (ISF). These guiding principles underwrote the country’s first ecological forestry certification program.
The Ten Elements became the guiding principles for the Institute for Sustainable Forestry (ISF) and underwrote the country’s first ecological forestry certification program. The Institute also pioneered a program of restoration forestry that focused on improving forest health by creating uses and markets for under-utilized species. ISF devoted a considerable amount of time and energy to researching and implementing ways to process hardwoods (one of the main products of restoration forestry) and managed Wild Iris Forest Products, a hardwood processing facility, for a number of years. Throughout this time, ISF has continually responded to the needs and interests of non-industrial forest landowners with a wide array of technical assistance.
Exploring answers to the original questions is still very much at play. What is ecological forestry? How can landowners both enhance and harvest from their land? What are the best ways to protect forest values such as water quality, wildlife habitat and soil productivity? How can value be added to the products of restoration forestry to maximize benefits to the landowner and the community? Over the years, ISF has brought together practitioners and academics, foresters and loggers in numerous workshops and exploratory conferences to develop implementation practices with respect to these values. Among the areas in which the Institute has aided landowners are:
Forest stand evaluations, inventories and restoration prescriptions
Watershed issues including watershed assessment; road improvement, maintenance, and decommissioning; salmonid habitat improvement; erosion control; stream monitoring and testing
Fire hazard reduction, fuels treatment, utilization of the products of fuels treatment, homeowner protection
Wildlife habitat enhancement
Hardwood management and utilization
Biomass utilization
Non-timber forest products
The Institute continues to respond to the shifting currents and trends. Currently the non-industrial landowner finds themselves in a situation where global-level market forces are determining market opportunities for all timber owners in the region. ISF is monitoring these trends and working on a series of policy suggestions that will help the smaller landowner continue to operate in an ecological manner and still find markets for their forest products, both timber and non-timber.