Introduction
There are many reasons that you might want to care for your forests. You may want to preserve natural beauty or maintain habitat for wildlife. You may want to create ecologically stable places where your community can benefit from ecosystem services or to recreate. You may want to manage timberlands for long-term resilience and financial stability. You may want to contribute to climate solutions by sequestering and storing carbon.
How you approach forest stewardship depends on your intentions, goals and the desired outcomes that you expect from your stewardship actions. Active management, passive management or a combination of the two can help you achieve those outcomes and can help you shape the future of your forests. As a municipal forest manager, you may engage with local communities, including the Indigenous peoples who have historically stewarded the forests, to help assure that your goals are inclusive and equitable.
Understanding how climate change may alter your forests is becoming more important as our region sees changes in temperature, precipitation and other climate related factors. Planning for adaptation and sustainability can put long-term forest health in focus and practices such as reforestation or invasive species management can help preserve that health for generations to come.
Forest Stewardship Funding
No matter what goals you might have for your forest, there are a number of programs that can provide financial support and assistance.