Opening The Book On Community Forestry. - Review - book review

American Forests, Autumn, 2000

A new book from AMERICAN FORESTS helps people understand the connections between healthy communities and healthy forest ecosystems.

Understanding Community Based Forest Ecosystem Management, the product of an AMERICAN FORESTS-sponsored national workshop held in Bend, Oregon, in June 1998, will be released by Haworth Press in autumn 2000. The book describes community-based approaches to ecosy tem management and explains how such approaches serve the public interest.

The idea for the workshop was born in 1996 as AMERICAN FORESTS' Forest Policy Center developed its program or community-based ecosystem management. It had begun working with community-based partners through the Communities Committee of the Seventh American Forest Congress and the National Network of Forest Practitioners. The Policy Center also was developing its role as a "bridge group" to convey information and build dialogue among local, regional, and national interests.

"We hope the book captures some the excitement [of the workshop] and stimulates broad public interest," said Gerry Gray, AMERICAN FORESTS' vice president of policy.

"We also hope it clearly presents a framework for thinking about community-based ecosystem management and key issues so that policymakers, national interest groups, and community groups can engage in constructive policy discussions."

Gerry Gray, Maia Enzer, then AMERICAN FORESTS' director of Forest Policy, and Jonathan Kusel, director of Forest Community Research in Taylorsville, California, co-edited the book.