National Community Forestry Service Center (NCFSC)

Vision and Opportunity

The rapid divestment patterns we see in forestland ownership by timber investors and family forest owners indicate a ten-year window of opportunity to effect meaningful change. After that, fragmentation rates and land prices will be so high as to effectively:

1) bar communities from effectively acquiring large-scale community forests, and,

2) weaken the necessary economic infrastructure of processing facilities and logging contractors.

NCFSC aims to energize and dramatically accelerate the national movement toward local ownership and management of forestland in the U.S., building on this unique opportunity to restructure timber ownership in our country.  Our success means that communities can increase their economic, conservation, and community-building options through sustainable community-owned forestry.

How NCFSC Supports the People and Places of Community Forestry

The National Community Forestry Service Center promotes the local acquisition, ownership, management, and conservation of community-owned forests through the facilitation of sophisticated intermediary services and network support of US community forestry practitioners.

Specifically:

• NCFSC provides skilled technical assistance in negotiating and financing forestland acquisitions, planning for stewardship and management, building community capacity and facilitating the establishment of governance and management structures in areas of opportunity.

• We support regional and national policy initiatives to further support existing community-owned forests or to develop new ones.

• We identify and connect grassroots, intermediary, and regional organizations across the US that support sustainable community-owned forestry.

• We identifying place-based strategies for acquiring and managing working forests as economic engines.

• NCFSC partners with community-based groups, local governments and tribal organizations to establish community forests.

• NCFSC provides GIS mapping to identify opportunities for establishing working community forests.

• We inventory resources, relationships, skills and structures needed for communities to sustainably own, conserve and manage working forests and support forest-related jobs and businesses.

NCFSC thanks the Ford Foundation and The U.S. Endowment on Forestry and Communities for their generous support.