AZ Makes Move to manage NF using statewide strategy
Forester
Janet Napolitano, Governor of the State of Arizona, writes to Corbin
Newman, Regional Forester Southwest Region to request that the U.S.
Forest Service "accelerate restoration work across northern Arizona,"
and "translate into on-the-ground action the good work done by
Arizona's citizens over the past several years."
In a letter to Corbin Newman, Regional Forester Southwest Region (3)
USFS dated November 13, 2008, Janet Napolitano, Governor of the State
of Arizona, stated:
"The explicit and strong level of broad-based consensus reached in the
Supply Study builds on agreement defined in the Statewide Strategy and
is unprecedented in the history of the national forest system in
Arizona. It comes at a critical time, providing a foundation of social
support and scientific justification for substantially accelerating
restoration of degraded forests across northern Arizona.
We absolutely cannot afford to lose this opportunity to move
substantially forward with effective and efficient landscape-scale
forest restoration. By accelerating our work and placing it in a
landscape context, we can meet ambitious community protection,
restoration, and fire management goals across northern Arizona, over
the next twenty years. By honoring well-developed social agreement in
the process, we can break the gridlock that has stymied forward-
thinking forest management across the state for decades. With social
agreement in place, we can identify and engage appropriately scaled
industries that can dramatically offset per-acre restoration costs.
With industry working as part of the forest management solution, we
can generate hundreds of jobs, and millions of dollars in revenue for
rural communities at a time when we need those jobs and that revenue.
We have come much too far to do anything but honor, carry forward, and
translate into on-the-ground action the good work done by Arizona's
citizens over the past several years. In this vein, and in the context
of your deliberations about accelerating restoration work across
northern Arizona, I request that you take the following actions:
1) Validate and institutionalize the consensus agreement reached in
the Statewide Strategy and the Analysis of Small-Diameter Wood Supply
in Northern Arizona in any and all relevant forest planning
processes.
2) Establish landscape scale planning, implementation, and monitoring
mechanisms that allow the Forest Health Council and other relevant
collaboratives the opportunity to continue building and translating
social agreement within the context of accelerated treatments across
northern Arizona.
3) Aggressively pursue the development of long-term stewardship
contracts and/or agreements that support an additional annual 30,000
acres of mechanical thinning over a twenty year period, as prescribed
by Supply Study consensus agreement parameters.
4) Identify, bolster partnerships with, and direct contracts towards
those industries with a proven collaborative record, and with the
ability to substantially offset planning, administration, preparation,
and treatment costs in the process of meeting the ecological goals
identified within the Supply Study.
5) Clearly identify additional federal appropriations needed to
support acceleration of consensus-supported forest restoration
treatments across northern Arizona, and support Arizona's
congressional delegation in its efforts to secure those
appropriations.”
“The engagement of the Governor marks a turning point in the
collaborative effort to implement landscape-scale restoration in
Northern Arizona now that a social consensus has been defined through
the Statewide Strategy and the Small Diameter Wood Supply,” said
Pascal Berlioux, President & Chief Executive Officer of Arizona Forest
Restoration Products Inc. “The Governor's five-step request for action
offers a clear path to execution and we strongly believe that AZFRP
has demonstrated through its commitments and actions since 2006 the
proven collaborative record, the appropriate scale, the ability to
dramatically offset per-acre restoration costs, the ability to support
600 Northern Arizona jobs, the ability to inject $170 million in
Northern Arizona rural communities' economy every year, and the
commitment to the ecological goals that are outlined in the Governor's
letter. We stand ready to move forward with a $300 million investment
to create the economic engine that will fund the restoration of 30,000
additional acres per year, as soon as wood contracts are awarded by
the Forest Service.”
See Governor Napolitano's letter, and letters and resolutions of
support in the “Community Support” page (http://www.azfrp.com/Community
%20Support.htm) of our website.
For further information, please contact
Pascal Berlioux, PhD, MBA
President & CEO
Arizona Forest Restoration Products Inc.
460 North Switzer Canyon #100
Flagstaff, AZ 86001
Cell (928) 637 3037
Office (928) 779 2155
Fax (928) 779 4546
pber...@azfrp.com