Pacific Northwest Community Forest Forum

Pacific Northwest Community Forest Forum Skamania Lodge 1131 Skamania Lodge Road, Stevenson, WA May 5-6, 2014

FORUM AGENDA

Monday, May 5 6:00 pm Welcome and Speaker Introduction

6:15 pm Welcome – Joe Kane, Nisqually Land Trust

6:45 pm Reception

7:30 pm Hosted Dinner in Skamania Lodge Cascade Dining Room

Tuesday, May 6 7:00 am Hosted Breakfast in Cascade Dining Room

8:00 am Coffee and settle in

8:30 am Welcome and overview of day

8:45 am Defining opportunities and challenges for community forests through examples. Community-forest proponents will address how they defined “community” for their projects, the critical elements and barriers they encountered, and keys for overcoming them.

Moderator Alice Williamson, Sustainable Northwest Panelists Jay McLaughlin, Mt. Adams Resource Stewards Mark Welther, Redwood Forest Foundation Julie Renaud Evans, Northern Forest Center (New England)

10:00 am Break

10:15 am Policies and programs that support community-forest creation in the Pacific Northwest. A look at public programs that currently exist to support community forests and ideas about increasing public support.

Moderator Tom Tuchmann, U.S. Forest Capital (moderator and panelist) Panelists Andy Hayes, Washington Department of Natural Resources Doug Decker, Oregon State Forester (invited) Brad Siemens, U.S. Forest Service Region 6

11:15-12:00 Facilitated discussion: How can we use information from the morning’s panels to build a more significant support network for community-forest creation in the Pacific Northwest? Expanding our ideas about things like partnerships, effective technical-assistance support, and more sophisticated approaches to conservation finance will be necessary to advance community forests in the Pacific Northwest. How can we translate these ideas into action?

12:00 pm Lunch

12:45 -2:00 Overcoming financial barriers to community forest success: Partnering with the for-profit sector, blended finance strategies, and new markets/value streams that can be used to get projects done. Working with the private sector to build community-forest partnerships.

Moderator Bettina von Hagen, Ecotrust Panelists Peter Stein, Lyme Timber Brad Hunter, Craft3

2:00-2:45 Facilitated discussion: Reconciling what we hear from the panelists with our Pacific Northwest experiences. How can we more successfully address financial barriers that we encounter, such as our capacity to understand timber management and associated revenues, or the regional lack of dedicated grant funds and state easement- purchase programs that can leverage private financing?

2:45-3:00 Break

3:00-4:00 A funder’s perspective: What will it take to inspire local, regional and national institutional funders to support community forests as a way of addressing conservation, community and economic development goals in the Pacific Northwest?

Moderator Scott Pascoe, Great Peninsula Conservancy Panelists Zahlen Titcomb, Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation (invited)

4:00-4:45 Facilitated discussion: Outcomes from the day and next steps. Where do we go from here, and how do we get there?

4:45-5:00 Closing remarks