ISAR | Special Programs

ISAR hosted five Russians on the topic of Sustainable Forestry in the Washington, DC area. Washington DC provided a unique location to provide an insight into the federal level of forestry management and meeting with prominent American nonprofit organizations involved with domestic and international activities for forestry conservation. In addition, Washington offered a useful base to visit different parks and forests in the professional program.

ISAR organized its program in three different professional areas:

• On-the-ground Forest Management by U.S. governmental agencies, The U.S. National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. During this portion of the program, the delegates visited Shenandoah National Park and George Washington National Forest to meet with forest rangers, administrators, and fire prevention experts to see how governmental oversight of forest resources are managed in the U.S.
• Governmental Resources for Forest Planning and Management and for International Cooperation in DC. During this portion of the program, the delegates met with the Congressional Research Service, the international programs of the U.S. Forest Service, and a chance to meet and interact with a representative from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Russia Program.
• The efforts by nonprofit organization for forestry conservation by working with communities, businesses and governmental bodies. The delegates had the opportunities to meet representatives from the Pinchot Institute, World Wildlife Fund, American Forests, and the World Resources Institute.

Full Exchange Schedule

Program Highlights
Most of the delegates were experienced forest management specialists and were able to interact with their American colleagues at a high level of discussion and exchange about forestry management. They were very receptive to discussing issues of Russian forestry management and comparing their practices with their American counterparts. The delegates were often surprised to find out that there were many commonalities in practices and conditions of forestry management and that there many areas of shared interests and struggles. In particular, the delegates heard much about the limited budgets for management by the National Park Service and the difficult choices and innovative ways that the Park Service stretched its budget, prioritized activities, and raised revenues through alternative means such as private donations.

Karen Beck-Herzog, the Shenandoah National Park assistant administrator and public affairs official discussed with the delegates the various means of park monitoring, scientific studies and enforcement of regulations. In addition, she spoke with the delegates about the importance of maintaining building a positive relationship with the inhabitants around the park boundaries. Karen also introduced the delegates to two forest fire fighter experts in the park and the delegates had a lively discussion about the methods and tools for detecting fires, fighting fires, and working with other state and local authorities on forest fighting prevention along with cooperation with other parks. The delegates were shown a fire fighting supply point where they were interested in the similarity of equipment but also some unique and useful tools employed by the park rangers.

The trip to George Washington National Forest highlighted the multi-use aspect of forests including those activities not permitted in National Parks, including logging, recreational vehicles, hunting and fishing. The forest ranger and forest planner outlined the differences in forest management of National Forests as opposed to National Parks and the differences in federal level of protection in contrast to state and municipal management of forests. Then Holden Mason, the forest ranger, took the group to visit sites of logging and timber production and spoke at length about the National Forest policies on timber management, concessions, and oversight.

During the nonprofit portion of the professional program, the delegates were first introduced to the work of the Pinchot Institute. The Pinchot Institute works in the spirit of Gordon Pinchot, the founder of the U.S. Forest Service, to bridge the gap between government, businesses, civil society and local citizens. The Pinchot Institute and the delegates spoke about the best practices of engaging government to work with civil society and citizens to ensure healthy forests. The delegates enjoyed the discussion about the Pinchot Institute’s work to bring different stakeholders together, governmental officials, logging industry and ecologists, to discuss forestry management and how this activity fosters a greater atmosphere of cooperation between different interests.

The delegates also enjoyed meeting with the nonprofit American Forests which described their work to not only conserve forests, but to replant trees in deforested areas throughout the world by engaging individual, corporate, and foundation donors to contribute to reforestation efforts. At the World Resources Institute, the delegates learned about the technical informational resources being made available through GIS and GPS mapping as conducted by American organizations in order to help better manage forests.

At the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the delegates learned about the activities of WWF to help timber companies and national forests throughout the world to become certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and then to connect these certified timber operations to interested buyers. WWF spoke about how this innovative method helps combat illegal logging and has had initial success in Russia, a common problem cited by the Russian delegates. The delegates also enjoyed a visit to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) where they learned the role of CRS in providing nonpartisan policy analysis for Congress on virtually every topic, including public lands and forests management. In addition, the delegates visited the U.S. Forest Service International Programs Division in DC where the delegates learned about the programs of U.S.- Russia forestry cooperation and discussed ideas for cooperation between themselves and the U.S. forest service on a range of topics including forest fire management.