By James Wright
The latest installment in the NASF Exhibition of Successful State Forest Partnerships highlights the work of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, and the USDA Forest Service (USFS).
Given that private non-industrial forest owners (NIPFs) own 12.5 million of Arkansas’s 19 million acres of forest land, the cooperation of these agencies has been and continues to be essential in providing technical and financial assistance to more than 345,000 family forest land owners across the state.
Between 2019 and 2021, the USFS and the Arkansas Forest Division teamed up to write 525 forest management plans for forest owners who covered over 92,500 hectares. Many of these plans served as an entry point for NIPF owners to participate in NRCB financial assistance programs.
This effort, along with several cooperation agreements between the NRCS and the Arkansas Forest Division, helped the NRCS provide $ 20.8 million in support of forest practices in NIPF lands over the same time frame. Additional information on the multi-agency forest partnership of Arkansas is provided in this review, which is also linked below.
Want to know more? Contact NASF Forest Partnership Coordinator James Wright to discuss state-level collaborative efforts in your area.
