The Community Forest Collaborative is a partnership of the Northern Forest Center (through its Sustainable Forest Futures program), the Trust for Public Land (TPL) and the Quebec-Labrador Foundation/Atlantic Center for the Environment (QLF). The Collaborative is working on a number of initiatives designed to promote the development and implementation of Community Forests in the region.

Helping to establish a Community Forest in Errol, New Hampshire has been an important early success of the Community Forest Collaborative.

In August 2007, the Community Forest Collaborative issued a report it prepared, Community Forests: A Community Investment Strategy, describing how a new model for Community Forests can deliver community, economic and conservation benefits to rural communities of northern New England. The report finds that Community Forests:

• Can be a significant part of landscape-scale conservation;
• Offer local and regional ownership options for conserving productive forestland, wildlife habitat, watersheds and open space;
• Can be a valuable component of economic development strategies; and
• Can reinforce community development objectives by building social capital and community capacity.

The report, based on interviews, other research and case studies, is available to communities, other organizations and individuals interested in supporting Community Forests in the region.

Click here to download a low resolution PDF [1.7 MB] of Community Forests: A Community Investment Strategy. For a higher resolution version of the same report, including maps with greater detail, click here. [6.2 MB]