Forest Stewardship Education

BACKGROUND

It is my great pleasure to nominate my colleague and co-collaborator and ANREP member Marilyn Wyman for an innovative program award. Marillyn is the Program Coordinator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Greene Counties Agroforestry Resource Center (ARC), located in the Hudson Valley/Catskill region of NYS, 40 miles south of Albany and 110 miles north of New York City. Marilyn has been the lead educator on the development and coordination of the ARC and this nomniation to ANREP is designed to recognize her innovation and success in pursuing a regional forest stewardship education program, housed in a regional center of excellence for natural resources and environmental stewardship extension education, over the past decade that has continued to grow and evolve throughout.

The Catskill Mountain/Hudson Valley region of New York State has been under tremendous development pressure for many years, culminating in threats to farm and forested land and resultant impacts on water quality (including the New York City watershed), wildlife habitat and quality of life for rural and surrounding urban residents and threats to traditional economic development activities such as farming and forestry. Cornell Cooperative Extension of Greene County has been engaged in these issues through its agriculture and natural resource based programming efforts, including a focus on Agroforestry, for many years. Agroforestry is defined as the combination of agriculture and forestry practices that result in more integrated, diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems. This experience, combined with growing academic interest and a mounting list of economic challenges facing upstate New York, culminated in a proposal to the Director of Extension in 2001 to create a regional educational center, the Agroforestry Resource Center (ARC), focused on issues of sustainable rural landscapes. The ARC opened in September 2003 in a refurbished 1940s recreation hall in Greene County with the financial support of the Watershed Agricultural Council (Watershed Forestry Program), State Senator James L. Seward and Cornell University. The purpose of the ARC is to support education, research and community based efforts that sustain forest resources in the Catskill Mountain/Hudson Valley region and the many economic, aesthetic and ecological services they provide to surrounding populations. This mission is pursued through education and research that encourages prosperous small farms, economically and environmentally sound woodlot management, market development for forest farming products, and the expansion of a land use ethic capable of sustaining both the economic and ecological values of forested land.

The initial success of the programs developed to support these goals led to a decision in 2003 to puruse additional financial support in order to build a new educational resource center on the site of the small classroom facility that was serving as a base for ARC programming. The new building was successfully financed and constructed and became the home base for the organization in 2007. At the same time a major land donation occured adjacent to the facility allowing for the addition of a 142 acre teaching and research forest that has now been developed as the third New York City Watershed Model Forest through a relationship with the New York City based Catskill Watershed Corporation (CWC) and the Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC). Here is a link to the NYC Model Forest Program:

http://www.nycwatershed.org/for_rdintro.html

PROGRAM OBJECTIVES

The ultimate goal of the program has been to achieve increased forest health and sustainability in the targeted region. The key target audiences are those with a greater influence over the state of the land: including rural landowners, educators, researchers, policy makers, and students. One key audience, private landowners, has been changing in recent years, and a new approach was clearly needed to reach this group. With forested land making up as much as 80% of the land area in much of the region and over 60% of this forested land in private, non-industrial ownership, the private land owner is a critical audience in determining the nature of the landscape in upstate New York. This “new generation” of forest owners tend to be “environmentally aware” but lacking in forest management skills and understanding of rural values and culture. This is particularly true in the Hudson River Valley region where a high percentage of forested land is owned by “absentee” landowners consisting largely of urban residents purchasing second homes in the more rural counties North of New York City and South of Albany. A key foundation of Marilyn's program development approach has been the recognition of these critical demographic shifts and developing logic model approaches to program development that will appeal to these newer, non-traditional forest landowners.

METHODS

With a dedicated staff of less than 3.0 fte's working exclusively on the Agroforestry Resource Center project, Marilyn has had to be very innovative in developing high impact programs. She has utilized two very effective methods to achieve outstanding results:

1. Strategic Partnership Development

Marilyn has expanded the impact and program output dramatically by developing key partners who in turn have developed short and long term programs being delivered at the facility or in the model forest. Key examples include:

New York State Forest Owners Association (Woods walks, co-sponsoring forest stewardship workshops)

Watershed Agricultural Council - Development of the Model Forest which results in baseline research, best management practices demonstrations for landowners, certified logger training.

The Department of Natural Resources and Departments of Horticulture at Cornell University - Both Cornell Departments have faculty engaged in research and extension project on the model forest including SARE funded mushroom cultivation work and applied research related to Beech tree control.

2. Innovative "Entry Level" Programs and Workshops

Marilyn realized early on that traditional approaches that tend to focus on Silviculture and active Forest management were not appealing to the target audience of non-rural second homeowner landowners. Marilyn began developing program opportunities and workshops that did appeal to these folks, brought them to the ARC and allowed for gradual introduction of forest stewardship and management principles. Programs that instead focus on Wildlife identification, mushroom identification and cultivation, the health benefits of walking in the woods and intentional forest farming activities such as ginseng cultivation are but a few examples. A "real time" example of the typical ARC classes and workshops can be found by clicking the link below:

http://agroforestrycenter.org/our-class-listings.html

RISKS, RESULTS and REPLICABILITY

Cornell Cooperative Extension is a very unique system with a heavy County based administrative and program structure that has been in place for nearly 100 years. Although the signs have been clear that a more regional approach to administration and programming have been clear it was still a major risk and bold step forward to propose the development of a multi-county, much more programmatically focused approach to extension education coming from one of the smaller, not particularly well funded locally County based Extension Associations. Our efforts were supported by Administrators at Cornell University and embraced by faculty, partner organizations and most importantly our target audiences. The true indicator of success is that the programs are having an impact and are expanding. As I submit this application Marilyn is moving forward with several major projects and new funding opportunities that will allow us to expand the staff by 1.5 fte's including the hiring of a full time Master's level educator to provide leadership for the private landowner forest stewardship programming that she has initiated. We will also be one of two sites in New York partnering with Cornell University and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation on an invasive species monitoring and education project for the Catskill/Hudson Valley region. We are also in the process of negotiating a major multi-year project with the NYC Department of Environmental Protection targeting landowners throughout the West of Hudson watershed counties with a focus on the protection of streams.

The business plan for the Agroforestry Resource Center was essentially to allow the program development process to lead the way towards developing the infrastructure, funding plan and organizational strucutre on a regional level. This in many ways runs counter the approach that has been in place for decades in New York State where the existing program areas and County based administration and funding have driven the programming. The success of the ARC has the potential to lead to further innovation and provide a model for sustainabilty for the future of CCE in New York State.

This application has been submitted by:

Andrew S. Turner

Executive Director, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Columbia and Greene Counties

518-622-9820 ext. 35

Cell: 518-965-4067

email: ast4@cornell.edu

Files

MW 12 09 Resume

Candidate's Resume

Wyman Photo

Photo of Nominee.