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Since 2002, Mary Lou Addor, associate director of the Natural Resources Leadership Institute at N.C. State University (www.ces.ncsu.edu/NRLI) and Juliana Birkhoff, a senior mediator at RESOLVE Inc. (www.resolv.org), a national conflict resolution group, have worked with a group of diverse forest users and USFS officials to arrive at the initiative.
The project, spearheaded by the USFS, national forests in Alabama and the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, is still under way. Congress created the USIECR to help resolve environmental conflicts around the country that involve federal agencies or interests. To reach a plan acceptable to the many involved parties, the Forest Service first had to approve a five-year plan that included all loblolly pine stands on 16,312 acres in northwest Alabama’s 182,000-acre Bankhead National Forest.
“The overall goal was to foster a positive and productive approach to guide the future management of the Bankhead National Forest,” said Addor, “to restore forest and plant community types that are uncommon to private lands in northern Alabama.”