(12) Forest Resource Education for Municipal Land Use Officials (FREMO)

Session: Concurrent session A1:  Addressing Challenges Through Research and Education

It has long been understood that the forested landscape is closely linked to water quality, and, more broadly, the overall ecologic, economic, and public health of our communities. As communities continue to grow and develop, the health of our forest lands is threatened by their conversion to other uses, fragmentation, and parcelization. Because the majority of forested land is privately-owned, the majority of educational efforts seeking to protect the forest resource have focused on individual land owners. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that community land use decision makers are also critical to the sustainability of the forest resource. They make the decisions about where and how to grow, and where and what to preserve that are critical to confronting the continued fragmentation of our nation’s forests. This presentation will highlight one effort to begin addressing this audience - the Forest Resource Education for Municipal Officials (FREMO) project.

FREMO is an effort to educate local land use officials about the fragmentation of the forest resource, its consequences for overall community health, and what can be done through land use planning to address it. The approach is to integrate forests into the ongoing land use education efforts of the National NEMO Network, a coalition of 33 programs in 31 states that help local officials connect land use and natural resource protection. The presentation will address the progress of the FREMO project, the importance of reaching local land use officials on forest issues, the challenges of working with this audience, connecting the “typical” forestry community with the FREMO effort, and recommendations for future efforts.

David Dickson
University of Connecticut
1066 Saybrook Road
Box 70
Haddam, CT 06438
Phone: 860-345-5228
Fax: 860-345-3357
david.dickson@uconn.edu