Pennsylvania: Welcome to Your Woods

I just received my Forests for the Bay email news blast and it included a publication that I did not know was in the works, "Welcome to Your Woods" (Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia) piece for each state gives landowners starting places for understanding the complex system that is the woods and where to get help.

Here's how they describe the publications:

Your woodlands provide you with a myriad of benefits every day from recreational and economic opportunities to wildlife viewing to a personal refuge away from life's daily rigors.  As land continues to transition to new ownership at a higher rate than at any time in our history, the number of new woodland owners in the region has exponentially grown. As a way to reach out to a vast number of newer woodland owners about the benefits of their natural resource we have developed the Welcome to Your Woods publications for Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. These succinct reference guides introduce landowners to the ecology and function of their woods, the benefits and challenges of woodland ownership and the resources available to keep them working and healthy.

We first developed the Welcome to Your Woods publication as a supplemental resource for our Real Forestry for Real Estate courses in Maryland. This innovative and highly successful program was first developed and pioneered by the Virginia Forest Landowners Education Program (VFLEP) at Virginia Tech and strives to reach woodland owners early in their tenure by educating real estate professionals about the benefits of wooded properties. Participants that complete the course receive the Welcome to Your Woods guide as a resource they can distribute to their clients; potential new woodland owners. VFLEP has produced a similar, Virginia specific publication entitled Welcome to the Woods.

Whether you have owned your land for 30 years or 30 days, there is always something to discover about your woods and its management and care. We have found these publications to be a useful resource in a variety of our other landowner workshops and trainings since they provide a good foundation of reference. Feel free to peruse these publications or share them in your own woodland outreach endeavors. They are also accessible on the Local Resources section of the Forest for the Bay website. We do have printed copies of Welcome to Your Woods (MD, WV, PA), so if you prefer to be able to flip actual pages of tangible fibrous cellulose pulp please email me, Craig Highfield, at chighfield@allianceforthebay.org.

You can link to the Pennsylvania version by clicking here.

Another tool for the toolbox, enjoy!