The Great Lakes Forest Alliance

Abstract

Summary The Great Lakes Forest Alliance, created by charter in 1987 at the direction of the governors of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, is a mutual aid, public/private partnership that integrates global, national and local interests by bridging the gap at a regional level. It expanded in 1997 to include Ontario. Trustees include key leaders of government and industry and citizens from a broad range of forest interests. It was designed to be as learning environment to address the resurgence of forest growth and the increasing demand for conservation, wood products and recreation. The need for the Alliance resulted in part from a perceived underrepresentation of regional forest-related issues in the national arena. The Alliance attempts to consider leading-edge strategies over the long-term in a pro-active manner, and trustees recognize the need to build respect, trust, information exchange, cooperation, coordination and collaboration among diverse interests. Among the projects that demonstrate the bridge role played by the Alliance: a regional forest resources assessment, public and private funding that supports research toward a more frequent forest inventory process, training for communities to use the collaborative learning process to address economic prosperity and environmental protection strategies and the development of sustainable forest management criteria and indicators for the region. A continual challenge is relationships among diverse forest interests across jurisdictional and institutional boundaries in a manner that promotes exchanges that build collective wisdom.