Project to Scope Water Projects Across Nation

Since launching its Healthy Forests; Healthy Watersheds Initiative in partnership with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in early 2010, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) has been studying and investing more deeply in the potential of water as an environmental market to advance forest health and retention.  “One of our most difficult challenges in digging into the topic of water was getting a handle on what is already happening,” said Endowment President Carlton Owen.  “After much searching we determined that there wasn’t a good base line of information,” he said.  That finding led the Endowment to enter into a partnership with the USDA Office of Environmental Markets in a project to “scope the state” of water-based environmental markets projects across the U.S.  EcoAgriculture Partners, a Washington, DC-based not-for-profit, is developing the information that should be available in early spring.  “We know that others will greatly benefit from this assessment,” said Peter Stangel, Senior Vice President of the Endowment.  “There is nothing more time consuming and wasteful than doing a background review of basic information only to learn that others have done the same thing but the information was not made publicly available.”