Endowment Celebrates Decade of Service to Continent’s Forests and Forest-Rich Communities

A Meritorious Initiative: The First Decade of the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, written by Endowment President & CEO Carlton Owen, recounts the events that led to the creation of the organization in 2006 and through the entity’s first ten years.

“All-too-often we don’t share experiences that lead to our failures as well as successes, thus doomingothers to repeat our mistakes,” said Owen. “At the Endowment we’ve made a commitment to be as openas we can about our own journey so as to help others along the way. This short book is just anotherexample of that commitment.”

Former Endowment Board Chairman Mack Hogans in remarks he shared at the 10th Anniversary celebration noted, “The Endowment takes calculated risks to advance the mission of working forests and support of forest-reliant communities, by identifying and taking on issues and projects that few others are willing to do. Also, the Endowment occasionally acts as a facilitator to bring disparate groups together by focusing on commonalities and not differences, all the time remaining true to its charter and avoiding the type of advocacy that paralyzes success in the forestry sector. The Endowment is a catalytic force for constructive change.”

Copies of A Meritorious Initiative were shared with current and former Board Members at the Board’sOctober 2016 meeting in Greenville, SC. An electronic version of the book is available on the Endowment’swebsite.

To further mark this decade of impact on the nation’s forested communities, the Endowment producedthe second in a series of three “birthday commercials” narrated by America’s first Forest Service Chief,Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot—played by reenactor Gary Hines—notes the links between the birth of Canada and the birth of the Endowment. The short video can be viewed here.