By Deborah Gangloff, executive director

"Cooperative conservation" is in the air-and not a moment too soon.

During the summer the White House sponsored a first-time-ever conference on Cooperative Conservation. Participants from the public and private sectors gathered to hear about successful examples of partnerships and, more importantly, to offer ideas for better collaboration to the administration and government agencies. Everyone there agreed that together we can do so much more than we can individually, and administration officials in attendance pledged to make collaboration easier.

American Forests has practiced cooperative conservation for 130 years. Recently, this work has gained additional attention. Our Policy center, for instance, works with local community-based forestry groups to bridge the gap between local forest efforts and national policy. We believe better forestry policy should rely on lessons learned in communities across the country, communities that have moved from being dependent on forests to being interdependent with them.

Our work in this area has broad support both from local collaborative groups and federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the innovative foundation community, which sees in this movement a new future for forest conservation and local economic development.

Contributing editor Jane Braxton Little attended a recent conference to examine first-hand some local efforts to acquire land in the wake of massive forest industry land divestiture. These new "community forests" (p. 7) add a 21st century twist to the 18th century practice of preserving community forests for the benefit of all the townspeople.

A positive side effect will be forests that remain forests; fragmentation and conversion to other uses, like housing developments, is the greatest threat to our forests today. That risk, as author Rhonda Mazza notes in "New Currency for Conservation" (p.43), undermines the value of our forests to provide ecosystem services like clean air and water.

American Forests based its Global ReLeaf program on the idea of cooperative conservation. Critical forests are restored by bringing public agencies and local community groups who want to restore forests through tree planting together with corporate sponsors and individual donors who seek to help sustain forests' life-giving benefits. In fact, that same recipe for success has led to our Katrina ReLeaf Fund, just launched to ensure replanting in the wake of that devastating August hurricane (www.americanforests.org/planttrees).

Since 1990, millions of native trees have been grown and planted locally to restore ecosystems damaged by tree loss. Magazine intern Meghan Amoroso brings us an example of a partnership project: helping the Nez Perce tribe reforest lands along the Clearwater River. The Nez Perce graciously greeted Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, and in the trek's bicentennial year, it is fitting that American Forests, the U.S. Forest Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Coleman Natural Foods, and the Nez Perce work together to restore these lands.

The pioneering work American Forests has conducted on the natural capital of urban ecosystems demonstrates that same spirit of partnership. Together with our partners we have helped dozens of cities and towns learn about the unique and precious value of their urban forests. In fact, our National Conference on Urban Ecosystems convenes this fall in Charlotte, North Carolina, where our analysis of tree value inspired community leaders to commit time and resources to protect the region's clean air and water (p.30). Charlotte knows if the city loses its trees, it loses a big reason people want to live there. And our conference boasts sponsorship from a variety of public and private supporters such as The Home Depot Foundation, the Davey Tree Expert Co., and Anheuser-Busch, as well as the U.S. Forest Service, North Carolina Forestry Commission, and local colleges and universities.

American Forests applauds administration efforts to foster collaboration among diverse groups. We stand ready to put those ideas "into the woods." We believe that this new era of conservation can benefit from the work of groups like American Forests and our partners, for whom cooperative conservation is a way of life.

Deborah Gangloff is American Forests' executive director.[TOP]