New Year, New Focus On Inspections
On-the-ground
inspections are a fundamental component of the American Tree Farm System’s
(ATFS) success, and ATFS Inspectors are key to implementing this outreach to
Tree Farmers. Regular communication and outreach is essential to maintaining
relationships with all ATFS Tree Farmers, especially those who have not been
engaged recently, to ensure that they are managing their forests to the ATFS Standards
and upholding the integrity of the program. This outreach requires solid
inspector engagement and assignment strategies, a thorough system-wide database
clean-up combined with tailored intentional landowner communication to ensure
the momentum created by the State’s
Voice, State’s Choice initiative continues.
In order to achieve our goal of reaching every Tree Farmer at least once every five years, we need to collectively inspect 20% of our Tree Farms annually. The key to our success will be to focus attention on how inspections are assigned and to spend more resources on priority landowners that have not been inspected recently.
Beginning in 2016, additional funding was added to each state’s baseline funding to support the engagement of landowners currently in the Pioneer and Prospect categories. When a Tree Farm is designated as Prospect status, that owner has reached out to an ATFS volunteer, our website or a national staff person and expressed interest in joining the program. As a prospective Tree Farmer they require follow up by an inspector. The goal of the Pioneer category is to provide landowners an opportunity to work towards fully meeting the ATFS Standards, whether they are new to the Tree Farm program or were previously Certified but no longer in conformance. This increased baseline funding will continue for at least two more years. This additional investment recognizes that many state programs have transferred Tree Farms to the Pioneer categories though mass data clean-up efforts but may need additional resources to resolve the status of these properties.
Thank you for your continued support of your local Tree Farm program. Here’s to a prosperous 2017!
Sincerely,
Kristina Duff
Certification Manager
American Tree Farm System
State Tree Farm Programs by the Numbers - Things to Ponder:
*Based on
data pulled in January 2017 with the caveat that landowner data is not static.
In 2016, ATFS had 38,874 Certified/Recognition Tree Farms in the State Tree Farm programs,
plus 6,784 Pioneers and 611 are Prospect properties.
3,240 active inspectors and almost 1,000 State Committee members are trained to the
2015-2020 Standards.
In 2016, 7,185 overall inspections were done, including 1,382 required inspections.
55% of the properties in the Certified/Recognition category have not been inspected in over 5 years.
