Our goal is to Enhance public benefits from trees and forests through:

• Actively and sustainably managing trees, forests, and watersheds for ecosystem health, economic benefits, and community resilience. Private landowner participation may be enhanced through the use of certification programs, cost-effective biomass utilization, and aggregation of managers/producers into larger groups that can more easily access traditional and emerging markets. Use of cross-boundary authorities can support stewardship across all lands. Agroforestry practices in agricultural, riparian, and urban areas can conserve ecosystem services, watershed function, and a diverse forest products industry.
• Facilitating the sustainable use of biomass by understanding and overcoming existing constraints, developing effective partnerships, communicating the economic and ecological benefits of biomass utilization, working toward a dependable supply of raw material from all ownerships and supporting a consistent, workable definition of renewable biomass for federal policies.
• Sustaining and enhancing urban and community forests that deliver multiple social, economic, and ecological benefits. Encouraging smart growth and a green infrastructure approach to conservation and development planning will support the integration of trees, forests, parks, and open spaces for the benefit of residents and the local ecology. Conserving and enhancing the urban tree canopy can contribute to energy and water conservation, air and water quality, and public health.
• Mitigating and adapting to climate change impacts, including increased temperatures, changes in timing and amount of precipitation, extreme weather events, and sea level rise by developing and adapting management plans and practices to promote flexible forest and community response to changing conditions. The most important mitigation strategy is to maintain and enhance forests as carbon sinks. Management actions include preventing forest conversion or loss to devastating wildfire, planting new trees, and supporting diverse forest products that sequester carbon and/or offset fossil fuel emissions.