Due to COVID-19 constraints, the deadline for state and territorial forestry agencies to submit 10-year Forest Action Plan revisions has been postponed to December 31, 2020.
WASHINGTON—The National Association of State Foresters’ request to extend the deadline for Forest Action Plan revisions to Dec. 31, 2020 has been adopted by the USDA Forest Service. This postponement ensures that state and territorial forestry agencies will have adequate time to complete comprehensive revisions of their Forest Action Plans in light of COVID-19 constraints.
In 2008, Congress tasked the states and territories with assessing the condition of trees and forests within their boundaries (regardless of ownership) and developing strategies to conserve, protect, and enhance these critical natural resources.
The resulting Forest Action Plans—completed in 2010 and reviewed in 2015 by all 59 states and territories—offer practical roadmaps for investing federal, state, local, and private resources where they can be most effective in achieving national conservation goals. Now, ten years after their creation, state and territorial forestry agencies are tasked with completing comprehensive revisions of these plans.
In addition to extending the 2020 submission deadline for revised Forest Action Plans, the Forest Service has released a minimally edited guidance memo and checklist for 10-year revisions. Both the updated checklist and the memo granting the deadline extension are linked in NASF’s online Forest Action Plan Toolkit.
To submit revised plans for Forest Service review, state and territorial forestry agencies are asked to designate a user for Box, a cloud-based content management system, and to send the designee’s name, email address, and phone number to Peter Bedker to set up access.
Media Contact: Whitney Forman-Cook at wforman-cook@stateforesters.org