Dovetail Partners assists public and private land managers and small and large landowners with understanding and participating in responsible forest management practices and forest management certification. If you have questions and are looking for answers, contact us.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s environmentalists began to seek proactive ways to address growing concerns about tropical deforestation. Some of these organizations began selective boycotts of wood products companies like The Home Depot (THD) in an effort to curb THD’s usage of wood from threatened tropical forests. Shortly, it became apparent that this broad-brush approach was painting good forestry with the same palette as the bad, and that these boycotts were having a significant negative impact on small, local forest enterprises in particular, and incurring a devaluation of tropical forests in general. Thus, a more positive approach and one that rewarded good forestry, was sought. A major collaborative effort between environmental organizations, industry representatives, and those representing social and community concerns was undertaken. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) arose out of this process. Early on, the FSC developed international standards, principles, and criteria for good forestry with the goal of identifying the “ideal” forest management system. The FSC then developed a means of verifying that these standards were being followed, and a worldwide certification and accreditation system was born. These developments were followed shortly in the U.S. by the development of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) of the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA). This separate initiative by industry was based on the belief that the industry was best equipped to develop workable solutions to growing concerns about forest management, and in part on the desire to preempt regulation or having other interest’s solutions imposed on them.

In the last fifteen years, a number of approaches have arisen to address concerns about global deforestation. Independent evaluation of forest management practices and the certification of forestland have come to the forefront of these approaches in recent years. Today overze-adjust: none;"> six hundred million acres of forest are certified globally.

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