End of Year Update from the Guild’s Membership and Policy Council (MPC)

Written by Jan-Willem Jansens

Greetings! Thank you to all who voted recently for your newest MPC members. Your MPC represents Guild members in the organization’s work to 1) support its members, and 2) develop position statements and policy statements that clarify the Guild’s six core principles. 

Want to know more? I can tell you about who we are. We are a group of passionate volunteers who care for forest ecosystems and the forestry profession according to the Guild’s principles. We come from many walks of life and demographics, represent various professional branches of forestry, and several forestry regions in the U.S. Presently, MPC members come from the Pacific West, the Southwest, Appalachia and the Southeast, the Northeast, and the Lake States areas. We give our time and experience to support you as a Guild member to become or stay connected with the Guild’s work and with other Guild members.

As the outgoing chair of the MPC, I want to offer a brief retrospective of the past three years of our work. I served on the MPC from January 2022 through this month. I have been a supporter of the Guild for its 30 years of existence and worked for its precursor, the Forest Trust, from 1993 until the fall of 1997. Looking back at the last three years, we gathered input for greater student engagement and encouraged the establishment of new Guild student chapters. We also advised Guild staff on implementation of the newly-established lifetime membership option. We helped staff encourage and support members to renew their membership. We researched a great variety of policy topics, such as a wildfire policy, silviculture for planted areas, plantation forestry, silviculture for natural forests, the 30×30 initiative, forestry and energy consumption, and support for tribal forestry connections in the Guild. We produced a position statement on Climate Smart Forestry and supported the publication of it as an article. We also supported Guild directors on an ongoing public outreach campaign with a series of webinars and a survey on mature and old growth forest stewardship. We are in the process of writing a position statement on this topic which we hope to release in the spring of 2025. Furthermore, we supported the Guild’s Board of Directors and staff in outreach about the Guild’s ongoing activities and policy conversations such as the focus on “full spectrum of forest management”. 

The MPC is here for you. Please contact us and let us know how you connect with the Guild’s work, how the Guild can support you better, and how we can strengthen our Guild community. I look forward to crossing paths with you anywhere across the country in our efforts to promote excellent forestry.

Stay tuned, as your two newly elected MPC members for the next three year term will be announced in January!