g l o b a l l e a f l e t

tradable unit, such as an area of wetland. 

The destruction of tiger habitat in 

Siberia, for example, isn’t really offset 

by the creation of lynx habitat in Spain. 

Biodiversity values tend to be localized.

So the big question is this: Can markets 

for biodiversity be established?

In the United States, a cap-and-trade 

model for biodiversity conservation is 

emerging nationwide; although, the trend is 

perhaps most visible in California. There, a 

process sometimes known as conservation 

banking has evolved. The process mimics 

the wetland mitigation model, with the 

mitigation being done for habitat damage. 

The first conservation bank was for an 

endangered songbird, the coastal California 

gnatcatcher, which lives in coastal sage 

scrub, a habitat much coveted by developers. 

The story is quite instructive.

In 1993, at about the time that the 

gnatcatcher was finally added to the 

California endangered species list, Bank of 

America foreclosed on a 263-acre (105-ha) 

property known as the Carlsbad Highlands. 

Because the property had coastal sage 

scrub, the bank suddenly found its 

development options severely limited. 

Anyone developing the land would have 

to pay large sums to mitigate damage to 

gnatcatcher habitat. 

 At about the same time, the California 

Department of Transportation had a 

gnatcatcher problem of its own: It was 

building a highway on prime gnatcatcher 

habitat. The two problems turned into 

a solution: the California Department of 

Transportation found Bank of America 

and paid it to mitigate damage from the 

highway to gnatcatcher habitat. As part 

of this payment, the agency puchased a 

conservation easement on 83 acres (33 

ha) of the bank’s property. In exchange for 

mitigation credits, that part of the Carlsbad 

Highlands would never be developed.

Two years later, the Carlsbad Highlands 

became the State’s first governmentsanctioned conservation bank. It has since 

sold all of its mitigation credits (about 180) 

Green markets can conserve species

such as this lesser long-nosed

bat (Leptonycteris yerbabuenae) 

but success often depends on

nontraditional partnerships.

Green Alchemy: Can Markets Save Biodiversity?

by Ricardo Bayon

What’s Inside? 

E C O S Y S T E M S E R V I C E S

◆ International Perspective: 

Ecosystem Services: 

Realizing the Full Value of Forests . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

◆ Paying for Water-Related Services 

From Forests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

◆ Voluntary Markets Set the Stage for 

Carbon Trading in the United States . . . . . . . . . . . 4

◆ Heritage Tourism: Learning From 

Italy’s “Green Province” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

◆ News Bits From Around the World . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

◆ Bulletin Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

No. 6, January 2007: Ecosystem Services

Ricardo Bayon is the managing director of 

“The Ecosystem Marketplace.”

orldwide, environmental markets 

are all the rage. The best known 

international markets are 

probably in industrial emissions, such as 

carbon dioxide, worth billions of dollars. 

But some countries also have markets in 

wetlands, soil salinity, and even sand.

What is an environmental market? 

Take wetlands, for example. Under the 

Clean Water Act of 1972, developers in the 

United States must offset wetland losses 

by creating or restoring another wetland 

with similar watershed functions and 

values. You can either do this yourself or 

pay one of a growing number of “wetland 

mitigation” businesses to do this for you. 

The wetland mitigation market in the 

United States is now worth an estimated 

$1 billion. Although wetland credits must 

be locally bought and sold, the market is 

rapidly acquiring various national actors.

However, when it comes to biodiversity, 

there is no globally or even nationally 

News From International Programs of the Forest Service

continued on p. 7...

Merlin Tuttle, Bat Conservation International, Inc.

W


id you know that landowners 

around the world are getting 

paid to grow trees rather than 

harvest them? To keep lands forested 

rather than develop them? Everyone 

benefits: landowners make money, 

taxpayers save money, and future 

generations will have the same rich natural 

heritage we enjoy today. 

It’s part of a global trend of paying for 

“ecosystem services”—harnessing market 

forces to protect natural resources. As 

resources become scarce, people are 

realizing that ecosystem functions have 

value that can be translated into dollars 

and cents. Emerging markets for clean air 

and water, productive soils, and biological 

diversity are tipping the balance towards 

conservation. 

Forests, in particular, provide many 

ecosystem services: They scrub our air, 

filter our water, produce our soils, and 

nurture our biodiversity. By absorbing 

and storing carbon, forests neutralize the 

effects of greenhouse gas emissions on 

global climates. 

Unfortunately, traditional markets 

for forest products fail to capture such 

nontimber values—and, increasingly, 

landowners are tempted to convert their 

forests to nonforest uses. The United States 

loses almost 3 acres (1.2 ha) of working 

farms and ranches to development every 

day; and the world loses about 30 million 

acres (12 million ha) of tropical forest every 

year, mostly to farming and ranching. 

By leveraging the many values of forest 

functions through markets, perhaps forest 

conservation can finally get a leg up on 

development. Although the trend is in 

its infancy, people around the world are 

finding imaginative ways of remunerating 

landowners for delivering ecosystem 

services:

• In Mexico, downstream water users are 

paying upstream forest managers to 

protect water quality (see the article by 

Hutch Brown). 

• In Italy, heritage tourism is encouraging 

communities to develop and protect 

their cultural and natural treasures alike 

(see the article by Kent Schneider).

• In California, landowners are profiting 

from protecting shrubland habitat for an 

endangered songbird (see the article by 

Ricardo Bayon).

• Across the United States, voluntary 

markets are helping businesses meet 

their targets for reducing carbon 

emissions, perhaps paving the way for 

a future cap-and-trade system (see the 

article by Ricardo Bayon and Amanda 

Hawn).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture 

(USDA) Forest Service is engaged at 

all levels in finding ways to reward 

landowners for delivering ecosystem 

services. Our International Programs Staff 

has organized senior leadership seminars 

to help build our awareness of the global 

challenges and opportunities associated 

with ecosystem services.

Some opportunities come from the 191 

million acres (77 million ha) of national 

forests and grasslands. These lands deliver 

a full array of ecosystem services as public 

goods, including clean water, biodiversity, 

wildlife habitat, and opportunities for 

outdoor recreation. Public lands also 

Ecosystem Services: Realizing the Full Value of Forests

by Sally Collins 

I n t e r n a t i o n a l P e r s p e c t i v e 

help visitors appreciate all the wonderful 

things they get from forests. The Forest 

Service is now looking into the possibility 

of increasing carbon sequestration on 

national forest land to help offset climate 

change. In addition, the National Forest 

System might be used to promote markets 

for ecosystem services. For example, 

a partner in Mississippi has planted 

trees to restore bottomland hardwood 

forest on newly acquired national forest 

land in exchange for carbon credits. By 

managing the land for restoration and 

carbon sequestration, the Forest Service 

guarantees the banked value of those 

credits. 

Other opportunities come from 

partnership programs. Through its State 

and Private Forestry Staff, the Forest 

Service works with States to purchase 

conservation easements from willing forest 

owners. Based on payments for services, 

such partnerships keep millions of acres 

of invaluable resources on private land 

protected in perpetuity. 

But it isn’t easy to market ecosystem 

services. Who wants to pay for something 

like water that they already get for free? 

The key is to convince people that such 

services are at risk: They won’t continue 

for long without investments in the 

ecosystems that deliver them.

There are also technical questions 

with no easy answers. How do you place 

a price tag on a unit of protected water, 

for example? Who has ownership rights? 

Who brokers the exchange? Forest Service 

researchers are actively exploring such 

questions to help markets for ecosystem 

services emerge. 

D

continued on p. 6...

Sally Collins is the Associate Chief of the Forest Service, 

Washington, DC.


magine waking up one day and 

finding your local river reduced 

to a trickle. That’s almost what happened 

in Coatepec, a coastal community in 

Veracruz, Mexico. In May and June of 1998, 

it took nearly all the water in the local river 

to meet the town’s needs.

Unusual drought was only partly to 

blame. In the dry season, most river runoff 

comes from upland cloudforests that 

capture moisture from coastal fog. But 

three decades of uncontrolled deforestation 

had devastated the forests’ fog-capturing 

capacity, so the river was running dry.

Forested ecosystems supply abundant 

flows of pure, clean water, a service 

long taken for granted and delivered for 

free. Now water supplies from forests 

are increasingly threatened, and we are 

seeing a surge of interest worldwide in 

finding ways to sustain them. Experience 

in Mexico and elsewhere suggests that 

market-based solutions can work, with 

government as the intermediary.

I

Paying for Water-Related Services From Forests

by Hutch Brown

Government has a role to play because riverflows and other freshwater 

supplies are public goods. Downstream 

municipalities can draw on taxes or user 

fees to pay upstream suppliers to sustain 

sufficient flows of pure, clean water by 

protecting the ecosystems that deliver 

them.

To save its river from running dry, the 

Mexican town of Coatepec came up with 

a solution. In 2001, it added a surcharge 

to municipal water bills, collecting enough 

funds to reward the owners of wellmanaged upstream forests. The annual 

payments were designed to discourage 

forest owners from converting their lands 

to other uses.

Drawing on the experience of Coatepec 

and communities in Costa Rica, Ecuador, 

and elsewhere, the Mexican Government 

launched an ambitious national plan in 

2003 to sustain water-related services 

from forests nationwide. Mexico’s aquifers, 

streams, and water bodies are national 

property, and the Government charges for 

their utilization. Users pay fees to support 

a program to remunerate forest owners for 

their water-related ecosystem services. 

The program is designed to keep forest 

owners from converting their lands to 

Catherine Karr, U.S. Department of State

agriculture or cattle ranching. It focuses on 

noncommercial forests in good condition; 

commercial forest owners can draw on 

other Federal programs. Highest priority 

are municipal watersheds threatened by 

deforestation, particularly forests with 

a high fog-capturing capacity. In 2004, 

the program accepted 352 applications, 

enrolling about 420,000 acres (170,000 ha) 

nationwide.

The United States has similar 

opportunities. A classic example comes 

from New York City, where the problem 

was not the quantity of water available, 

but the quality. An epidemic caused by 

waterborne pathogens, such as the one 

in 1993 in Milwaukee, WI, could kill 

hundreds of New Yorkers. In 1989, the U.S. 

Environmental Protection Agency ordered 

New York to build a water filtration plant 

costing $6 to $8 billion.

Instead, New York spent $1.5 billion 

on protecting its 2,000-square-mile 

(5,200-km2) upstate watershed. The city 

made payments to local governments 

and landowners in exchange for limiting 

development and managing forests 

sustainably in the Catskill Mountains—and 

saved billions of dollars in the bargain. 

These examples illustrate some of the 

challenges to market-based solutions. The 

New York case raised the issue of whether 

landownership gives the right to pollute—

or the obligation to protect downstream 

water supplies. What institutional 

framework is needed to balance landowner 

rights against downstream user needs?

Severe water scarcity

creates conflict in

communities and across

local and national

boundaries.

Hutch Brown is a policy analyst for the Forest Service, 

Research and Development, Policy Analysis Staff, 

Washington, DC.

Will other countries

follow Mexico's lead in

making forests a central

part of the solution?

Jennifer Peterson, Forest Service

continued on p. 7...


hen it comes to credit trading 

for ecosystem services, the 

United States lags behind—or 

so the conventional wisdom goes. In fact, 

the first markets for emissions trading 

emerged in the United States. In the late 

1980s, the U.S. Government set caps on 

sulfur dioxide emissions—a leading cause 

of acid rain—and let industries trade to 

meet the caps. Although a cap-and-trade 

system for carbon emissions—the leading 

cause of climate change—is still years away 

in the United States, voluntary markets are 

already up and running.

Europe now leads the way in regulated 

carbon markets. The European Union’s 

Emissions Trading Scheme, operational 

since January 2005, was designed to meet 

commitments by European governments 

under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an 

international agreement to reduce 

carbon emissions worldwide. The Kyoto 

accord also set up the Clean Development 

Mechanism allowing companies or industrialized countries to meet their emissions 

targets through offset projects in the 

developing world. Together, the European 

carbon market and the Clean Development 

Mechanism have traded $10 billion worth 

of carbon, according to World Bank 

estimates. 

Although not a Kyoto signatory, 

the United States has had a voluntary 

carbon market since the early 1990s. 

Indeed, the world’s first carbon offset 

deal was brokered in 1989, when the U.S. 

electricity company AES Corporation, for 

philanthropic and marketing reasons, 

invested in an agroforestry project in 

Guatemala. Trees store carbon as they grow, 

a process known as carbon sequestration; 

AES reasoned that it could offset the 

greenhouse gases emitted during electricity 

production by paying farmers in Guatemala 

to plant 50 million trees on their land.

Until the European market got 

underway, the voluntary market in the 

United States was the only international 

carbon market. Its breadth and impact are 

difficult to measure, because deals take 

place worldwide and nobody really tracks 

them. In 2005, however, perhaps 10 to 20 

million tons of carbon were traded on the 

voluntary market. It was only a fraction of 

Several U.S. cities

and States are already

at the forefront of

carbon trading and

sequestration—will the

rest of the country

catch up?

Voluntary Markets Set the Stage for Carbon Trading in the United States

by Ricardo Bayon and Amanda Hawn

John Martin, Conservation International

 George M. Aronson

Improving forest

management—such as the

current Forest Service

work in Liberia—could

prove to be valuable later

as cap-and-trade systems

increase.

W

continued on p. 7...

F o r e s t S e v i c e 

R e s e a r c h H e l p s 

C a r b o n T r a d i n g

To help forestall climate change, Forest Service 

scientists hope to better understand how much 

carbon is stored in forests and grasslands and 

how to build more storage capacity. To that end, 

researchers are inventorying the amount of carbon 

sequestered in U.S. forests and quantifying the 

effects of fire regimes on carbon cycles and forest 

sequestration. To support viable carbon markets, 

Forest Service researchers and partners are 

creating models and tools that landowners can use 

to estimate current and new carbon sequestered in 

forest and rangelands.

Part of the solution lies in better utilizing wood 

products, which continue to store carbon long 

after a timber harvest. Researchers are looking for 

ways to extend the storage capacity by improving 

the utilization, product life, and recycling of wood 

products. Scientists are also looking for ways 

to use woody biomass—often the byproduct of 

fuel reduction and forest health treatments—to 

offset fossil fuel use and reduce carbon emissions 

overall.

Ricardo Bayon is the managing director and Amanda 

Hawn is the editor of “The Ecosystem Marketplace.”

the volume in Europe, where a single week 

of trading in April 2006 saw 20 million tons 

exchanged; but it was still an impressive 

figure, given the voluntary basis of the 

trading.

A key player is the Chicago Climate 

Exchange, whose members trade among 

themselves to meet voluntary targets. A 

ton of carbon on the Chicago exchange 

has traded for anywhere from $1 to $4.50. 

Although that hardly compares to the more 

than $30 per ton traded on the European 

exchange, the Chicago exchange remains a 

potential precursor for a regulated carbon 

market in the United States. Reading the 

writing on the wall, Fortune 500 companies 

such as DuPont and Ford have joined the 


Kent Schneider formerly managed the Heritage Resource 

Program for the Forest Service, Southern Region, Atlanta, 

GA, and is now retired.

icture yourself sifting through 

a pre-Columbian firepit in 

Virginia, looking for artifacts. An 

archeologist comes up with exciting news: 

A bit of bone you found is from American 

bison. It’s proof positive that bison herds 

once roamed east of the Appalachians.

What would such an adventure be 

worth to you? Italians are betting it’s a 

lot. Communities in the Abruzzo, an area 

with a trove of archeological riches, are 

banding together to protect their regional 

heritage while building an infrastructure 

for “heritage tourists”—people willing to 

spend time and money exploring the past 

in places where artifacts are relatively easy 

to find. 

The Abruzzo is a region of forests, 

mountains, and beaches near Rome. 

Known as Italy’s “Green Province,” it has 

had continuous human habitation since 

Paleolithic times, yet it still features habitat 

for many types of wildlife, including wolves 

and bears. Much of the best habitat is 

protected in the 150,000-acre (60,000-ha) 

National Park of Abruzzo.

A magnet for both heritage and 

recreational tourism, the Abruzzo is 

pioneering a plan for payments for 

services: Communities there are drawing 

tourists willing to pay for the outdoor 

opportunities they provide. About 30 

local communities are helping to create 

archeological parks and build the needed 

roads for visitors.

Viewing the entire Abruzzo landscape 

as an “open-air museum,” the Italian 

Ministry for Cultural Property and 

Activities is developing educational 

programs associated with visitor centers, 

local exhibitions, research centers, and 

museums in order to promote both cultural 

and recreational tourism. 

The key is to attract more visitors to 

the Abruzzo. Some join archeological 

expeditions, such as the Forest Service’s 

Heritage Excursions, spending time in the 

rural heart of the Abruzzo. In exchange 

for the opportunity to search for artifacts 

in beautiful settings, they contribute to 

community development through their 

food, lodging, transportation, and other 

costs. 

The work must be carefully done. Like 

the United States, Italy is committed to 

protecting and professionally managing 

its cultural and natural treasures. When 

it comes to finding artifacts, the trick is 

to discover where to dig with a minimum 

of environmental disturbance. In 2001, 

specialists from the Forest Service and the 

University of Georgia brought subsurface 

imaging technology to the Abruzzo. The 

technology uses ground-penetrating radar 

to identify areas rich in potential artifacts. 

While delivering the new technology, the 

specialists discovered Italy’s communitybased heritage tourism program, and the 

Forest Service saw its potential for parts 

of the United States with rich natural 

and cultural resources. In 2003, the 

Forest Service and the Italian Regional 

Superintendency for the Abruzzo signed a 

3-year agreement to share expertise and 

technologies in subsurface imaging as well 

as heritage tourism.

Both sides benefit from the collaboration. 

The ultimate goal, according to Mike Kaczor, 

the Heritage Program Leader for the Forest 

Service, is sustainable, heritage-based local 

and regional development. “With these 

agreements,” he said, “we can potentially 

build a long-term relationship with a view 

towards what works and what doesn’t work 

and that benefits everyone involved.”

Italy is committed

to protecting and

professionally managing

its cultural and natural

treasures like Pompeii.

Heritage Tourism: Learning From Italy’s “Green Province”

by Kent Schneider

P

Kent Schneider, retired Forest Service

Kent Schneider, retired Forest Service

The Abruzzo in Italy is

pioneering a plan for

payments for services: 

Communities there are

drawing tourists willing

to pay to be part of an

archeological dig.


Forest Service Helps Prepare a 

Tsunami Warning System

In December 2004, the world was shocked 

when underwater earthquakes pushed huge 

waves ashore around the Indian Ocean, 

killing thousands. The heavy loss of life could 

have been avoided had a warning system 

been in place.

With help from around the globe, the 

United States is implementing the Indian 

Ocean Tsunami Warning System Program. 

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International 

Development, the system will warn coastal 

communities in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, 

Thailand, and the Maldives of impending 

threats from the sea. Due to its extensive 

experience in emergency response, the 

Forest Service is helping countries integrate 

the Incident Command System and 

emergency preparedness coordination into 

their disaster response systems.

Forest Service Supports Bat 

Conservation

More than 1,100 species of bats play a 

critical role in maintaining the health of 

forest and other ecosystems worldwide. 

Yet many bats are increasingly threatened 

by hunting, habitat loss, and disturbance of 

roosting sites.

The Forest Service International Programs 

office has initiated a new partnership with 

Bat Conservation International to support 

student scholarships aimed at conserving 

bats and their habitats around the globe 

and to help support projects, ranging from 

Colombia, to Madagascar, to Thailand. 

Projects are designed to better understand 

how bats use habitat and how they support 

seed dispersal and germination as well 

as rare-plant pollination. Results will help 

support designation of protected areas.

Forest Service Honors Bird 

Conservation Achievements

In March 2006, Forest Service Associate 

Chief Sally Collins presided over an awards 

ceremony for the agency’s Wings Across the 

Americas program.

To conserve birds across the Americas, 

the Forest Service has fostered partnerships 

across borders and boundaries through 

funding, technical expertise, and a forum 

for mobilizing citizens, governments, and 

organizations on behalf of bird conservation. 

The annual Wings Across the Americas 

awards ceremony celebrates work to 

conserve birds and their habitats, recognizing 

the roles that birds play in ecosystems. 

The 2006 awards honored outstanding 

partnership achievements in research and 

management, habitat conservation, and 

international cooperation.

N e w s B i t s F r o m A r o u n d T h e W o r l d

Visit these Web sites for more information related to articles in this issue:

Ecosystem Marketplace, Forest Trends—http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com

Forest Service’s Ecosystem Services—http://www.fs.fed.us/ecosystemservices/

Forest Service Northern Global Research Change Forest Program—

http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/global/index.html

Chicago Climate Exchange—http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/

Heritage Resource Program—http://www.fs.fed.us/recreation/programs/heritage/

Wings Across the Americas—http://www.fs.fed.us/global/wings

Bat Conservation International—http://www.bci.org

Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System—http://www.iotws.org/

Forest loss is a growing problem 

worldwide, and it won’t be stopped 

by government fiat alone. Yes, we will 

still need such traditional approaches 

as zoning or tax incentives; and yes, 

incentives for sustainable forestry 

will continue to include income from 

traditional forest products. But the best 

way to conserve our privately owned 

forests for future generations is to 

recognize that sustainable forestry is 

worth more than exploiting the land or 

selling it to developers. Through careful 

interventions, governments can help 

landowners realize the full value of their 

forests by making ecosystem services pay.

...continued from p. 2


...continued from p.1

for $10,000 to $15,000 apiece. Today, there 

are many such gnatcatcher banks in San 

Diego County, with similar mitigation 

credits selling for upwards of $25,000 each.

And that’s not all. Part of the revenue 

from the sale of credits by the Carlsbad 

Highlands Conservation Bank went into 

a trust fund that can be used—at least in 

theory—to pay for conservation of the 

land. In effect, a private landholder has 

created a private gnatcatcher park funded 

in perpetuity.

Californians have since created more 

than 50 conservation banks for a variety of 

endangered species. And California is not 

alone: State and Federal governments have 

also issued guidelines for their creation, 

and conservation banking is becoming a 

multimillion-dollar business. Conservation 

banks are springing up all over the 

United States, driven by State and private 

interests. For example, Alabama’s Mobile 

Sewer and Water Commission established 

one conservation bank for gopher tortoise, 

and International Paper—the timber 

industry giant—is in the process of creating 

another for red-cockaded woodpeckers.

Environmental markets in biodiversity 

are slowly becoming a reality. The impact of 

this could be tremendous: If strong markets 

in biodiversity emerge, business will have 

succeeded in transforming the preservation 

of biodiversity from a financial burden into 

an economic boon. Now, that is a form of 

green alchemy worth striving for!

...continued from p. 4

exchange, and future prospects for 

carbon markets worldwide look promising: 

On the European exchange alone, carbon 

trading already exceeds the volume of 

trading for all U.S. agricultural commodities 

combined. 

U.S. cities and States are also getting 

in on the action. Dozens of cities have 

pledged to meet targets for reduced carbon 

emissions, and eight Northeastern States 

are putting the finishing touches on a 

State-regulated carbon market known as 

the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. 

The Western States of California, Oregon, 

and Washington are also considering a 

regulated carbon market, as are several 

Southwestern States. California already has 

a carbon registry, the California Climate 

Action Registry, which could form the 

basis for carbon trading nationwide; it is 

considered more robust than its Federal 

counterpart, a voluntary registry known as 

1605b. Federal research also supports the 

development of carbon trading and other 

markets for ecosystem services.

Voluntary carbon markets, coupled with 

Federal support as well as regional, State, 

and local initiatives, signal great things 

to come. The question is not whether 

regulated carbon markets will appear in the 

United States, but rather when, where, and 

how. The most sanguine observers foresee 

a Federal cap-and-trade system within 10 

years; skeptics predict State-level actions 

for more than a decade before the Federal 

Government finally takes over. Either way, 

the smart money is on environmental 

markets playing a key role in the United 

States in the not-too-distant future. For 

more information on how these markets 

are evolving, come visit us at 

http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com.

A related challenge has to do with 

valuing the water-related service and 

finding the right level of payment. The 

Mexican case raised the issue of whether 

payments were excessive (above the 

opportunity cost to the landowner of not 

converting to nonforest uses) or misplaced 

(in places where the risk of deforestation 

was already low). In either case, the result 

is waste. What market framework most 

efficiently brings supply into balance with 

use?

Considerable research is needed if 

market-based solutions are to succeed, and 

the Forest Service’s research stations have 

already begun exploring such questions. 

But the need is clear: As the world loses 

its forested ecosystems, we can no longer 

afford to take the services they deliver for 

granted. The future of our children—and 

theirs—will depend on the investments we 

make in the natural capital around us.

...continued from p.3

1 According to an article in Newsweek

(Karen Breslau, “It Can Pay To Be Green,” 

22 May 2006). 

1


2007 International Seminar on Forest 

Administration and Management

October 1-19, 2007

Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and the District of 

Columbia, USA

Jointly offered by Forest Service International 

Programs and Northern Arizona University, 

this seminar presents a broad spectrum of 

natural resource management techniques 

and institutional arrangements so that 

participants may selectively gather ideas 

that can assist in the management of their 

lands. It focuses on strategies and methods 

to develop, manage, and conserve natural 

resources for the sustained delivery of goods 

and services to meet the full range of human 

needs. For application details, visit http://

www.fs.fed.us/global/is/isfam/welcome.

htm or write to Dr. Michael Wagner, P.O. Box 

15018, 82 Huffer Lane, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, 

USA or e-mail at ISFAM@nau.edu.2005

2007 International Seminar on 

Protected Area Management 

August 1-18, 2007

Missoula, Montana, USA

This seminar—jointly offered by the University of Montana, University of Idaho, 

Colorado State University, and Forest Service International Programs—is geared for 

senior-level managers and policymakers 

working in protected areas. The program 

examines and stimulates debate on management strategies, policies, and innovative 

institutional arrangements to address the 

conservation and use of the world’s most 

special places. For application details, visit 

http://www.fs.fed.us/global/is/ispam/

welcome.htm or write to Wayne Freimund, 

School of Forestry, The University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812, USA, or e-mail at 

wayne@forestry.umt.edu.

B u l l e t i n B o a r d

The Global Leaflet presents highlights of policy, 

research, technical cooperation, development, 

and conservation activities in which the Forest 

Service is involved worldwide. Its purpose is 

to demonstrate the breadth and importance of 

international collaboration on natural resource 

management issues and to share information 

within the Forest Service and with our partners 

in the United States and around the world.

International Programs is dedicated to applying 

the wealth of skills within the Forest Service to 

foster sustainable forest management globally. 

We encourage linking the agency’s researchers, 

foresters, wildlife biologists, hydrologists, 

policymakers, and disaster specialists with 

partners overseas to work on assignments 

in the areas of technical cooperation, policy 

assistance, and disaster coordination. Our 

focus is on key natural resource problems 

and issues in countries with significant forest 

resources and important forest-related 

trade with the United States. International 

cooperation results in improved sustainable 

natural resource practices in partner countries, 

develops the skills of Forest Service personnel, 

and brings back knowledge and innovative 

technologies to the United States.

Secretary of Agriculture: Mike Johanns

Chief of the Forest Service: Dale N. Bosworth

International Programs

Forest Service

1099 14th St. NW, Suite 5500W

Washington, DC 20005-3402

Web site: http://www.fs.fed.us/global

Director: Val Mezainis 

Phone: (202) 205-1650

Art Director: Jeff Baldwin

Editor: Hutch Brown

United States Department of Agriculture

Forest Service

International Programs

2007 International Field Course 

on Wildlands and Protected Area 

Management

July 10-August 12, 2007

Fort Collins, Colorado, USA

Co-hosted by the Center for Protected 

Area Management and Training at Colorado State University and Forest Service 

International Programs, this course, held 

in Spanish, presents key concepts and 

methods of protected area management 

while emphasizing field-based practical 

exercises. For application details, visit 

http://www.fs.fed.us/global/is/field_

course/welcome.htm or write to Ryan 

Finchum, Colorado State University, Center 

for Protected Area Management and Training, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1480, USA, or 

e-mail at finchum@cnr.colostate.edu. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 

prohibits discrimination in all its programs 

and activities on the basis of race, color, 

national origin, age, disability, and where 

applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, 

parental status, religion, sexual orientation, 

genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, 

or because all or part of an individual’s 

income is derived from any public assistance 

program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to 

all programs.) Persons with disabilities who 

require alternative means for communication 

of program information (Braille, large print, 

audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s 

TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 

(voice and TDD). To file a complaint of 

discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office 

of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, 

S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410, or 

call (800) 795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-

6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity 

provider and employer.