When you buy a car, you receive an owner’s manual. When you buy an appliance like a refrigerator, you get an owner’s manual. It makes sense. As the proud new owner of an expensive piece of equipment, you don’t want to do anything to compromise its long-term value and usefulness.
Then why does the largest purchase any of us will ever make come with no such owner’s manual. When you buy a piece of land, you’re on your own. How do you take care of the plants and animals that inhabit your land? How do you make sure that you don’t compromise the forest’s value both economically and ecologically?
That is a huge problem that Northern Woodlands is working to solve with our publication, The Place You Call Home. It’s an owner’s manual for family forest owners. To date, we have completed three: one for the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, the second for the Catskills in New York, and a third state-wide version for Vermont.
These are stand-alone magazine-format publications with stories and a resource guide written specifically for a particular region. This Spring and Summer, we are working on another state-wide version, this time for New York. We are currently developing the content and the distribution system.
These publications will be distributed free to landowners who own 10 or more acres of forestland. If it’s free to the end user, how do we make it happen? We raise the funds from individuals, businesses, and foundations. If you’d like to help make sure new owners of land receive an owner’s manual, please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). It can help make the difference between an irresponsible logging job and a good one, and between an intact forest and a subdivided one.
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