Community forestry demystified: Sometimes the unknown isn't such a scary place

摘要

"Community forests are a square peg in a round hole. How can we enable them to meet their full potential?" These words from a recent forum on the topic, held in Fredericton, New Brunswick, summed up nicely the challenges facing those interested in developing community forestry in the Maritimes. Anyone who has spenttime in or around the forest industry recognizes the term "community forestry" as old hat. It seems to float around the periphery as a Utopian ideal - able to solve all our current woes, yet destined to remain out of reach. Many people dismiss the concept as something complicated and impractical, or say they vaguely remember hearing that it was tried andfailed somewhere, sometime, soitlikely won't work here. Or perhaps it is the case thatthese tired old lines are nothing but a cratch to excuse ourselves from treading into the unknown, which, as we all know, is a scary place.