Use of Blue Ridge Forever conservation value viewer (or another similar tool that identifies areas of higher value and/or higher risk) to identify areas of greater risk for threats to aquatic biodiversity within the Central Appalachian CBA, and establish a mitigation bank for those areas with ‘forest conservation credits’
Participate in the discussion forum to share ideas and provide feedback about practical actions that companies can take to promote positive impacts on forest management, and reduce the risk of procuring wood from forests where important ecological values are threatened.
The forum is organized by each Regional Meeting with each Specified Risk Topic listed under each meeting:
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Asheville (Appalachian Region)
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Atlanta (Southeast/Mississippi Alluvial Valley Regions)
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Portland (Pacific Coast/Rocky Mountain Regions)
Not being familiar with this particular viewer, I would strongly hesitate before I knew how the information in the viewer was being populated. Is the base research reliable, valid, and recent? FSC doesn't exactly have a great track record of vetting their sources before requiring usage of said source. We obviously have to pull information from somewhere to formulate a plan around, but any such information should be vetted carefully. If found lacking, perhaps money would be better spent sponsoring current research on the desired issue.
Not being familiar with the Blue Ridge Forever viewer, this sounds like a good idea on its face. If we can correctly identify areas at higher risk, why wouldn’t we? However, to be effective these conservation value viewers would need to be dependable and reputable to make this mitigation option a reliable means of risk mitigation. Is FSC willing to use such conservation tools?
Not sure thatt this idea is operational at this time and also not sure that FSC should adopt the use of these types of conservation trading schemes. But it would be great and would make logical sense if the CW NRA and Risk Mitigation Measures allign with other regional initiatives assessing environmental risk from bad forestry like the the viewer mentioned above and the forthcoming American Forest Foundation and Green Blue Forests In Focus (FIF) tool. If all of these tools would reinforce each otherthere is a much greater chance that more positive outocmes would happen in the woods and these risks would be reduced.