What is the Roundtable on Sustainable Forests?

The Roundtable on Sustainable Forests is an open and inclusive process committed to the goal of sustainable forest management (SFM) on public and private lands in the United States. Roundtable participants include public and private organizations and individuals committed to better decision-making through shared learning and increased understanding.

The Roundtable's primary activity to date has been the implementation of an internationally agreed upon set of criteria and indicators for the purpose of developing a shared understanding of current forest conditions and a baseline against which to mark future progress toward sustainability. To this end, the Roundtable focused much of its attention on identifying and evaluating the quality of data that can be used to assess the state of the nation's forests and providing input on the production of the National Report on Sustainable Forests 2003 released in March 2004. In doing so, the Roundtable stimulated a national discussion of SFM and served as the catalyst for more collaborative data management relationships among several federal agencies. The report can be downloaded from the USDA Forest Service's site on the National Report.   Roundtable efforts since completion of this report have focused on stimulating stakeholder dialogue on the meaning of the 2003 report, and preparing for the next national report in 2010.  Additional details about related Roundtable activities are included in the work plan for the Roundtable. Click here to see the Roundtable's current work plan.

For a chronology of the Roundtable's major activities to date, click here.

The Roundtable has utilized multi-stakeholder dialogue as the primary vehicle for inquiry, input, and feedback. This process has created a culture of collaboration and shared learning on a subject that is often fraught with gridlock and controversy.

Click on the What's New link to learn about recent Roundtable activities.