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Welcome to the Mature and Old Growth Science Summit

With the release of Executive Order (EO) 14072 on April 22, 2022, the Biden Administration placed the health and sustainability of the nation’s forests at the center of its agenda. The EO calls particular attention to the importance of conserving mature and old-growth (MOG) forests on federal lands because of the diverse suite of benefits they provide to people and planet. The USDA Forest Service and the DOI's Bureau of Land Management have since been developing the Mature and Old Growth Initiative, which is a national-scale effort to define, inventory, and build a strategy to conserve MOG forests on federal lands.

In the context of this ongoing effort, SAF convened the "The Mature and Old Growth Science Summit" in March 2024. The presentations and discussions were curated to explore the state of MOG science, ethics, and policy, as well as to advance constructive dialogue on conservation opportunities for these important resources. The Summit was an unprecedented opportunity to hear from a diversity of leaders on our best strategies for fostering resilient ecosystems in the face of a changing climate.

The recorded technical sessions below have CFEs attached in pursuit of furthering your professional goals, and each session can be registered for individually. Alternatively, you can register for the package to have all sessions added to your dashboard for easy access in the future. Please note that you will need to register for a free SAF account in order to view these recordings.

If you would like to register for the package, please click here. Otherwise, peruse as you'd like.

Session One: How Culture, Ethics, and History Influence our Views of MOG

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Hear from three speakers on philosophical, historical, and cultural considerations for how we approach forest policy and management of mature and old-growth forests.

FREE - Register to Access

1.0 Category 1 CFE

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Session Two: USDA Forest Service: Agency Update on the MOG Initiative

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The USDA Forest Service provides an update on the latest science and policy developments shaping their ongoing Mature and Old Growth Initiative with an emphasis on the environmental impact statement anticipated for summer 2024.

FREE - Register to Access

0.5 Category 1 CFE

ACCESS HERE

Session Three: Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge for Climate-Adapted Forests

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This presentation overviews an ecocultural state-of-knowledge report that brings together Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science to support climate and wildfire adaptation strategies for forest landscapes.

FREE - Register to Access

0.5 Category 1 CFE

ACCESS HERE

Session Four: Balancing Carbon and Resilience on the Forested Landscape

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These presentations seek to help us understand how to balance forest health and resilience with optimized carbon storage. They also present multiple narratives on forest carbon management as related to mature and old-growth forests.

FREE - Register to Access

1.5 Category 1 CFEs

ACCESS HERE

Session Five: Regional Ecology and Management

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In this session, we hear from experts representing their respective region to help us understand how we define, assess, and foster the conservation of old-growth forests.

FREE - Register to Access

3.0 Category 1 CFEs

ACCESS HERE