Stewardship is the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.  The forests are entrusted to our care and for many years things have been muddling along fairly well.  In California we had the Department of Forestry and they managed several forest nurseries as well as a seed bank. Many of the large lumber companies had their own nurseries including the nurseries in Georgia Pacific and Louisiana Pacific. One of the major tenets of forest stewardship has been reforestation and reforestation depends on a stable supply of seedlings with which to replace the trees that were harvested. In California the supply of nursery seedlings has been severely curtailed.  Management companies such as Mendocino Redwoods and Humboldt Redwoods need abut 800,000 seedlings a year and they have taken steps to either grow the seedlings themselves and are able to buy some. Smaller property owners re left to fend for themselves with no seedling resources available to them: I know, because I manage a small forest and I have not been able to buy seedlings for reforestation for several years.  The big industrial companies have the resources to cover their needs but the forest resources are owned by myriad small landowners and they have no one to turn to.

Pacific Forest Stewards Foundation (PFS) has been organized to help the small forest owner to keep their forests healthy. We need you to help us do this.  PFS intends to implement a forest nursery on property we control in the heart of the redwood forest ecosphere.  On the banks of the Noyo river in Fort Bragg, CA we secured over 30 acres which will be dedicated to the practice of growing reforestation seedlings.  Since we have the technology we plan on growing seedlings in the traditional way in containers and also by cloning.  Cloning will allow us to grow more trees than are otherwise possible with traditional methods. Please help us to achieve this by donating what you can. As little as $1 will allow us to buy seeds from experienced seed collectors. Please check out the Pacific Forest Stewards Foundation at http://pacificforeststewards.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/forest-stewards/ and please help with your donation.