Who We Are

The Forest Partnership is an aggregation of foresters and landowners with the goal of providing third-party certified and/or locally grown wood to nearby wood users. Its present area of coverage is Vermont and eastern New Hampshire.  At the heart of TFP are foresters and landowners who have a passion for well managed lands.

 

History & Background

The Forest Partnership, L3C was established in 2010.  Prior to its formation, Redstart Forestry, a small company in Corinth, VT, had worked to test third-party certification for small landowners and ways of connecting sustainable log supply with demand for lumber.  Redstart, with support from the National Wildlife Federation and Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, became FSC certified in 2005.  Soon it became evident that if real lasting connections were to be built between forest landowners and the marketplace for wood and wood products, including more foresters in a broader geographical region would be beneficial.  As interest grew and foresters Alan Calfee, Andrew Sheere, and, Jim Wood joined Redstart, it became clear that a separate company was needed and The Forest Partnership, L3C was founded.

 

More about The Forest Partnership

The Forest Partnership is an L3C.  An L3C operates similarly to a regular LLC and can be profitable, however, unlike a for-profit business; the primary focus of the L3C is not to make money, but to achieve socially beneficial aims, with profit making as a secondary goal.

 

Calfee1Alan Calfee, Calfee Woodland Management

 

Alan is a landowner, forester and conservationist who has been practicing forestry in southwestern Vermont for over 20 years. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resource Management and a Masters in Forestry from UVM. His business, Calfee Woodland Management, which also involved a second staff forester, helps hundreds of private woodland owners steward their properties with a holistic and sustainable long-term approach. Alan has taught at the college level and worked extensively with the Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC) forest management certification program in the U.S. and other countries. He has a passion for observing and studying the whole forest and for hands on management.

 

 

lynn1.comLynn Lavine, Forest*Care

 

Lynn was born in Brooklyn and moved to Vermont in 1974.  Four years later, having received her master’s degree in forestry from the University of Massachusetts, Lynn became the first female consulting forester in New England.  Lynn is the owner of Forest*Care and manages over 15,000 acres, owned by more than 200 woodland owners.  The vast majority of the land she manages is in Windham County.  Lynn holds licenses in both Massachusetts and Vermont and is certified with Vermont Woodlands Association.  Levine started the Conservation Commission in her town and is still actively involved.  Throughout her career, she has been passionate about protecting the integrity of the forest.  Lynn is also an environmental educator, and a tracker.  Lynn has been a consultant to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS), creating a middle school environmental citizenship program and Project Learning Tree.  Levine has also designed a program for training teachers to teach tracking.  In the last three years, she has created five interpretive trails and helped organize a workshop for women landowners for Vermont Woodlands Association (VWA).  She is also working on a video for VWA on the effects of harvesting on aesthetics.  Levine has co-authored and authored several books including Mammal Tracks and Scat: Life Size-Tracking Guide, Working with Your Woodland: A Landowner’s Guide and now Snow Secrets, Spring Secrets (a sequel to Snow Secrets),   Is It Time, Yet, (a picture book about Spot the Salamander returning to the vernal pool of his birth) and Mammal Tracks and Scat: Life Size Pocket Guide.

 

 

Ben Machin1Ben Machin, Redstart Forestry

 

Ben received a Bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College in 1996 and a Master’s in Forestry from University of Vermont in 2003. Prior to joining Redstart Forestry in 2002, Ben was employed as a firefighter – smokejumper with the USDA Forest Service in Redmond Oregon. Ben was a 1996 Watson Fellowship recipient, a 2002 Leopold Schepp Scholar, a 2003 Snelling Center for Government Fellow, and was presented with the 2007 Mollie Beattie Young Forester Leadership Award. Redstart manages over 70,000 acres in east central Vermont taking an integrated approach that includes ecological restoration, land conservation, invasive plant assessment and control, stream geomorphic assessment and river protection. Redstart held their own FSC-certified from 2006-2011 , and as the consulting forester for the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, has additional experience with their stand-alone FSC certificate.

 

 
andy_profile1Andrew Sheere, Long View Forest Management & Contracting

 

Andy received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maine at Orono in 1987, where he was awarded the northeast section of the Forest Products Research Society’s outstanding student as a senior in the Wood Utilization program.  In 1996, Andy started Future Generations Forestry as its sole proprietor and has been committed to practicing sustainable forestry in southeastern Vermont ever since.   Andy has recently made the move to Long View Forest Management & Contracting now acts as their Senior Forester.  Mr. Sheere was a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) assessor certified through Rainforest Alliance and is a Tree Farm Inspector.  He has completed the Game of Logging and training through the wildlife habitat advocacy group Vermont Coverts.  He is a member of the Society of American Foresters, The Forest Guild and The Woodland Owners Association.  Andy enjoys community involvement and is a volunteer firefighter with the Chester Fire Department and has been Cubmaster in the local Cub Scout pack.  His interests include camping, hiking, reading and writing an occasional poem.  He lives in Chester, Vermont with his wife and two children.

 

 

Jim Wood_photo1Jim Wood, North Country Environmental and Forestry

 

Jim is a forester, wildlife habitat specialist, and natural resource consultant who has been working in northeastern Vermont for over 20 years. His business, North Country Environmental and Forestry, manages forestland for over 300 private landowner clients, developing forest management plans, laying out and administering timber sales, and managing logging contracts and marketing timber resources. Jim is also quite knowledgeable about the issues and opportunities facing large parcels through his work as the forestland manager for an 86,000 acre ownership in Northeastern Vermont owned by Essex Timber Company, LLC from July 1999 – October 2008. This parcel was the largest parcel in Vermont to be FSC-certified, was one of the first to successful become certified, and is protected by a Vermont Land Trust easement.