HF Forest Policy Analyst Honored with Int'l Award

The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) Small Scale Forestry group recently honored HF Forest Policy Analyst David Kittredge with the 2016 Brandl Award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of small-scale forestry research.

Kittredge has served as a forester on the faculty in the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since 1987. At Harvard Forest, he provides management, policy, and social science perspectives to a host of long-term ecological research projects. He also co-directs the Family Forest Research Center (FFRC), a national joint venture between UMass and the USDA Forest Service, whose mission is to study the attitudes and behaviors of family forest owners.

Kittredge's ground-breaking work with family forest owners is vital because, collectively, family forest owners own and manage more of the nation's forestland than industry or government (family forests comprise 36% - or 263 million acres - of the nation's total forestland). The research is also challenging: small-scale forests often span multiple ownerships and involve not only the natural variety of trees, plants, and animals, but a host of social factors including economics, sociology, psychology, and history. 

The Brandl Award was first given by IUFRO in 2008, and named for Professor Dr. Helmut Brandl, a founder of the IUFRO Small-scale Forestry group and a leading scholar of private forest policy in Germany. IUFRO is the global network for forest science cooperation, uniting more than 15,000 scientists in almost 700 Member Organizations in over 110 countries. 

• Learn more about Kittredge's recent work as a Harvard Forest Bullard Fellow.
• Learn more and find resources at the UMass Family Forest Research Center.