The eight-nation “Baltic Forest” initiative met in late September in Estonia’s capital, Tallin. This was the second full gathering of representatives of the project since its launch in Sundsvald, Sweden, in January 2006. Dr. Fred Pollett, Senior Consultant to the IMFNS, attended as a resource person on behalf of the IMFNS. The ambitious two-year project’s participants are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, Sweden, Finland and Germany. Model forests feature as one of five work packages now being developed:

• WP1: Forest management and production aspects.
• WP2: Forest ecology and environmental aspects.
• WP3: Forest social aspects.
• WP4: Small-scale private and state forestry and forest based small to medium-sized enterprises.
• WP5: Model forests as a tool for sustainable forest management and regional development.

The meeting was an opportunity to continue to build awareness of the Model Forest concept and to do some forward planning. Follow-up is expected to include a series of workshops on WP5 to be hosted in Poland in spring 2007, and the third meeting of the full group in Germany, also in the spring 2007.

For more information, contact Robert Axelsson at robert.axelsson@smsk.slu.se.