Guldin Forestry

The Seventh American Forest Congress was a citizen gathering that used a round table process to discuss, "What is our common vision?" for America's forests, and "What principles do we agree upon to guide us toward our vision?".  The Congress was attended by 1,519 people, who gathered on February 24-26, 1996 in Washington, DC.  The Congress was preceded by 51 regional and local round tables and 43 collaborative meetings in which an estimated 4,000 people participated.

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Much good dialogue was held in the preliminary meetings and at the Congress itself.  Although several national-scale and regional reports were prepared by the Office of the Seventh American Forest Congress, whose headquarters were at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in New Haven, CT, the reports were only reproduced and circulated as photocopies, and not formally published in the peer-reviewed literature or in book form.  Consequently, online searches today cannot find most of the reports. 

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To restore online access to the Final Report and key national and regional reports about research priorities, I have obtained PDF copies from the few university and Forest Service libraries where scattered hard copies still exist, and now make them available below.  I was greatly assisted in assembling these out-of-print reports by Gary Dunning, Executive Director of The Forest Dialogue at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, who earlier in his career served as National Coordinator for the Seventh American Forest Congress.  My thanks also to Paul Ellefson and the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy and to Forest Service librarians at the National Forest Service Library in Fort Collins, CO, the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, WI, and the International Institute of Tropical Forestry in Rio Piedras, PR for diligently searching their stacks to find and digitize several of the reports made available below.