American Tree Farm System

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The American Tree Farm System is an agroforestry practice characterized by intentional, integrated, intensive and interactive management of an existing forested ecosystem wherein forest health is of paramount concern. It is neither forestry nor farming in the traditional sense.

Forest farm management principles constitute an ecological approach to forest management through efforts to find a balance between conservation of native biodiversity and wildlife habitat within the forest and limited, judicious utilization of the forest resources. It attempts to bring secondary growth forests that have been overused and whose ecosystems have become so fragmented that their natural processes are out of equilibrium, back into ecological balance through careful, intentional manipulation over time, emulating natural processes to restore original, natural diversity of species.

Methods include intensive, yet cautious thinning of overstocked, suppressed tree stands such that no individual species is decimated and such that the crown cover is never depleted leaving the forest floor exposed to excessive sun, rain and erosion ; multiple integrated entries to accomplish thinnings so that the systemic shock is not so great and interactive management leaving a cross-section of healthy trees and shrubs of all ages and species, rather than a monoculture of timber species.

Forest farm management is a type of forest stewardship ethic whose philosophy is that the term "sustainable" means what is sustainable for the earth, not what is sustainable for man's demand and its objective is to restore and maintain the health of the forest land's many and varied ecosystems.

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"Natural Selection Forestry, The Forest Farmers Handbook"; Orville Camp, 1984.
"The Forest Management Controversy"; Orville Camp, from "The Forest Farm Journal", Forest Farm Association publication, 1985-1992.
"North American Agroforestry: An Integrated Science and Practice, American Society of Agronomy, Inc."; Gold, Rietveld, Garrett and Fisher, 2000.
"Forest Farming Practices"; D.B. Hill and L.E. Buck, 2000.
"Alex's Forest Farm"; j.a. kendrick, 2005.

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The National Woodland Owners Association (NWOA), founded in 1983, is a nationwide organization made up of non-industrial private woodland owners and is independent of the forest products industry and government forestry agencies. NWOA works with all organizations to promote non-industrial forestry and the best interests of woodland owners. With its 32 affiliated state organizations working as the Alliance of Landowner Associations, it has become the most active, independent landowners group in the country.
ATFS was established in response to concerns that America's private forests were being cut at unsustainable rates without reforestation. The term "tree farming" was first used in the 1940's to introduce the public to sustainable forestry terminology they could easily understand. Farming implies continual stewardship and production of goods year after year. By linking the term "farming" with trees, foresters could communicate the concept of sustainable production of forest products over time. Tree Farming implies commitment to the land and was the philosophical opposite of the "cut-out and get-out" philosophy of the early 20th century. It began in 1941 when the first Tree Farm was designated in Washington State. The Tree Farm's purpose was to demonstrate sound forest management practices to area landowners.

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