The Center for Northern Woodlands Education, Inc., more commonly known as Northern Woodlands, is a 501(c)(3) public-benefit corporation whose mission is to encourage a culture of forest stewardship in the Northeast by increasing understanding of and appreciation for the natural wonders, economic productivity, and ecological integrity of the region’s forests.

Northern Woodlands has grown from a shoestring operation begun in 1994 to one with annual revenues of $600,000, a staff of 5.3 FTEs and a reach through our various programs of more than 100,000 readers. Along the way, our work has been honored by associations of loggers, foresters, and botanists, and a natural history museum. With our call for stewardship of these forests that surround us, we have had a positive influence on the actions taken by landowners, foresters, and loggers on millions of acres of forestland in the Northeast.

Northern Woodlands builds on the 16-year success of its principal program, Northern Woodlands magazine, which has developed a reputation as the Northeast’s leading conservation, forestry, and wildlife publication. Northern Woodlands currently has a paid circulation of 13,000 readers. The magazine was started in 1994 as Vermont Woodlands and expanded to Northern Woodlands in 1999.

Another of Northern Woodlands’ programs is Northern Woodlands Goes to School (NWGTS), a place-based environmental education program. Its goal is to prepare a new generation of forest stewards by introducing students to the ecosystems of the forests where they live and to the competing demands on those forests’ resources. Begun in 1998, NWGTS now has 5,000 participating students in more than 300 classrooms across the region.

The organization’s third program, Northern Woodlands News and Information, reaches out beyond the magazine and school programs to engage audiences in a variety of other ways. This currently includes The Outside Story ecology column that now runs in a dozen newspapers in New Hampshire and Vermont reaching 86,000 newspaper subscribers each week. Another outgrowth of this column series is The Outside Story, a very well-reviewed paperback book that is a collection of 72 of the best articles.

In February 2006, we published The Place You Call Home: A Guide to Caring for Your Land in the Upper Valley, which is a landowner’s manual intended for both long-time residents and new arrivals in the Upper Valley. It was such a successful pilot that we published a second version for the Catskills in November 2006, and a third, a statewide edition for Vermont, was released in October 2008. Our next edition designed for New York State is scheduled for production later this year. Surveys show that 46% of the readers made positive changes in their land management based on information in the publication.

For more information about Northern Woodlands email mail@northernwoodlands.org or visit www.northernwoodlands.org.