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When people think about USDA they usually think of the Farm Service Agency loan officer helping a farmer finance a new tractor, the Extension agent explaining the latest research to a rancher, or the Rural Development employee bringing broadband to a rural community.  But few would realize our largest agency is not directly responsible for our farms, but rather our forests.

The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of forests and range lands, and helps States, Tribes, and communities manage an additional 500 million acres – together about 30% of the United States!  Through its work in managing and protecting these lands the Forest Service also plays a critical, even if often overlooked, role in local and regional food systems.

More and more these days we recognize that clean water is one of the most important products of our forests.  Forest lands are the source of nearly two-thirds of water in the 48 contiguous states -- the clean water that fills our rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands, sustains our fisheries, or flows from the taps of our homes and businesses.  Forests serve as a living sponge to capture, store and slowly release precipitation as well as trapping and transforming the chemicals and nutrient deposits that come in the rain or from adjacent runoff.  All the benefits that forests provide—like erosion and sediment control, maintenance of water quality, regulation of flows, and provision of clean drinking water—are called ecosystem services, and in this case can be called watershed services.

Although the U.S. Forest Service Planning Rule is still a draft document, it has helped to produce environmental change for one special group of involved students. Over the past year this special group of young adults attended planning rule public sessions, followed developing issues, and then provided some input of their own. Through their diligence and proactive engagement, some of their concerns have made it into the draft planning rule.

In 1995, the Girl Scouts of the USA adopted “Linking Girls to the Land,” a program supported by the U.S. Forest Service and one that echoes the non-profit organization’s nearly decade-long legacy of helping to build girls of courage, confidence and character, and who make the world a better place.

On Saturday, March 12, as they have all week during National Girl Scout Week, the organization will honor founder Juliette Gordon Low, who organized the nation’s first Girl Scout Troop with just 18 girls in Savannah, Ga., 99 years ago. Congress chartered the Girl Scouts of the USA on March 16, 1950.

The U.S. Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service honored partnerships in four states for outstanding efforts in conservation and forest stewardship.

The National Joint Forestry Team, comprised of the Forest Service, NRCS, conservation districts, and state forestry organizations, sponsors the Two Chiefs’ Partnership Award. Award winners work in partnership with the team’s agencies and organizations.

The Forest Service’s i-Tree Pest Detection software, due to be released next week, is going to help urban foresters curb the spread of invasive species and the dead trees left in their wake.

Cities and communities are frequently the first site of introduction for exotic pests, where they remain undetected until populations are well established and have had harmful impacts on the health of host trees. Pests, such as Asian longhorned beetle and emerald ash borer, are introduced into the U.S. through international shipments and packaging materials. Ports and transportation centers are areas of interest for urban foresters concerned with maintaining healthy forests.

The Weeks Act, which went into effect on March 1, 1911, has been identified as one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation in American history.

In the early 1900s the public began to embrace a more proactive attitude toward conserving public lands. Just the year before, in 1910, Gifford Pinchot started the Forest Service. Before the Weeks Act, lands set aside for conservation were all located in the West and were created from large blocks of land in the public domain. Millions of acres of bare, eroded lands dotted the Eastern states from cut-over and farmed-out lands. In the West, the epic wildfires of 1910 fueled support for the Act.

The U.S. Forest Service is helping Minority Landowner Magazine celebrate its 5th anniversary with a conference in support of minority farmers, ranchers and forest landowners.

Minority Landowner will convene the conference Feb. 24-26 in Raleigh, N.C., with some 300 farmers and landowners from across the country. Through a facilitative process of four concurrent breakout sessions, and small group interactive discussion, farmers, ranchers and forest landowners will design an intervention program to help save family farms.

Like in many communities, tree care in Casper, Wyo. was largely reactive and just one of many duties performed by the Public Services Department staff. Year after year of seeing trees removed without a plan for replacement worried the city staff members who performed tree work. No one, however, had any basis for articulating an argument that Casper’s prized legacy—their tree canopy—was poised for imminent decline. The last large scale tree planting initiative in Casper was at the end of World War II and their urban forest, full of Siberian elms, was not aging gracefully. For a few staff members, finding a way to make a compelling argument to care for community trees that was cost effective, accessible and credible became their personal charge.

Members of the Tribes already know this, but President Obama, Secretary Vilsack and members of this Administration take very seriously the need to work with Tribes on a government to government basis, and to provide the Tribes with the technical and economic support they need not just to survive, but to grow, prosper and thrive. This commitment from the Administration provides me and this department with the opportunity to do great things in concert with First Americans.