Designing a revised McIntire-Stennis Strategic Plan

Over the last 10 years, many changes in the economy, forest and wood products industries, state and federal agencies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and various research funding programs have combined to change the complexion of forest resources research in the United States. Increasingly, concern is being expressed that overall forest science research capacity is declining, which threatens not only our ability to conduct important research, but also the development of future generations of scientists who will tackle the critical forest management issues of our time. As one of the most fundamentally important funding programs supporting forestry research in the United States, the McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forest Research Program (MS Program) has produced thousands of scientists, leveraged millions of dollars (at a 1:9-dollar ratio), and advanced fundamentally important applied research efforts toward managing the nation’s natural resources. Despite these successes, funding for the MS Program remains well below levels authorized by the act’s original language and growth lags well behind several other USDA capacity research programs (e.g., Hatch, Evans-Allen, etc.). At a time when challenges facing management of the nation’s forests are reaching critical levels in the eyes of many experts, and the capacity to produce the next generation of scientists to conduct fundamentally important forestry research is declining, a thorough review, and new strategic analysis, of the MS Program may be warranted. NAUFRP will convene a group of leading forestry scientists, administrators, stakeholders, and partners (20-30 individuals to form the 2015 McIntire-Stennis Strategic Planning Committee) to 1) determine the scope and depth of revision to the McIntire-Stennis Strategic Plan, 2) identify the key partners, stakeholders, and users of McIntire-Stennis resources (i.e., affected interests) who should be a part of the revision process (>300 individuals comprising the Stakeholder Group), 3) identify key program needs to meet the original intent of the MS Program, and 4) design a robust methodology for soliciting, analyzing, and summarizing input from the group of affected interests.