I love your ideas here. I have been working for the past decade or so on expanding the town forest in my small town in New England.

One of the first things we did, which was quite controversial, was conduct a harvest of older and less healthy trees. We did this under the supervision of a forester who has been specially trained in promoting bird habitat and protecting watershed lands.

Money from the harvest has been used to match state and private grants to expand the forest.

In this part of the world the greatest threat to forests is not responsible logging but development.

The challenge is to develop a sound forest management plan and engage as many different stakeholders as possible. One of our strongest advocates for the plan recently has been the professional and amateur wildlife photographers who love getting pictures of pileated woodpeckers, great blue herons, osprey, deer, moose, bobcats, etc.

Success leads to success and nearby towns are looking at what we have done as a possible model.

If folks are interested I could work on a longer article describing how towns can work collectively to sequester carbon, build trails, enhance wildlife habitat etc.

The keys are to be flexibile, build strategic alliances, have a good long term vision, and work opportunistically.