Imagine planning your summer vacation to visit to one of your favorite outdoor places from your childhood. The fond memories of lakes and endless hiking trails. When you finally reach your destination, it doesn’t resemble the place you once loved. We all have those beloved places and memories, but without management and conservation those places will quickly disappear.

Forest management and conservation comes with a hefty price tag and that is why innovative financing is so important. Pooling public and private funds to invest in land management activities creates opportunities that may otherwise be out of reach.

The Forest Service and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities have done just that, providing over $6 million through 26 grants over the past three years. The Innovative Finance for National Forests grant program supports organizations to see what is possible through new financial approaches funding on-the-ground pilot projects and larger projects that will have lasting impacts on national forests and surrounding communities.

“The grant program came at just the right time to allow us to go to market with our timber investment fund focused on improved forest management, wildlife habitat, and public recreation access,” said Bryan Wentzell, executive director of the Maine Mountain Collaborative.

The Maine Mountain Collaborative is state, regional and national conservation and forestry organizations with a shared focus of accelerating the pace and scale of conservation. This is the collaborative’s second year as a grant recipient supporting a timber investment fund that encourages long-term forest management and ownership in Maine.

“The grant program is a key missing link for getting innovative projects off the ground that help solve challenges for national forests and their connected landscapes,” said Wentzell.

This is third year of Innovative Finance for National Forests funding and the Forest Service awarded $2.2 million to 11 projects.

“The Innovative Finance for National Forests program was established to grow and diversify the breadth of partners working with the Forest Service to develop financial solutions for land management,” said Troy Heithecker, Forest Service associate deputy chief for National Forest System.

This grant program is part of a larger Forest Service effort to leverage new sources of funding through public-private partnerships. The grant program serves as one piece of the puzzle in the larger effort to identify land management projects that can benefit from creative financing solutions.

Despite a recent influx of federal dollars to combat issues like wildfire resilience, watershed health and recreation infrastructure, there are still barriers to implementing solutions at a quick enough pace and large enough scale to meet the need.

“Modeled like a business incubator, this grant program provides both financial and technical assistance support to grantees, creating a network of holistic support to advance the exploration, piloting, and scaling of new ideas,” said Heithecker.

The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of national forests and grasslands across the country. Wrapped within these landscapes are benefits to the American people such as protected drinking water, access to outdoor recreation, forest-based local economies and more. However, these lands face challenges such as catastrophic wildfire, extreme weather events, and degrading infrastructure that put at risk the environmental, social, and economic benefits these landscapes provide.

Solutions to these increasingly complex challenges require landscape level coordination, a myriad of partners, community input and financial innovation. A full list of projects funded can be found on our website at https://www.fs.usda.gov/working-with-us/partnerships/conservation-finance/innovative-finance-approved-projects.