New Statewide Initiative Launched to Ensure Healthy Forests in Wisconsin

Wednesday, March 18th, 2026 -- 8:00 AM

(Katie Thoresen, WXPR) A new statewide initiative recently launched to ensure Wisconsin has healthy forests well into the future.

As WXPR recently reported, forests are facing a number of challenges including climate change, the loss of sawmills and invasive species. The Wisconsin Forests FIRST initiative is working to develop a strategic plan and long-term roadmap to ensure Wisconsin’s forests remain healthy while also supporting a sustainable and competitive forest products industry.

FIRST is an acronym for Forest Industry Roadmap and Strategies for Tomorrow. Tom Hittle is the chair of the Wisconsin Council on Forestry and part of the Wisconsin Forests FIRST executive committee. He says the initiative grew out of an effort going back more than five years to when the Verso Mill closed in Wisconsin Rapids.

“We look at that closure as the kind of galvanizing event that brought our legislators, brought our forestry stakeholder communities together to recognize that our industry is going to continue to face challenges,” said Hittle. “Our local rural economies that depend on the forest industry and … healthy forests are going to be challenged going forward, as well as our state economy.”

Wisconsin Forests FIRST is being funded by a $1 million state of Wisconsin grant awarded to the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association and the Wisconsin Paper Council, in close collaboration with the Wisconsin Council on Forestry.

The two-year initiative will bring together industry leaders and other experts in the field to identify challenges and opportunities for the long-term success and health of Wisconsin’s forest and wood products sector.

“The foundational element of Wisconsin’s Forests FIRST is an effort to better support our forest products industry,” said Hittle. “But that’s grounded in the need to support healthy forests. Healthy forests and a healthy forest product industry are directly connected. You can’t have one without the other.”

There’s already been some efforts to diversify the state’s forest products with things like biochar and biofuel. “Our other forest products industries are looking to evolve with new technologies, new opportunities, new markets, and then, frankly, new challenges that we face in the competitive nature of that evolving marketplace,” said Hittle.

Over the next two years, Wisconsin Forests FIRST plans to conduct comprehensive industry research, data analysis and stakeholder engagement to assess market conditions and identify growth opportunities.

“Wisconsin’s forest industry contributes $27 billion to our state economy, but it’s also critically important to the overall health of our forests,” said Hittle. “Our forests are facing a variety of different challenges right now, and the forest industry is one of the best tools that forest managers and land managers have in their toolbox to be able to ensure that we have healthy, productive, and resilient forces moving forward.”

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