MeetYourForest: New uses and innovative management of forest

The coordinator of the project is from Galicia, a predominantly forested area, where a large part of the forest is owned by “comunidades de montes (forest communities)”, associations of people from a small territory. The territory was affected by the serious forest fires of 2017, which forced measures to be taken to prevent forest fires. The problem in the management of the forest by these groups is that they are mainly composed by older people who take care of these resources with an excessively traditional perspective. New forestry and management practices need to be implemented to increase the interest of younger people in caring for forested areas, which are poorly managed due to the lack of a future perspective. It is important to improve knowledge about the range of possible forestry activities, many of them attractive to youth, to motivate them to carry out new activities, which enrich local communities and control forests to avoid the accumulation of biomass that could produce a serious fire, affecting the entire population, as happened in 2017.

The coordinator, in association with local “comunidades de montes”, decided to create an international consortium to address this issue from a European perspective, aware that in other EU regions, local communities have a broad and modern approach to forests. In addition to logging activity, a forest can be a place for leisure, walking, sports or relax, and a source of food (berries, mushrooms and nuts). Promoting these uses will allow the population and forest communities to take care of these lands, improving their “health” and keeping them clean to minimize the impact in the event of a forest fire. Publicizing successful practices in other countries would promote respect for nature, in addition to create new opportunities related to the forest and its resources. For this reason, MeetYourForest was created to create dialogue and synergies between the local population and the various economic and social agents related to the forest (forest communities, neighborhood communities, town councils, training centers, etc.) and to develop educational materials that will be freely available so that those people/organizations related to forest management can improve their management.

Numerous activities have been carried out within the framework of the project, such as: - Research on the forest situation in each partner country, collecting information on the type of owner, activities, responsible authorities, etc. - Collection of Good Forestry Practices in each of the partner countries to serve as an illustrative example of management in each of the units of the Manual. - Preparation of the Manual on New uses and innovative management of the forest. - Creation of a website for the project with the purpose of serving as a means of dissemination and also as OER for the project. - Compilation of resources for the OER platform. - Development of a Moodle Course on New uses and innovative management of forests. - Preparation of a georeferenced map with places of high natural and forest value. - APP with questions about forest management. - Training activities in which participants from all partner organizations were able to learn how to get the most out of the Moodle course in their daily activities. - Dissemination activities in each of the partner countries. - 4 project meetings, one in each partner country.

The specific results can be listed as follows: - Report on the forestry situation in each partner country. All partner organizations contributed to mapping the forest information of the countries participating in the project to obtain a general perspective on which to work on the strengths and weaknesses of forest management. - Report with Good Forestry Practices in each of the partner countries. The partner organizations were in charge of compiling a series of examples of good forestry practices of interest to include in the Manual as an example, to promote and facilitate the implementation of these practices in other countries. - Manual on New uses and innovative management of the forest. - MeetYourForest website. https://meetyourforest.com/ - Open Educational Resource. Support resource center for the Manual, such as articles, videos, web pages of interest, etc. - Course on New uses and innovative management of forests. Moodle course for execution and consolidation of knowledge of the Project Manual. - Georeferenced map. A compilation of places of high environmental and forestry interest in each of the participating countries. - MeetYourForest APP. Installable APP for mobile phone (IOS and Android) with questions about forestry.