State and Private Forestry Fact Sheet Marshall Islands

The "State"-Wide Assessment and Resource Strategy (SWARS) identifies the Marshalls' highest priorities for forest resource management and needs for assistance from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (FS). State assessments and resource strategies are integral to the Forest Service's State and Private Forestry (S&PF) Redesign and required as an amendment to the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act (CFAA), as enacted in the 2008 Farm Bill. Each "State" is required to complete a State Assessment and Resource Strategy within two years after enactment of the 2008Farm Bill (June 18, 2008) to receive funds under CFAA. The 2008 Farm Bill also made the Republic ofthe Marshall Islands eligible for CFAA programs that are available to states, territories and commonwealths of the USA.

The Marshalls SWARS thus includes two components to the assessment and planning required by the S&PF Redesign approach to identify priority forest landscape areas and highlight work needed to address national, regional, and state forest management priorities:

State-wide Assessment of Forest Resources: provides an analysis of forest conditions and trends in the state and delineates priority rural and urban forest landscape areas.

State-wide Forest Resource Strategy: provides long-term strategies for investing state, federal, and other resources to manage priority landscapes identified in the assessment, focusing where federal investment can most effectively stimulate or leverage desired action and engage multiple partners.