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Be sure to check out SAF Members on the last two OFRI Forester Friday blog posts. Great job Kat and Anna! 

National Convention 2019

Louisville is known for bourbon, bluegrass, the Kentucky Derby, baseball bats, and now, as the destination for this year’s SAF National Convention. You won’t want to miss this exciting event, to be held October 30-November 3 at the Louisville Convention Center, featuring over 200 speakers, 80 exhibitors, 20 CFE credit hours, and endless networking opportunities. Approximately 1,300 foresters attend from around the country, and among those in attendance are many under-30 young professionals representing the future of our profession.

   What can you expect from this year’s convention? Under the theme of “Goods from the Woods” there will be educational sessions spanning the full range of topics in natural resource management from silviculture, economics, urban forestry, biometrics, and more. Wednesday kicks off with a great slate of tours to showcase forestry in Kentucky, as well as more than a dozen workshops teaching the latest in forest technology and more. On Halloween, be sure to join the night hike in Jefferson Memorial Forest (we’ll provide the flashlights, you provide the costumes!) and on Sunday visit the renowned Mammoth Cave.

Here is where to register and you will find more information too.

On March 7, 2019, the board of the Oregon Natural Resources Education Foundation (ONREF) met to evaluate and award the 2019 grants.

There are four ONREF sub-funds: ONREF, OSAF, Pleasant Hill, and the Terry Selby Memorial.  All four sub-funds are managed by the Oregon Community Foundation.  At the end of 2018, the total of the sub-funds was $286,360.

The ONREF sub-fund had $50,000 bequeathed to it from Barte Starker’s estate.  [Barte was one of the originators of ONREF.]  OSAF, in its 2018 year-end gifting campaign, added $4,000 to the OSAF sub-fund, making the OSAF sub-fund second only to the ONREF sub-fund. 

When we looked at the 2019 grant requests, we had nine requests totaling $24,822 and only $11,500 available for granting.

Given that the requests were more than double the available funds, there is still a need to donate to ONREF and work towards having more funds available for future grant requests.

Anyone wishing to donate to ONREF can donate through OSAF, Treasurer Steve Cafferata, or should contact John Moriarty at the Oregon Community Foundation, (541) 431-7099.  The donor needs to indicate which of the four sub-funds they want their donations placed.

On September 21^st, the Oregon Society of American Foresters will host its first annual evening trail run, the SAFsquatch Scurry. Run with a forester on a 5k or 10k race, both starting and ending in Peavy Arboretum. Funds raised will benefit the Oregon Society of American Foresters, which is the largest state affiliate of the national Society of American Foresters, representing over 800 Oregonians in forestry and natural resources professions.