By Northeast Regional Manager, Sarah RobbGrieco

Are you curious about what it would be like to become an OGFN County Coordinator? Here's a step-by-step guide to the process, from applying for the position to fulfilling your volunteer potential.

Who can be a County Coordinator?

Anyone who has an interest in old-growth forests can be a volunteer County Coordinator for OGFN. While some of our County Coordinators are indeed forest scientists, practitioners or experts, many are purely forest enthusiasts: hikers, birdwatchers, trail runners or other fans of the out-of-doors who would like to learn more about old-growth forests. This is a great opportunity to deepen your understanding of old-growth forests while at the same time providing invaluable assistance in OGFN's process of protecting, promoting and celebrating them.

What exactly does a County Coordinator do?

STEP 1 : PREPARE: OGFN’s Regional Manager in your area will provide you with everything you’ll need for your role as County Coordinator including (a) clarification of OGFN's goals and your role in the forest selection process, (b) clear guidance and criteria for how to help select a forest for OGFN, (c) easy-to-use forest assessment tools and (d) a preliminary list of candidate forests to visit, assess and compare (or ideas for how to begin creating that list).

STEP 2: HIKE AND LEARN: Put on your hiking boots, head out onto the trails and see what you discover! Visit each forest with our criteria in mind. Take a few notes and take pictures while you hike.

STEP 3: REPORT AND DISCUSS: After each forest visit, send a brief, informal report and photos to your Regional Manager. Once you have assessed all of the candidate forests for your county (usually between 2 and 6 forests), have a discussion with your Regional Manager and together decide which of the forests you visited is best suited for inclusion in the Old-Growth Forest Network.

STEP 4: APPROACH: In most cases, your Regional Manager will approach the owner of the selected forest to officially invite the forest into the Network and will handle the communications and logistics of finalizing the agreement. If, however, you already have a relationship with the forest owner, you may be invited to be involved in this part of the process.

STEP 5: CELEBRATE: For most forests, an induction ceremony will be held at the trailhead followed by a short forest hike. Come to the ceremony. Help us welcome the new forest into the Network and let us celebrate your vital role in the process!

Once my county's forest is inducted into the Network, what's next?

After a forest is inducted, we rely on our County Coordinators to help OGFN stay connected with the forest by keeping an eye out for big changes at the forest and alerting us to them, by sending us updated forest photos from time to time, and by being available to advise us should we have questions about the forest or about other forests in your county. Although it’s not a requirement or expectation, some County Coordinators continue connecting their community to the local OGFN forest through hikes and other activities.

In addition, many of our County Coordinators cover multiple counties for us, so if you loved the forest assessment/selection process and want to do it all again, your Regional Manager can set you up to assess forests in another nearby county.

How do I apply?

Just go to our website and fill out the simple online form. Then OGFN’s Regional Manager in your area will contact you to get to know you a bit, to answer any questions you may have and to help you get started.

We hope you’ll join us!