Where Do We Go from Here?

INTRODUCTION – MARTIN L. BLANEY In the process of putting this symposium together with a diverse group of conservation partners, a momentum of purpose and resolve developed that seems to be unprecedented in our region. Upon witnessing our upland oak forests and woodlands slowly degrade in health and vigor through the last decades of our collective careers and then to watch their accelerated decline in the last three years has brought us to the same question. Can we continue in our own spheres of responsibilities and allow such a shift in forest communities to occur without our concerted efforts to find and affect solutions? With defiant conviction, the response was a collective “not on our watch.” A strategy formed around the oak sustainability issue that had its beginnings in the Forestry Subcommittee of the Arkansas Wildlife Federation with the formation of a coalition of partners. At the same time, acting as a catalyst, an issue of the Arkansas Wildlife magazine focusing on oak decline was printed and widely circulated. The many and widely favorable responses received from the widespread distribution of this publication, further heightened the resolve of the coalition to the possibility of changing public opinion regarding the need for human intervention into the oak communities. With the onset of the red oak borer outbreak, questions from the public regarding hardwood forest management began to accelerate and the obvious gaps and conflicts in our professional understandings was apparent. These events lead to the eventual need of assembling the various resource professions to gain a cohesive awareness and understanding of oak ecology to both provide answers to the public and affect management solutions through better techniques. It was clear that we, as resource professionals, were quite divided in our understandings of how these systems worked and what were and were not appropriate recommendations when lending technical assistance to the inquiring public. Once assembled at the conference and with the quality of presentations and subject matter, it was easy to see that we also needed to capture more of the expertise attending this event.