Wide view of the Shenandoah River State Park in Virginia

Virginia

Forest Action Plan

Virginia’s Forest Action Plan

Virginia is a forested state with just over 16 million acres of forestland, the majority privately owned. Over two-thirds of that forestland is classified as hardwood or hardwood pine. Virginia’s 2020 Forest Action Plan identifies the trends, conditions, and threats relevant to this important natural resource.

The critical threats were identified as: the expansion of the wildland-urban interface and the associated dangers of wildland fire; the future composition of the hardwood resource; increasing forest health and invasive species concerns; loss of forestland to other land use types; impacts associated with climate change; a changing forest industry; the decline of several tree species; and insufficient funding for natural resource programs and conservation education.

The 2020 revised Forest Action Plan provides geographic priority areas across the Commonwealth along with a strategic plan that will protect, conserve, and enhance Virginia’s forests over the next 10 years.



Best Management Practices

Virginia’s best management practices (BMPs) program is regulated at the local level, but not the state-level. The agency responsible for BMPs policy development is the Virginia Department of Forestry.

Click here to view the most recent BMPs recommendations on the state forestry agency website.

Click the following links to view available BMP monitoring data and implementation rates from NASF’s 2015 BMP survey and NASF’s 2019 BMP survey.

Virginia Forestry Publications

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