Issue link: http://palletcentral.uberflip.com/i/973524
peaking on the power of collaboration and partnerships during the recent 2018 Annual Leadership Conference, NWPCA President and CEO Brent McClendon, shared before a packed general session on the importance of working with other organizations to communicate our common goals, and how vital the wood packaging sector is to our communities. In a video segment during McClendon's presentation, he elaborated: "At NWPCA, collaboration isn't just in our DNA, it's what helps us achieve and advance our mission. You can't build a wooden pallet without wood, and you can't have healthy forests without a strong forest products community. Working together works for the environment and for the economy." That consensus was also shared by several groups that participated in the video, "Wood Packaging Supports Healthy Forests and Strong Communities," including Vicki Christiansen, who was just named interim chief of the U.S. Forest Service on March 8, 2018. "This collaboration has not only benefited our forests domestically, but it has had a global impact as products from the U.S. get shipped around the world, free of pests... Wood pallets and containers help move the world, and more specifically, they feed America and help maintain healthy forests," said Christiansen. Other groups speaking on the video about the importance of wood packaging to their respective sectors include Tom Martin, president and CEO, The American Forest Foundation; Larry Selzer, president and CEO, The Conservation Fund; Jay Farrell, executive director, The National Association of State Foresters; Carlton Owen, president & CEO, U.S. Endowment for Forestry & Communities. Future editions of PalletCentral will include conversations with our partners as they share how healthy forests and the wood packaging industry helps improve local communities in so many ways. For this edition, we present the extended conversation with Vicki Christiansen, interim chief of the U.S. Forest Service. P A R T N E R S H I P S : Connecting the Dots on Healthy Forests, Healthy Markets & Healthy Communities 34 PalletCentral • March-April 2018 palletcentral.com S ENVIRONMENT A Conversation with the U.S. Forest Service Chief iStockphoto.com/monkeybusinessimages