The Nature Conservancy in Pennsylvania

Dylan Jenkins came to The Nature Conservancy in 2003 to initiate and manage Pennsylvania's Forest Conservation Program.

Prior to joining the Conservancy, Dylan spent six years with the Virginia Tech College of Natural Resources developing and coordinating the Virginia Forest Landowner Education Program, where he designed educational programs on sustainable forest management including the nation's first web-based course for forest landowners.

He served as chair of the Virginia Society of American Foresters (2002), was a member of the Society of American Foresters (SAF) National Committee on Forest Policy (2002-2005), is the recipient of SAF’s 2006 National Young Forester Leadership Award and currently serves on the SAF Certification Review Board.

Dylan is an SAF Certified Forester and holds a bachelor’s in forest resource management from Clemson and a master’s in forest management and economics from Virginia Tech.

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"Our long-term goal is the effective protection of a critical network of working forest landscapes and the sustainable management of those forests."

— Dylan Jenkins, director of forest conservation in Pennsylvania

Go Deeper

Our Forest Conservation Work

Combating illegal logging and advancing sustainable forest trade

Protecting forest health

Securing innovative conservation finance

Protecting, restoring and managing forests

Advocating supportive public policies

What You Can Do

Find out the simple steps you can take today to help protect and restore the world’s forests.

Forests are essential for life on Earth. They give us shade and shelter, refuge and refreshment, clean air and water. Today, with a growing global population and subsequent demand for forest products, the forests of the world are at risk from widespread deforestation and degradation. .

The Nature Conservancy advances innovative and sustainable forest management solutions for the benefit of both people and nature. The Conservancy’s Dylan Jenkins, director of forest conservation in Pennsylvania, answers questions about what makes forests so special and what we can do to protect them.

nature.org: What’s your role at The Nature Conservancy?

Dylan Jenkins: As director of forest conservation, I lead Pennsylvania’s Forest Conservation Program - which consists of a team of four foresters and forest ecologists plus additional protection, planning and policy support staff.

Our program focuses on forest conservation within a 3.6 million-acre conservation network, which represents about 20 percent of Pennsylvania forestlands. It’s my job to coordinate the development and delivery of conservation programs within this network and to export successful strategies to Conservancy staff throughout the eastern region.

nature.org: In which areas does much of your work focus?

Dylan Jenkins: The 3.6 million-acre forest conservation network is distributed across Pennsylvania. However, most of the large, working forest landscapes that compose the network lie within Pennsylvania’s “Big Woods” region north of I-80 as well as the Central Appalachian ridge and valley portions of the state. These areas are where we concentrate most of our on-the-ground "in-the-woods" work with private forest landowners and public land management agencies.

The forest management decision tools and strategies we’re developing are designed both for the oak-hickory forests of the Southern and Mid-Atlantic Appalachian region and the northern hardwood forests extending from the Mid-Atlantic to lower New England.

nature.org: What’s the most important project on which you’re working?

Dylan Jenkins: As our public and private forests transition through the next 10-20 years, it’s critical that decision-makers have the best information available to balance the production of economic and ecological values from working forestlands. To help make these decisions at the individual property level and across large forested landscapes, our most important ongoing project is the development of our FoRest (FOrest RESToration) Decision Tool.

FoRest helps forest landowners and managers in the Central Appalachian and High Allegheny Plateau regions to optimize wildlife habitat on working forestlands. Essentially, FoRest is designed to help forest managers obtain the biggest conservation bang for their management dollar.

nature.org: What is the Conservancy’s long-term goal for Pennsylvania’s forests?

Dylan Jenkins: Because our eastern hardwood forests are economically mature, forest landowners and managers are making decisions now that will profoundly impact forest conditions and biodiversity over the next century. Our long-term goal is the effective protection of a critical network of working forest landscapes and the sustainable management of those forests.

Success will be the development and adoption of our FoRest Decision Tool, the sustainable management of critical working forestlands, and the protection of those same lands by landowners and land managers within the 3.6 million acre forest conservation network. Ultimately, we want to provide a set of intuitive and easily accessible conservation strategies for all stakeholders that make decisions affecting the health and productivity of Penn’s Woods.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © George C. Gress/TNC (View of the Susquehanna River and misty valley from the South overlook in West Branch Wilderness); Photo © TNC (Dylan Jenkins); Photo © Charles DeCurtis/TNC (Mushrooms).