Port Blakely

Date of Visit: May 1, 2018
Type of Event: Study Tour
Topic: Family-Owned, Medium-Sized Forest Ownership
Organization: Port Blakely
Location: Mollala, Oregon
Host: Bonnie Glendenning / Environmental Educator
International Fellows: Jeen Bunnik (Netherlands), Meei-ru Jeng (Taiwan), Xuejiao Li (China), Thammarat Mettanurak (Thailand), Tuan Manh Phan (Vietnam)
WFI Staff: Shadia Duery / International Fellowship Manager, Vivian Bui / Professional Programs Coordinator

The World Forest Institute (WFI) International Fellows’ schedule has been jam-packed with interesting and educational activities since arriving in early April, including weekly tours to local forestry-related businesses and sites of interest. One of the Fellows’ first tours was to Port Blakely’s tree farm located in Mollala, Oregon. Port Blakely is a fifth-generation, family-owned, Sustainable Forestry Initiative®- certified company that provides log products to mills and log brokers throughout the Pacific Northwest and around the Pacific Rim. They manage the ecosystems in which their products grow with respect to provide renewable forest products around the world.

By far, the highlight of the Fellows’ visit to Port Blakely was getting the opportunity to see Port Blakely’s Environmental Education Program in action. More than 87,000 Washington and Oregon schoolchildren have participated in this program through classroom study and field trips to discover firsthand the benefits of a working forest in a fun, safe environment. Port Blakely provides grants to local schools to cover transportation costs to their tree farm. On their tour, the Fellows accompanied Bonny Glendenning, Port Blakely’s Environmental Educator, as she led a classroom of fourth-graders through the forest, teaching them about tree identification, forest stewardship, and carbon sequestration.

WFI International Fellows and Vivian Bui, Professional Programs Coordinator, holding an example of Port Blakely’s custom-designed “carbon capture” tape, an educational tool used to teach students how much carbon can be captured in trees depending on their diameter.

Thank you, Port Blakely, not just for the tour, but for all that you do in educating future generations about forest stewardship!

Interested in setting up a school tour to Port Blakely? Click here!