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The board of directors and members of the Fundy Model Forest will be meeting in Nackawic on Monday, June 23.

The organization's work plan for 2008-2009 will be presented and will include projects directed towards the woodlot-owner community, small towns and rural areas. Fundy Model Forest will be helping SNB Wood Co-op develop a five-year strategic business plan which they hope will identify creative avenues to enable them to continue providing services to the more than 6,000 woodlot owners in their area.

In another initiative, Dr. David Bruce, who heads up Mount Allison University's Rural and Small Town Program, intends to work with three small communities in the province to create a menu of choices which could allow communities and organizations to more readily identify what capacities can and should be built, how to build them and what can be done with the newly-built capacity.

Also slated for next year is the development of a directory of non-timber forest products for Atlantic Canada and Maine. Difficulties for retailers in sourcing products and for the sellers in finding markets for their products are impeding development of this industry. The objective of this project, led by INFOR Inc., is to bring together an extensive collection of resource materials for the producers and provide an interactive marketing forum (Web site) that will allow buyers and sellers to find each other.

Over the next four years, Fundy Model Forest will be collaborating with diverse agencies and organizations to develop processes to help forest dependent communities plan effectively and assess the viability of new opportunities as they endeavor to build stable local economies.

"We will be helping draw together academic institutions, government agencies, forest industry stakeholders, municipalities and grass-root community organizations to find solutions to local challenges and carry those solutions to other communities," said Dr. Dave MacLean, president of the Fundy Model Forest. "One of the key roles we can play is to act as a facilitator and to help communities access information and experts."

The members and directors will tour two forestry-based enterprises, Pellet Systems International and Riverbend Log Homes, in the morning before the meeting starts at the Lion's Club on Otis Drive at 1 p.m.