U.S. Forest Service to Partner with National Parks and Conservation Service

January 11, 2008

The Embassy of the United States of America is pleased to announce that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) is sending a team of three experts to Mauritius to work with the National Parks and Conservation Service.  The goal of the collaboration is to provide technical assistance in developing better and more varied trails, better managing visitors, signage, and disseminating information about the parks.  The team will also work to train park staff, including rangers, assistant rangers, guides, and technical officers.

The program will take place over two weeks, beginning January 16, and will cover a variety of National Park facilities, including the Black River Gorges National Park, Islets National Park, the Wetland Ramsar area, and the Gerald Durell Endemic Wildlife Sanctuary

The U.S. Forest Service has over a century of natural resource management experience working in over 77 million hectares of National Forests and Grasslands in the United States.  It is charged with providing multiple social and environmental benefits to the public including recreation, wildlife and biodiversity protection, watershed conservation and forest products.  Given this mandate, USFS has within its ranks specialized expertise in areas such as integrated resources management, protected areas management, tourism, silviculture, agroforestry, anthropology, disaster preparedness and mitigation, hydrology and soils, migratory birds, and other wildlife management. 

Of the multiple uses of USFS lands, recreation by far makes the largest contribution to US gross domestic product.  Increasingly, the Forest Service works with private landowners, counties, municipalities, other Federal agencies, states and the tourism industry to promote sustainable natural resource based tourism, and to work with communities to facilitate their participation. The USFS has a significant track record in establishing long-term partnerships.   Increasingly, the Forest Service is being asked to provide technical assistance all over the world on sustainable management of parks and other protected areas.  Forest Service experts offer a wide range of technical capacity across the entire recreation spectrum, from design and implementation of activities in wilderness areas to management of urban forests.  Similar to its work domestically, the international activities of the Forest Service seek to balance social and economic needs of communities with protection of natural resources.