The contest aims to motivate student teams to create business plans that reflect real opportunities for finding market-based incentives to address forest stewardship challenges on National Forest System lands.

MISSOULA, MONT. – The National Forest Foundation (NFF) announces the launch of the Barrett Foundation Prize to encourage fresh, creative ideas regarding public lands stewardship. The contest challenges teams of cross-disciplinary university students to create new solutions to the escalating problems of natural resource management amidst economic slowdown, demographic changes, changing American values and increasing anthropogenic impacts on natural systems.

The contest aims to motivate student teams to create business plans that reflect real opportunities for finding market-based incentives to address forest stewardship challenges on National Forest System lands. Through a pre-proposal selection process, 10 teams will be selected as finalists and invited to submit complete business plans for the challenge. From the 10 final teams, a first-prize winning team will be selected and will receive a $50,000 cash reward. Four runners up will each receive a $10,000 cash reward.

The Barrett Foundation Challenge has four primary objectives:

• To educate students through the process of creating and evaluating new approaches to forestry and integrated natural resource management;
  
• To prepare students to work in an interdisciplinary, team-oriented work environment to seek practical solutions to complex challenges;
  
• To stimulate creative thinking that leads to harnessing the unique ideas generated through the planning process; and
• To provide real world solutions that satisfy the multiple goals of forest health, sustainable use and job creation.

“Facing climate change, spreading invasive species and escalating wildfires, we need to be increasingly creative with forest management and conservation strategies,” said NFF President Bill Possiel. “Our public lands are important to the future of our nation – and what better way to plan for that future than by engaging tomorrow’s business and natural resource professionals to develop solutions to increasingly complex public lands management challenges.”

Pre-proposals must be submitted electronically by March 16, 2012.

Complete proposal materials can be found here.