By Alton Perry
What a treat it was for our project team to meet recently with the new (and first!) executive director of the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Program, Bethaney Wilkinson of Atlanta. Bethaney carved time out of her schedule to spend a day with us at the offices of Roanoke Cooperative in Aulander, N.C. Roanoke Cooperative is one of the sites initially selected to pilot the SFLR initiative. For those who are unaware, our Sustainable Forestry and Land Retention Project in the Tar Heel state is one of eight similar programs created over the past decade in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
As executive director, Bethaney is the chief advocate of the network that is the connective tissue for the SFLR sites across the southeastern United States. Our common goal is to help African-American landowners increase the asset value, health and productivity of their land and its habitats to help them keep it in their family for generations to come and stem the massive farming and forest land loss among African Americans over the past century.
Our team meeting with Bethaney was timely and useful. Over the course of the day, we were able to:
- Meet with Roanoke Cooperative’s leadership, including President and CEO Marshall Cherry
- Hear stories from participating landowners on their accomplishments of forest management and land retention all due to the SFLR project at Roanoke Cooperative
- Discuss the path forward for the SFLR Network.
We know that Bethaney is going to have her hands more than full in these early months since her hiring in February. We are proud and privileged to have the opportunity to better the lives of families in our home state, and to improve forest health and the environment at the same time. We are firmly convinced that our efforts in North Carolina and our counterpart entities in the Southeast are having a positive impact. And we’re excited to have Bethaney lead us into the next chapter of SFLR.