Dr. Alan Barton
NMFWRI Director
NMFWRI welcomes the Nevada Forest & Woodland Restoration Institute (NFWRI), located at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), to the alliance of Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI)!
This is exciting news for the SWERI. After 20 years of a partnership between institutes in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, in May we expanded to include Nevada as a SWERI state. The faculty and partners at UNR add a wealth of expertise and experience to our SWERI team, as well as opportunities to expand our partnerships with federal agencies in the Departments of Interior and Agriculture.
The Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act, the federal legislation that created the SWERI, included Nevada as a state authorized to host an institute; however, an institute was not designated at the time the Act was passed. About four years ago, UNR expressed an interest in joining the SWERI, with support from Congress. As interest increased, the existing institutes worked with UNR administrators, faculty and partners to assist in the creation of an institute in the SWERI model. UNR faculty member Dr. Bob Shriver took the lead locally, and brought together partners who worked to establish the NFWRI. Congress committed funding to the Nevada institute this year, prompting the Forest Service and SWERI leadership to produce a designation memo, and when Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz affixed his signature to this document, the NFWRI came into being. Dr. Shriver has taken the role of director of the new institute.
The staff at NMFWRI are thrilled to have a new SWERI partner, and we congratulate Dr. Shriver and everyone at UNR who made this happen. We thank the members of Congress and the Forest Service personnel for supporting the expansion of the SWERI into another Intermountain West state, and we look forward to working with NFWRI on forest, woodland and watershed restoration around the West.