The Massachusetts Forest Alliance represents and advocates on behalf of forest landowners, industry professionals, businesses, and others who support a strong, sustainable forest economy in the Commonwealth. MFA works on a variety of policy initiatives, including tax programs, property zoning, modern wood heat, forest management, and many more regulations that affect our membership.

The best place to find current policy updates is the Forest Update e-newsletter, which is sent monthly. You can sign up by clicking the link in the right column.

MFA has worked recently on a number of policy-related issues:

  • We fought legislation that would ban forest management on all state-owned lands. This bill would deal a devastating blow to MassWildlife’s habitat creation program, threaten watershed protection, and prevent DCR from converting dying Depression-era monoculture plantations to native mixed-species diverse forests.
  • We opposed efforts to remove modern wood heating from the Alternative Portfolio Standard, the Commonwealth’s renewable heating program. Modern wood heat refers to automated, high-efficiency boilers using wood pellets or dried wood chips for fuel. Much of this fuel is derived from sawmill residues, and numerous studies have found significant carbon benefits from switching to modern wood heat from fossil fuels.
  • We worked to defeat a bill from the concrete industry designed to ban mass timber construction, which is demonstrated to provide significant carbon savings compared to building with steel and concrete.
  • We advocated for forest landowners in applying current use values to forestland in the estate tax, preventing thousands of acres of forestland from being sold for development after the death of an owner.
  • We sought compromise in solar siting on greenfields, trying to find a balance between preserving rights for forest landowners, creating renewable energy, and protecting forestland from conversion.
  • We’ve partnered with leading environmental organizations on legislation and programs focused on climate change.

Our members can count on us to represent their interests to legislators, regulators, other organizations, and the public at large.