American Tree Farm System Honors Ed and Barb Mignery with 2020 National Leadership Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 20, 2020) The American Tree Farm System® (ATFS) is pleased to recognize Ed and Barb Mignery with the 2020 National Leadership Award. The award recognizes the efforts of extraordinary volunteers for their leadership in motivating other volunteers, educating landowners and accomplishing his or her state committee’s forest conservation goals.

“Ed and Barb are amazing advocates of the American Tree Farm System,” said Tom Martin,  president and CEO of the American Forest Foundation (AFF), the organization that oversees ATFS. “They continue to work incredibly hard to build a community that can support a diverse range of landowners – providing these individuals opportunities to learn and grow as forest stewards.   We are lucky to have them as part of our ATFS network.”

ATFS is an internationally-known recognition and certification program that provides family and private forest owners with support and tools to keep their forests healthy and sustainable. It is administered at the national level by AFF, and run at the state level by volunteer committees. Currently there are more than 70,400 family forest owners in the program, managing more than 18.9 million acres. 

Ed and Barb Mignery have been involved with the ATFS Wyoming committee since 2017 and Ed currently serves as the state Tree Farm Chair. Upon becoming chair of the Wyoming Tree Farm Program, Ed immediately contacted landowners within the program to begin developing relationships among his state’s landowners. Ed’s outreach has helped increase interaction among participating landowners.

The Mignerys are dedicated to continuing to strengthen, grow and increase the impact of ATFS through engagement of landowners. Whether this be with current or with potential ATFS-certified landowners, the Mignerys are working to make a difference whenever and wherever they can with natural resource management and education. Since becoming chair, Ed has started the “Walk in the Woods” program in collaboration with Project Learning Tree (PLT) and the local Audubon Society, which provides natural resource education to local grade school students.

Ed Mignery accepted the award on the couple’s behalf and was presented the award by AFF President and CEO, Tom Martin, and the Chair of AFF’s Board of Trustees, Kathryn Fernholz, on February 27 at the 2020 ATFS National Leadership Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

Contact: Elizabeth Greener; (202) 253-1096; egreener@forestfoundation.org

The American Tree Farm System® is a network of 73,000 family forest owners sustainably managing 19 million acres of forestland. ATFS is the largest and oldest sustainable woodland system in the United States, internationally recognized, meeting strict third-party certification standards. The American Tree Farm System® is a program, of the American Forest Foundation.