Local Knowledge. Technical Skills. Better Livelihoods. Stronger Forests.
We bring practical forestry training directly to communities, creating local economic opportunities by enabling people to become Paraforesters. Building on existing Indigenous and local knowledge, Paraforesters combine traditional experience with recognised technical skills to actively manage forests for livelihoods, restoration and long-term resilience.
Paraforesters are locally based accredited active forest management practitioners who help communities turn forest rights into lasting benefits. By progressively combining customary knowledge with professional forestry practice, they support improved active forest management, restoration, monitoring and enterprise development, enabling communities to generate greater economic, social and environmental value from their forests.
Like paramedics supplement doctors,
Paraforesters supplement foresters.
This expands capacity for practical, field-based work without losing professional oversight and turns forest tenure rights into local jobs and prosperity.
What Challenge Do We Address?
Across the world, communities are gaining greater responsibility for managing their forests.
Yet the practical technical skills needed for active forest management often remain scarce or available only through distant, overstretched professionals.
Paraforesters build on Indigenous and local knowledge by adding recognised technical forestry skills within communities themselves—creating local employment while ensuring forests receive the timely care they need.
Paraforesters support and supplement professional foresters by creating a recognised, locally based technical workforce. Building on Indigenous and local knowledge, they add practical forestry skills that generate skilled employment while expanding the reach of professional forestry services.
Following training, assessment and accreditation, Paraforesters undertake routine field-based work, enabling professional foresters to focus on planning, specialist technical advice, regulation and oversight.
Paraforesters Bridge The Gap
The Results:
Economic Benefits
Healthy forests need local people with recognised technical skills. By creating a new generation of accredited local Paraforesters, communities gain more than the capacity to manage forests—they gain new opportunities for skilled employment, enterprise development and long-term prosperity.
As countries increasingly invest in wildfire prevention, sustainable forest product production, biodiversity conservation and environmental markets, demand for practical forestry skills is growing rapidly. Paraforesters enable communities to meet that demand themselves, creating local jobs that won’t be outsourced and retaining more of the economic value generated by forests within rural communities.
Paraforesters can support a wide range of income-generating activities, including sustainable forest management, wildfire mitigation, forest health management, biodiversity monitoring, carbon and environmental monitoring, and community forest enterprises.
By combining Indigenous and local knowledge with formally recognised technical skills, Paraforesters help transform forests from underused assets into thriving local economies—creating lasting benefits for communities while supporting healthier forests, biodiversity and climate resilience.
Paraforesters help turn forest rights into forest livelihoods.
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