Supplementary Requirements for
US Forest Service Lands

The FSC US Forest Management Standard now includes supplementary requirements for National Forests.

Historically, FSC certification of US Forest Service lands (i.e., National Forests) was not possible due to an agreement amongst stakeholders that additional FSC forest management requirements were needed to capture the unique conditions associated with National Forests, including ownership, history, mandate and resource management objectives.

In January 2015, the FSC US Board of Directors initiated a process to develop both the necessary supplementary certification requirements for the FSC Forest Stewardship Standard, and the Certification Body Auditing Procedures.

The process to develop these requirements followed FSC procedures for developing or revising normative documents, including technical input and oversight from a chamber-balanced and consensus-based working group and technical experts. It also included opportunities for broad stakeholder engagement. The supplementary requirements and associated Certification Body Auditing Procedures were taken through three rounds of public consultation. The supplementary requirements for national forests were approved by FSC in March 2019. You can download these documents below.

This inclusion of supplementary requirements for USFS lands comes at a time when we are actively working on a full revision of the FSC US Forest Management Standard, to bring it into alignment with newer FSC Principles and Criteria (Version 5). As part of this revision process, the supplementary requirements will need to be reviewed to ensure that they also remain aligned with the indicators in the revised standard. You can read more about the standard revision process on the FSC US website.