The Master Woodland Managers program is for landowners or anyone with an interest in forest stewardship!

Connecticut Forest and Park Association, with Partner Organizations including UConn Extension Forestry, Yale, CT Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection, the CT Agricultural experiment Station, Audubon Connecticut, and the CT Land Conservation Council, have been developing this program which launched in 2021 and is now signing up it's 4th cohort of students.  This year-long course offers a library of online content to learn from, outreach opportunities, many real-time (in-person or virtual) learning opportunities covering a wide variety of subjects from chainsaw maintenance to wildlife habitat creation, and guidance in goal-setting for your woodlands or the woods that you are working with.

Developers, educators and organizers have been thrilled with the interest and responses from participants in this swiftly growing program. Participants are enthusiastic learners and they are creating the connections between their peers and forestry professionals that it's going to take to steward Connecticuts woods with its mosaic of ecosystem types, ownership situations, and challenges. We at extension forestry think this educational networking will be a real asset to the health and function of Connecticut's forests in the future, but we are not the only ones impressed with the success of this program! Connecticut Forest and Park Association and partner organizations were awarded the Family Forests Education Award for their Master Woodland Manager Program (MWM) in 2023. This award was granted to an “outstanding individual educational program to improve management of family-owned forests”. 

Learn about the 2023-2024 class below, and catch a few action shots of them in the field at some of the many filed learning days that offered that year.

Programming is always being refined and updated, and CFPA is improving outreach and funding for underserved populations each year. To learn more and sign up for the next cohort, visit the CFPA website:

Master Woodland Manager

Before 2021 and the launch of the MWM program, there was COVERTS

What is a covert?
A thicket providing sheltering cover for wildlife.

The Coverts Project was a special educational program of UConn Extension in partnership with Connecticut Forest and Park Association and Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP). Since 1983, The Coverts Project reached out to Connecticut woodland owners and land trust stewards to teach how sound management practices can make wildlife habitat healthier, more diverse, and more abundant.

Education Through Demonstration

The Coverts Project began simultaneously in Vermont and Connecticut in 1983. It spread to 11 other states across the northeastern U.S. with goals of teaching forest owners how good forest stewardship can improve the health and productivity of both the forest and the wildlife that live in it and possibly earn the woodland owner a long-term financial return.

Each year, a select group of woodland owners and/or environmentally concerned individuals were invited to participate in a three-day training seminar, held at the beautiful and remote Yale Forestry Camp at Great Mountain Forest in Norfolk, CT. They learned about different types of Connecticut forests and about where, how, and why they grow as they do. and about wildlife species & habitat needs. They learned about the many natural resource professionals and organizations available to help. And they learned how to put this knowledge to work on their own woodland. Actively managed demonstration areas were used as outdoor classrooms during the annual, in-depth Coverts Project Seminar and follow-up workshops. Coverts Project Cooperators agreed to return to their communities and share what they learned with others by developing a sound forest and wildlife management plan for their own woodland and/or woodland which they are involved in managing, maintaining for at least one year an up-to-date set of reference materials (provided by the Coverts Project) and be available to answer questions other landowners have, and to make an active effort to reach out to and motivate other woodland owners in their community.
This networking of informed individuals taught thousands of landowners about sound forest and wildlife conservation.

The MWM program continues and improves upon the goals of the Coverts project, building on its legacy and taking CT woodland stewardship into the future. 

For over 300 years, Connecticut's forests were cutover, burned and otherwise abused for human profit. Decades of neglect have alternated with intense periods of indiscriminate cutting and abuse. Genetic depletion, poor health and productivity, and loss of wildlife species have been the result. Today, rapid development and land fragmentation, as well as poor cutting practices and rampant misunderstanding of the positive impacts of forest management, continue to threaten our forest and wildlife resources.

Like Coverts Cooperators before them, the MWM cohorts know the time has come to recognize the forest and the land as a community of which we are a part, rather than a commodity for our use. Together, by taking the time to learn and to share their knowledge with others, they are making a difference. 

Will you join us?

Each year CFPA is expanding the amount of people that can accept into the workshop. Join other woodland owners and like-minded folk involved with the care of wooded properties. We esspecially look for people with the potential to be informal educators in their communities: people who others will come to when they have questions about forests or wildlife and people who want to get to know and to work with natural resource professionals from around the state. Above all, we want people who would like their own woodland to be healthy and productive & people who care about Connecticut's forests and the wildlife that live in them. 

The MWM Program is housed on the CFPA website where you can find contact information for CFPA and links to sign yourself up to be a part of the solution for CT Forests.

Master Woodland Manager

OR Contact UConn Extension with questions at
1066 Saybrook Road, PO Box 70
Haddam, CT 06438-0070 
Phone: 860-345-5232
Email our State Extension Forester: thomas.worthley@uconn.edu