The Virginia Forestry Educational Foundation and Gilbert NS Lumber Company sponsored the team.
The team from Alabama took top honors at the Invitational. They were followed by Pennsylvania and West Virginia, respectively. Capturing the high-point individual award was Holly Cordner of Alabama. Second place was captured by Amanda Luker of Alabama and third by Brittany Brown also from Alabama. Daniel Gordon of Georgia received the Joe Yeager leadership award given to the individual who demonstrated excellent communication, management, decision-making and interpersonal skills.
At the Invitational, students compete for overall team and individual awards in tree identification, tree identification, tree measurement, forest health (forest entomology and forest pathology) compass traverse, topographic map use, forest evaluation, and the Forestry Bowl, a fast paced event fashioned after popular television quiz shows.
4-H is the youth education program of the Cooperative Extension Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state land grant universities. More than five-and-one-half million youngsters participate in 4-H and nearly 100,000 are part of the 4-H Forestry Program.
The International Paper Company Foundation, which was founded in 1953 as a philanthropic grant-making organization, primarily addresses existing and emerging educational needs, as well as civic needs within the communities where International Paper has operating businesses. The Foundation also supports those organizations where employees actively volunteer.
International Paper (http://www.internationalpaper.com) businesses include paper, packaging and forest products. As one of the largest private forestland owners in the world, IP foresters and ecologists manage the woods with great care in compliance with the rigorous standards of the Sustainable Forestry InitiativeŽ program, an independent certification system that ensures the perpetual planting, growing and harvesting of trees while protecting wildlife, plants, soil, air and water quality. In the U.S. alone, International Paper protects more than 500,000 acres of unique and environmentally important habitat on their own forestlands through conservation easements and land transactions to environmental groups. Headquartered in the United States, IP has operations in over 40 countries, sells its products in more than 120 nations and is dedicated to managing the world's greatest renewable resource -- trees.
For more information on the National 4-H Forestry Invitational you may contact Dr. Robert Hansen at (570) 265-2896, rsh7@psu.edu or Mr. Brian Chandler at (225) 683-3102, bchandler@agctr.lsu.edu.