Ralph Schmidt

Ralph Schmidt is an adjunct professor at the Earth Institute of Columbia University, New York, and is also an advisor for a major international reforestation program for Haiti. His work with forests started in 1970 in Colombia. Schmidt studied forest ecology and economics and received his Masters of Forest Science (1978) from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His good Spanish got him a research assistant job at the US Forest Service Institute for Tropical Forestry in Puerto Rico, where he learned to identify 300 species of trees. He was soon asked to be the head of the Puerto Rico Forest Service. Here, he managed a system of protected areas, as well as tree nurseries and sawmills for five years. After, he went to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome and worked on forestry projects in the developing world. In 1990, he transitioned to the United Nations Development Program in New York to continue that work as the Director of their forestry program. He represented UNDP in the Forestry Advisers Group, the International Forum on Forests, and the Interagency Task Force on Forests, with a strong focus on the economics and finance of sustainable forest management. Finally, he was CEO of a private company, Candlewood Forest Group, owning 250,000 acres of forest in northwest Argentina. They were the first FSC-certified natural forest operation in that country. Along the way, he wrote three reports for the World Bank Inspection Panel, where they carefully examined forest project policies and consequences in Brazil, D.R. Congo, and Cambodia.

SUMA PS5770 Sustainable Management of Forests 

SUMA PS4238 Biodiversity, Climate Change and Sustainable Management of Natural Ecosystems