World Forestry Center
Forestry Center Main building
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 Location within Portland, Oregon
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| Established | 1964 (organization); 1971 (facility) |
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| Location | Portland, Oregon, United States |
| Coordinates | 45°30′38″N 122°43′04″W / 45.510635°N 122.717895°W |
| Type | private: forestry |
| Public transit access | TriMet MAX light rail (Washington Park station) and bus lines 63, 83 |
| Website | World Forestry Center Discovery Museum |
The World Forestry Center is a nonprofit educational institution in Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. Located near the Oregon Zoo in Washington Park, the organization was established in 1964 as the Western Forestry Center, with the actual building opening in 1971.
The World Forestry Center has its roots in the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair for which an enormous log cabin was built of huge native trees and advertised as the world's largest. Public interest in the Forestry Building, which was turned over to the State of Oregon, lasted long after the exposition ended, right up until it was destroyed by fire on August 17, 1964.
The day after the fire, a group of civic and industry leaders conceived The Western Forestry Center. A new, more fire-resistant forestry building designed by Oregon architect John Storrs was built in Washington Park. It opened to the public on June 5, 1971. The name was changed to "World Forestry Center" in 1986 to reflect the center's revised focus on forestry on a global scale.
On June 30, 2005, after a $7 million, 6-month renovation, the 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) museum reopened with new interactive exhibits about the sustainability of forests and trees of the Pacific Northwest and the world.
The World Forestry Center's mission is to "educate and inform people about the world's forests and trees, and their importance to all life, in order to promote a balanced and sustainable future."
The center achieves its mission with three programs: the Discovery Museum, two donated working forests—the Magness Memorial Tree Farm and the Johnson-Swanson Tree Farm—and the World Forest Institute which was established in 1989. The primary program is the International Fellowship Program.
In 1989, the World Forestry Center established the World Forest Institute to meet a growing demand for forestry information. As the forestry sector becomes increasingly complex, there is a greater need for international collaboration and exchange of information on forest trade, regulation, management, and forest resources. The World Forest Institute was created through the vision and support of Harry A. Merlo, a pioneer of the forest products industry, and an early visionary of the globalization of the forestry sector.
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