                                 CODE OF VIRGINIA

ADDITIONAL POWERS AND DUTIES OF STATE FORESTER (§ 10.1-1105)

A. The State Forester shall supervise and direct all forest interests and all
matters pertaining to forestry within the Commonwealth. He shall have charge of
all forest wardens and shall appoint, direct and supervise persons he employs to
perform labor in the forest reservations or the nurseries provided for herein,
and he is authorized to employ temporary forest wardens to extinguish forest
fires in the Commonwealth. He shall take such action as is authorized by law to
prevent and extinguish forest fires; develop a program to promote the use of
prescribed burning for community protection and ecological, silvicultural, and
wildlife management; enforce all laws pertaining to forest and woodlands;
prosecute any violation of such laws; develop silvicultural best management
practices, including reforestation, prevention of erosion and sedimentation, and
maintenance of buffers for water quality, pursuant to Article 12 (&#xA7;
10.1-1181.1 et seq.); collect information relative to forest destruction and
conditions; direct the protection and improvement of all forest reservations;
and, as far as his duties as State Forester will permit, conduct an educational
course on forestry at the University of Virginia for credit toward a degree, at
farmers&#8217; institutes and at similar meetings within the Commonwealth. He
shall provide for the protection of state waters from pollution by sediment
deposition resulting from silvicultural activities as provided in Article 12
(&#xA7; 10.1-1181.1 et seq.). In addition, the State Forester shall cooperate
with counties, municipalities, corporations and individuals in preparing plans
and providing technical assistance, based on generally accepted scientific
forestry principles, for the protection, management and replacement of trees,
wood lots and timber tracts and the establishment and preservation of urban
forests, under an agreement that the parties obtaining such assistance shall pay
the field and traveling expenses of the person employed in preparing such plans.
The State Forester also shall assist landowners and law-enforcement agencies
with regard to reported cases of timber theft. The State Forester shall develop
and implement forest conservation and management strategies to improve wildlife
habitat and corridors, incorporating applicable elements of any wildlife action
plan developed by the Department of Wildlife Resources and the Wildlife Corridor
Action Plan developed pursuant to &#xA7; 29.1-579.

B. Records of the Department composed of confidential commercial or financial
information supplied by individuals or business entities to the Department in
the course of an investigation of timber theft are excluded from the mandatory
disclosure provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (&#xA7;
2.2-3700 et seq.).

HISTORY: 1986, c. 567, § 10-31.4; 1988, c. 891; 1989, c. 215; 1993, c. 948;
1997, c. 7; 1998, c. 156; 1999, c. 220; 2000, c. 997; 2019, cc. 348, 353; 2021,
Sp. Sess. I, c. 498.