Formed 16 years ago by local residents concerned about the effects of logging on nearby watersheds and habitat, Dunster Community Forest Society purchased a wood manufacturing facility in 2019 with the philosophy of creating value-added products from sustainable forestry. An $88,000 grant, part of the economic recovery infrastructure program to support economic resilience, tourism, heritage, and economic development, will expand the society’s wood manufacturing operation, to include a protected storage area. Additional storage will enable BRKH Custom Woodworking to produce more, higher-value products, a shorter haul from where they were sourced. “The forestry operation is barely economically viable as it is; we need to get more revenue from the would-be log than we do now just selling it to mills,” said Dunster Community Forest chair Larry Stamm.