The main architect of northern Arizona’s Four Forest Restoration Initiative is set to retire later this month. Wally Covington, a forestry professor at Northern Arizona University, has been a pioneer of modern forest management for more than five decades. KNAU’s Ryan Heinsius reports. Covington became a leading voice in the growing field of forest ecology and was an early proponent of prescribed burns and thinning to reduce catastrophic wildfire. He founded NAU’s Ecological Restoration Institute and helped craft the Four Forest Restoration Initiative, also known as 4FRI, which aims to thin 2.4 million acres in Arizona over the next two decades.
Covington made the leap to forestry on a trip out West while on a break from medical school in the early 1970s.