Recent meetings by state legislators and state government agencies have looked at ways to improve the rural economy in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region. Recommendations include: hiring more bureaucrats to study the issues; more state funding for education and transportation; promoting farming and ecotourism.

Millions of dollars of taxpayer money have already been spent on numerous studies and failed programs. More state funding is needed to fully fund the PILOT program which compensates towns that have tax exempt state owned land. Farming has been promoted for decades and there are many successful diverse farming operations. Promoting ecotourism is a good idea and a few businesses have been doing very well like the rafting companies on the Deerfield River. There are many great hiking, biking, and kayaking guides that describe great areas to go, but the state has done a very poor job in maintaining trails and creating new ones. Two of the very best views in Western Mass., for example, are very poorly marked — Raycroft Lookout in Florida and Robinson Point on Mt. Greylock. Twenty years ago a much needed bike trail was proposed to link Athol and Orange but it was never built.

But despite the fact we have hundreds of thousands of mostly unmanaged or mismanaged forest land in this area, forestry and the forest products industry were never mentioned by our state legislators and state agencies.

Over the past few decades, there have been efforts to support forestry all of which failed:

■In the ‘90s the state subsidized a log concentration yard in Greenfield. The idea was if you trucked a lot of low-grade saw logs to one location, it would make them more attractive to a log buyer. Well, that didn’t work and the yard went belly up.

■In the latter part of the ‘90s, the state created the “Forest & Wood Products Institute” at MWCC. It was supposed to promote forestry but instead just supported itself. After wasting a few million, the state pulled the plug.

■There was the “North Quabbin Woods Project” which was supposed to promote forestry but never did. Instead, they sold wooden knick-knacks in a little storefront in Orange. They also went belly up and a few million dollars were wasted there too.

■There was the Massachusetts Woodlands Cooperative where landowners hoped to sell their junk wood in bulk to get a better price. They even built their own sawmill which produced the most expensive boards in the country! But they went belly up too because they couldn’t make the economics work. Millions of taxpayer money was wasted with that boondoggle.

■The Mohawk Trail Woodlands Partnership was originally meant to support forestry by supporting the construction of a wood pellet plant but that proposal was deleted when a small group of anti-forestry protesters complained. So you can buy wood pellets in this area and you can use them in your wood pellet stove but we cannot manufacture them here! How does that make sense? Wood banks provide poor people with firewood so they don’t freeze in winter. There were no protests against the wood banks, so why were there protests against the manufacture of much cleaner burning wood pellets? So the “partnership” will waste millions of dollars on more bureaucrats and wasteful projects.

■The biggest disaster for forest industry was the failure to build the biomass plant in Greenfield. This would have spurred huge investments in forestry but the fraudulent Manomet Biomass “Study” provided the cover needed to kill that great project.

It is clear that we are long overdue for a “New Forestry Deal.” The legislation that we will be filing will:

■Provide a much better deal for landowners who are enrolled in the Chapter 61 Forest Land Tax Program that will encourage them to keep their land in forest while encouraging more landowners to enroll in the program.

■Provide more renewable energy credits for high-efficient CHP (combined heat and power) biomass plants to support locally produced renewable energy and use the waste heat to manufacture wood pellets and for greenhouses for the emerging cannabis industry. This will provide much needed low grade timber markets.

■Provide a comprehensive program to control non-native invasive plants and insects which are a huge threat to our forest ecosystems.

The “New Forestry Deal” will rebuild our forest economy and create thousands of new jobs in forest industry while improving our forests. It will be a win-win for everybody.

Mike Leonard is a consulting forester with North Quabbin Forestry in Petersham.