Rainforest Alliance

Willits, California
Telephone & Fax: (707) 459-0576

Email: wsmith@ra.org

Walter Smith is a senior manager for RA-Cert Division of the Rainforest Alliance. Walter has 17 years of experience in logging, training and forest resource management and 22 years of experience in Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Rainforest Alliance certification and verification. From 1973 to 1990, Walter worked in the forestry industry in northwestern California. In 1990 he co-founded a small non-profit called the Institute for Sustainable Forestry (ISF). Walter was the ISF's forest management certification program manager (which began three years prior to the founding of the FSC). He was a founding delegate of the FSC and on the original FSC International Principles and Criteria Working Group in 1992/1993. Walter began working with Rainforest Alliance in 1995 when ISF became RA’s first certification partner. He became as an employee in 2001. He has worked in Asia, Africa and North America as a senior representative, auditor, trainer, lecturer and manager for the Rainforest Alliance. He is currently the senior manager for RA-Cert operations in Asia Pacific.

Additionally, Walter has served on several forestry policy boards at the county and state level in California, USA and is the co-author of Forest Certification in Sustainable Development: Healing the Landscape with ecologist Chris Maser. Walter lives with his wife, Karen, in rural California on a 4.5 hectare forest and organic farm.