…As the northern Arizona program restoration manager for The Nature Conservancy, Neil Chapman is well-versed in the overgrown state of the region’s forests. The Four Forest Restoration Initiative, or 4FRI, aims to mechanically thin densely packed ponderosa forests like these, with a goal of completing 1 million acres over 20 years in northern Arizona. But so far, the Forest Service has struggled to get close to the initiative’s ambitious 50,000-acres-per-year goal. Over the past year, logging companies have thinned about 13,000 acres. Now, The Nature Conservancy and the Forest Service hope a new partnership, called the Future Forest program, will help accelerate that pace.