Governor Kay Ivey served as the keynote speaker for the Alabama Forestry Commission’s spring academy graduation ceremony on Friday, April 30, 2021. The AFC established the original Forestry Academy in 1979, and it continued through 1994. Now, after 26 years, the Academy has been reinstated. This first graduating class of the ‘new’ Academy is composed of 27 recently hired AFC employees from 20 counties across Alabama. These individuals have completed eight weeks of intensive classroom study and field exercises in forest protection, forest management and teamwork building. (Governor’s Office, Lori Davis Jhons)