Marking a first in the long history of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest, a charitable friends group has formed for the 5,000-acre forest.

Eclogists will lead a tour of the state forest on Thursday — rescheduled from Wednesday due to rain in the forecast. The tour begins at 9 a.m. at forest headquarters.

Chris Bruno, formerly an assistant superintendent with The Trustees of Reservations, took the helm as superintendent of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest last month.

The superintendent of the Manuel Correllus State Forest will leave this week after two years on the job. Virginia Dautreuil steps down Sept. 2.

Virginia Dautreuil, 35, started training Wednesday morning for her new role as superintendent of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest. A Connecticut native, Ms. Dautreuil is the third person and first woman to hold the post.

The state conservation and recreation department is accepting applications for a superintendent following the sudden death of John J. Varkonda in late December. Mr. Varkonda was 55 and had been steward of the state forest for 26 years.

From a failed heath hen reservation to a red pine plantation gone wrong, the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest has weathered its share of management experiments.

In 2012, the forest’s plants and trees can breathe easy, as the forest recently has been designated as a state reserve by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).

David Foster, Harvard University forest director and historian for the Correllus state forest, said the designation has guaranteed a better future of the forest.

State foresters and Nature Conservancy fire ecology experts will draft a fire management plan for Manuel Correllus State Forest on Martha’s Vineyard, to guide ongoing fire work, thanks to recent funding from the U.S. Forest Service.

The $374,000 also will cover the partnership to restore 925 acres in Massachusetts with prescribed fire over the next year, to manage ecosystems and improve public safety.

On Monday crews from R.J. Cobb Land Clearing moved into the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest to begin clearing some 90 acres of dead red pine trees that have been blighted in recent decades by the fungus diplodia pinea. The work is part of a larger three-year effort to remove 237 acres of timber that was originally planted as early as 1925 in the forest.

The red pine plantations of the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest have been described as recently as 1998 by this paper as a “pine cathedral,” with evenly spaced rows of the northern evergreen towering above a forest floor nearly barren except for a carpet of needles. Now that cathedral has been all but sacked by fungal barbarians known as diplodia pinea which infect the trees from the shoots and rot them to the core.