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3. We Need a Forest Policy Fix; it is Long Overdue – Part III

We Need a Forest Policy Fix; it is Long Overdue – Part III

How to effectively market stewardship practices to private forest owners.

Forest Stewardship market penetration is ineffective: Despite long term promotion of forest stewardship and cooperative forestry programs, market penetration has been exceedingly poor.
                
According to B. Butler et al “Only 3% of the owners have a written management plan while 16% have sought management advice. Among owners who have harvested trees, 22% sought professional advice during their most recent harvest. Most of the owners who own most of the family forest land (70% of family forest owners who own 70% of family forest land) are conservation minded or appear to be interested in protecting their land from development, but few have taken the concrete step of placing a conservation easement on their land (3% of the family forest owners who own 5% of family forest land,” (Butler et al, Journal of Forestry, Oct/Nov 2007).
 
Resources First Foundation offers the most robust platform of tools and services to address this problem. We currently host almost 1,500 tax, estate and conservation practice attorneys whose core clients are forest land owners. We host over 3,000 consulting foresters across the length and breadth of the U.S. who represent prime service providers for forest stewardship and forest management plans. And we host CTC (www.conservationtaxcenter.org), the most comprehensive tax advisory website in the country, built and designed purposely to address the demographic cliff of our aging forest landowner population.

The way to get forest landowners to adopt forest management plans and stewardship practices is to work through forest consultants nationwide. For example, Bob Williams - who is on the RFF Advisory Board and also listed as a resource on our Private Landowner Network - has some 600 clients in New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic states, and promotes forest stewardship with every one of them.
 
It is the end of the Trilogy, but do not worry because we will be back next week with an example of successful forest management in action.