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Family Forest Owners Hold the Cards

Private forests, especially in the eastern U.S., are being converted to non-forest uses at an unprecedented rate, according to a new U.S. Forest Service report.

The report, Forests on the Edge: Housing Development on America’s Private Forests, is the first in a series put out by the Forest Service’s “Forests on the Edge” project, whose purpose is to explore and publicize the contributions of and threats to private forests, which comprise 60 percent, or 430 million acres, of the nation’s forestland.

Forests on the Edge describes the services private forests provide to people – everything from maintaining water quality to providing wildlife habitat and home-grown wood products – and the threat from development that 44.2 million acres of them are likely to face in the next 30 years, with a consequential loss of these valuable services.

The team of researchers who contributed to the report analyzed watershed boundaries, forest cover, land ownership, and housing density projections to determine which areas of the country presented the highest probability of near-term development. Their data led them to focus on 15 watersheds, all in the eastern U.S., which has more private ownership than any other part of the country.

Areas vulnerable to a rapid shift from forest to developed uses include 310,000 acres in the Lower Penobscot watershed of Maine, 221,000 acres in the Middle Hudson watershed of New York and Massachusetts, 213,808 acres in the Lower Androscoggin watershed of Maine and New Hampshire, and 210,005 acres in the Lower Kennebec watershed of Maine.

The Lower Penobscot is listed as the watershed expected to experience the most development: analysts expect that by 2030, 20 to 30 percent of the watershed will have shifted from rural or exurban to urban status. The Lower Penobscot includes the city of Bangor, Maine, and towns on the mainland north of Acadia National Park, such as Blue Hill.

The result of the shift will be increased housing density and decreased parcel sizes, which will in turn decrease the quantity and quality of wildlife habitat, undermine the ecological integrity of forests, decrease biodiversity, reduce water quality, and eliminate sources of wood and other forest products, along with the jobs they entail.

Compounding the problem, results from the Forest Service’s recent National Woodland Owner Survey indicate that during the next 10 to 20 years, there will be a noticeable spike in forestland transfers – whether to new forestland owners or to developers – as current owners age. In the Northeast, more forests are owned by families than by any other type of owner (industry, investment groups, or nonprofits). Right now, 44 percent of those family forests are owned by people older than 65.

Between the projected turnover of land in the next few decades and the high development value much of that land holds in the watersheds described above, the opportunity for educating present and future forest owners is golden, according the Forest Service.

Brett Butler, a research forester who helped conduct the survey, noted, “The fate of much of the nation’s forest land is in the hands of family forest owners, who currently control 42 percent of forests. New owners will likely have different backgrounds and ownership objectives and may be less aware of the potential benefits of good forest management.”

To see the complete Forests on the Edge report, visit www.fs.fed.us/projects/fote/reports/fote-6-9-05.pdf.

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