Beyond Protected Areas

Simply creating protected areas out of their forests is not a viable option for many private landowners, given the entailed forgone revenue. A number of measures exist, however, that could create incentives for private southern forest owners to maintain the quantity and quality of their forests. These measures include land use instruments, fiscal incentives, liability limitations, market incentives, and increased education and capacity building.

Land use instruments

Protected areas are a delineation of eligible uses for a tract of land. Other forms of delineation, many of them voluntary, are also available or are beginning to emerge (Table 5.1). For instance, companies, nongovernmental organizations, or private citizens can establish conservation easements on forestland or other ecosystems. Easements have been increasingly utilized in the United States over the past two decades, growing from approximately 500,000 acres in 1990 to more than 6 million acres across the country in 2005.¹ Just under 1 million of these acres were in the South.

Notes: * The conservation easement involved The Nature Conservancy, Potlatch Forest Holdings, Inc., the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, and the Arkansas Forestry Commission. “16,000-acre ‘Working Forest’ Easement to Become Wildlife Management Area.” The Nature Conservancy. ** Thompson, Bill. “County adds 1,958 acres to land-conservation program.” Ocala (Florida) Star-Banner, 5 May 2009.

Fiscal incentives

Fiscal incentives can influence private sector land use decisions and practices (Table 5.2). For instance, a number of cost-share programs are available that help finance the expenses associated with reforestation, conservation, and sustainable forest management on private lands (Box 5.2). Likewise, tax deductions or credits are available to lower the cost of planting trees or instituting sustainable forestry practices. Such tax policies—or the lack thereof—can have a significant impact on both corporate and non-corporate forest owner decisions regarding the status, extent, and management of their forests.

Liability limitations

Liability limitations are designed to reduce liability risk to landowners for taking voluntary, proactive steps to protect or restore forests or other ecosystems (Table 5.3). For example, safe harbor agreements encourage private landowners to voluntarily maintain and/or restore and maintain habitat for a particular endangered or threatened species. In return, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service absolves the landowner of any increased restrictions should the landowner’s management actions increase the number of a listed species on his or her land or bring a listed species to that land. Under candidate conservation agreements with assurances, a nonfederal landowner voluntarily implements land management practices to benefit candidate species that are declining, but which are not yet listed as endangered or threatened. In return, the landowner has no legal obligations beyond what was committed to in the agreement if the species is later listed as endangered or threatened. In return, the landowner receives regulatory assurances.

Market incentives

Market incentives are another measure for encouraging sustainable forest management. A range of markets exist, often tied to specific types of ecosystem services (Table 5.4). For example, markets already exist for many of the provisioning ecosystem services such as timber and non-timber forest products. Revenue from sustainably harvesting timber has provided and can continue to provide southern landowners an incentive to maintain their lands as forests. In fact, recognition of this fact is leading conservationists to increasingly collaborate with timber companies and private landowners in an effort to keep forest as forest and stave off development across the country.

Markets and payment systems also are emerging for some of the regulating and cultural ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, watershed protection, and recreation. For instance, payments to landowners for carbon offsets have occurred in the United States. These new revenue streams might be able to provide forest owners with additional income to finance sustainable forest management practices, fund forest conservation, or pay taxes or other expenses associated with keeping land as forest.

Education and capacity building

Extension services are another means of informing and influencing forest management decisions. Extension services are avenues for exchanging ideas, knowledge, and techniques designed to change attitudes, practices, knowledge, and/or behavior such that forest and tree management improves.² State divisions of forest resources and federal extension services, for example, can inform landowners about prescribed burns, reforestation techniques, deer fences, and harvesting practices that mimic natural canopy openings, among other practices. Some forest product companies offer landowner assistance programs to private forest owners for the same purpose. Likewise, consulting foresters offer forest management advice to landowners. State forest services can provide lists of consulting foresters by region or county.

Such technical assistance programs have been successful in encouraging the application of sustainable forest management practices on private lands.³ Research suggests that education and capacity building are still in high demand. A recent nationwide study of family forest owners found that the most frequently cited request or demand was for one-on-one access to a forester or other natural resource professional to “walk the land” with them and discuss best management practices and options.⁴