Forestlands harbor a variety of important societal and environmental values, from wild spaces for recreation to clean drinking water and habitat for wildlife species. These values are most efficiently provided by publicly owned land. But in the eastern United States, only 15 percent of forestland is publicly owned, compared to 68 percent in states west of the Mississippi River (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 2003. Draft RPA 2002: Forest Resource Tables. Washington, DC). In order to remedy the East's lack of public lands and the values that flow from them, many conservation organizations are seeking ways to help public entities acquire conservation lands and to assist private landowners in protecting the many values that their lands hold.
Large forested parcels offer the best opportunities to manage for values like wildlife habitat and remote recreation that require protection across a broad landscape. In the East, 80 percent of private forestland parcels over 5,000 acres were under corporate ownership in 1993, the date of the last complete woodlot ownership survey (Birch, Thomas W. 1996. Private Forest-land Owners of the United States, 1994. Resource Bulletin NE-134. Radnor, PA: United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Forest Experiment Station).
Changing Patterns of Land Ownership
The pattern of land ownership in the Northeast and Southeast is changing, however, and industrial ownership is becoming less dominant. Some 3.5 million acres of timberland in these regions were transferred out of forest industry ownership from 1977 to 1997, most often to institutional investors (Sampson, N., DeCoster, L., and Remuzzi, J. 2000. Changes in Forest Industry Timberland Ownership, 1979-2000. Alexandria, VA: The Sampson Group). These forestland investors typically hold land for ten to fifteen years and may well subdivide parcels to achieve maximum return on their investment (Block, N.E., and Sample, A.V. 2001. Industrial Timberland Divestitures and Investments: Opportunities and Challenges in Forestland Conservation. Washington, DC: Pinchot Institute for Conservation).
When land is transferred, there is a risk that large forested parcels will be converted to other uses or divided into smaller parcels, reducing the potential to provide both commercial timber and ecosystem services. By the same token, the transfer represents an opportunity to bring land into public ownership, thereby assuring the provision of important public values far into the future.
Federal Funding is Lagging
Over the years two federal programs could usually be counted on to help protect those public values. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and Forest Legacy Program were the mainstays of financing for forest conservation through fee or easement purchases. Yet LWCF met only 8 percent of state grant requests from fiscal years 2000 to 2002 (McQueen, M. and McMahon, E. 2003. Land Conservation Financing. Covelo, CA: Island Press). Forest Legacy funding, though growing, is not keeping up with the addition of new state participants in the program (46 states are currently approved or awaiting approval).
Given expanding opportunities to protect public forestland values and insufficient LWCF and Forest Legacy funding to meet the challenge, there is a need to identify and learn how to use additional sources of funds. Innovative approaches and a patchwork of funds from multiple programs may be necessary to achieve forest protection, particularly for large-scale projects.
About This Guide
This resource guide describes some of the resources available to people and organizations interested in protecting the many values of forestlands, with a special focus on the eastern United States.
The guide first discusses a variety of federal conservation funding programs and their requirements for participation. Many of these programs have a special focus on protecting wetlands, scarce wildlife habitat, urban watersheds, undeveloped coastline, or farmland. Although not all of these programs are devoted entirely or specifically to fee and easement purchase, they may well prove valuable in an overall strategy that includes participation by federal, state, tribal, and local governments, non-profit conservation organizations and land trusts, and private interests -- from industry and small businesses to foundations and individual donors. Appendix B contains information on the Fiscal Year 2003 appropriations for each of these programs, sources of funding, allocation of funds, typical project grant size, and special purposes.
The guide then summarizes state and local funding options, including notable innovative projects.
The Wilderness Society intends for this guide to be useful in continued work to protect the many benefits that forestlands in the East and elsewhere contribute to communities, both rural and urban, and to the health of the environment that ultimately sustains us all.
