Quick Guide for Community Forestry Practitioners
Published by: The Communities Committee
Written by: Mary Cox, in consultation with Ann Ingerson and Carol Daly
This Quick Guide provides an introduction to community-owned and managed forests as an approach to conserving private forests that has been gaining increasing attention. In June 2005 the Communities Committee and several other partners hosted a conference in Missoula, Montana on “Community-owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences and Lessons Learned.” The conference brought together citizens, managers and researchers from across the United States, as well as Canada and Eastern Europe to discuss opportunities and challenges for community-owned forests. The Quick Guide captures key information and learning shared at the conference and from more recent experiences in community-owned forests. It discusses what community forests are and the benefits they provide, outlines the background leading to efforts to increase community ownership of forestlands, provides examples of community forests from across the country, and introduces how communities can acquire and manage forests.
What Are Community-Owned Forests?
Across the country, millions of acres of private forestland are changing hands. Much of this land is at risk of being developed for residential or commercial use, which can cause significant fragmentation of forests and wildlife habitat, close off local residents’ access to outdoor recreation opportunities, hunting, forestry and other traditional uses, and imperil economic development, employment and other community benefits. Increasingly, forward thinking communities are acquiring some of these lands to protect forests from possible conversion and to manage them as community forests. Community-owned forests are a valuable economic, social and environmental asset – in addition to keeping forestland intact, local forest ownership gives residents greater control and self-determination in how their communities grow and develop, keeps economic benefits from the land in local hands, preserves and enhances local traditions, and allows the community to invest in long-term resource protection.
As the examples in this guide show, community-owned forests can take many forms – forests owned by local municipal governments, such as the many town forests in New England; forests owned by local community-based non-profits; and even forests in collective private ownership. What sets these forests apart from other private or government-owned forests in the role that local residents play in their stewardship. Local residents are involved in determining the goals and purposes of these forests, developing a governance structure, selecting individuals or organizations responsible for managing these forests, and in enjoying the many social and economic benefits of the forests.
Changing Forest Ownership
In recent years, privately-owned forestland has been changing hands rapidly, particularly as large timber and forest products companies divest their land holdings. The result is often smaller parcels of forestland and increasing fragmentation of ownership. As ownership patterns shift, forests are increasingly being developed for commercial or residential uses.
• Since 1978, 20-25% of all privately-owned forest land has changed ownership; approximately 75% of industry-owned private forestland changed hands between 1996 and 2005. (Little, 2005; Shillinglaw, Morgan and Vaughan, 2007).
• Estimates suggest that another 20% of private forestland could change hands in the next ten years. (Block and Sample, 2001).
• Research by the USDA Forest Service shows that conversion of forest land to developed uses reached 1 million acres per year in the 1990s.
• Projections are that in the next 30 years, another 44.2 million acres, over 11% of all private forest land, will experience “dramatic increases in housing development.” (Stein et al., 2005).
Development of private forestland has significant consequences for the ecological functions of the forest as well as the communities that live in and near them. Loss of forest means loss of wildlife habitat and degradation of wetlands and riparian areas. Communities also lose forest-based businesses and jobs, in both forestry and recreation-based industries. Moreover, much of the forestland in private timber company ownership has traditionally been open to public access. As timber companies sell their lands to other private owners, this access could disappear. In fact, according to the Forest Service, the number of acres of private forest land open to outdoor recreation has been declining in recent years. (Smith and Darr, 2002).
Community members, conservation organizations and government agencies are working to keep some of these lands as contiguous forest through acquisition by land trusts or state or federal governments. However, this option is not always feasible or favored by local residents. Community forests offer a promising way to keep forests as forests and maintain them as community assets, putting the critical economic, environmental, recreational, social, cultural, and aesthetic values those forests have traditionally provided in the hands of local residents.