4.1. Cross Cutting Themes
4.1.1. Ownership is linked more to self-identity
than to profit
The most striking finding was the strong affiliation
these landowners felt toward their land. Every focus
group elicited statements that equated land ownership
with self-identity: it is who I am and what I want to be
and do. Some managed land that had been in their
families’ hands since the early-19th century or
lived on roads named after their families; others had
only owned the land for a couple of years, perhaps as
retirement homes and assets. Despite these great
differences, there was a broadly shared commitment to
long-term stewardship and appropriate management. Some of
the more recent forest landowners bought their land
without thinking about needing to manage it, but soon
learned the need for a management plan and in so doing
became more educated about forestry. Landownership seemed
much more tied to self-identity and lifestyle than to
financial return, and in some cases there were clear
statements that financial return was not a decision
driver for their management (the exception was in the
South, where financial return was more important). Focus
group narrative is included below and identification
codes (State; Participant Type) identify the geographical
state of the participant (Oregon = OR, Minnesota = MN,
Pennsylvania = PA, and SC = South Carolina) and
participant type (FAM = forestry association member and
NAM = non-forestry association member).
This is not about making money—this is forestry.
(OR; FAM)
One thing you need to know is what you want to do with
your forest personally. Not everyone is in it for the
timber; some people just like a quiet place to go, some
people like to grow things, some people like to hunt. So
you need to have your goals of what you want to do, and
that varies across everyone in the room. (PA; FAM)
I just enjoy seeing a beautiful tree in a beautiful
forest. (MN; FAM)
Doing something totally different than my usual
routine…it provides me with a place to retreat.
(MN:FAM)
We bought because it reflected a simpler life. When we
grew up, it wasn’t as populated, didn’t have
the traffic or the population. So when we looked at the
area, it was peaceful, quiet, you had a little privacy.
It’s a lot of wildlife, the traffic was low and we
want to care for it out of respect. Somebody greater than
I made it, and with a chainsaw you can cut it down pretty
quick and destroy it, at least for my lifetime. We just
like to walk through it. (PA; FAM)
Doing something that feels good—landscaping for
wildlife is what I enjoy the most from my forest land.
(SC; FAM)
The traditional economic model of investment behavior
assumes that investment returns are fungible, and that
investors readily shift their asset allocations in order
to meet their financial objectives. But the economic
model of investment decisionmaking seems to be a
less-than-ideal fit to the ownership of forestland
because there was little sense from the focus group
participants that they were viewing their forestland as a
readily substitutable asset.
It is important to me, my farm, that I want a legacy
to my kids. And this legacy will be done properly, with
good forestry. And we are now raising black cherry
cultivars, back-crossed chestnuts, and black walnut. And
this will be my legacy to my kids. (PA; FAM)
Today, the family forest owner is probably 7/10 of 1
percent of the expressed interest in production. So you
have an inversion… You have a production-driven
system (of programs) imposed on a benefit-driven
ownership system. (MN; FAM).
Of the eight focus groups, perhaps the only one that
approached the classic economic motivation paradigm was
the forestry association members in South Carolina. These
landowners were the most focused on intensive management
and generating financial return. This is not an
unexpected finding because the south is the region where
economic returns are the often the highest, rotations are
quite short, and the NIPF lands play a significant role
in the region’s forest industry [
19]. But even among them, there was a strong
inter-generation component in their motivations for land
ownership.
This result is not particularly striking because it is
not a new finding; in fact it replicates similar results
[
20,
21]. What is interesting is the extent to which it
was seemingly universal across the eight focus groups,
and also provides a window into the objectives that
people have and the programs that they find to be
attractive.
4.1.2. A strong ethic of conservation
A readily verbalized commitment to conservation
appears to be interwoven with the self-identity
motivation for forest land ownership and management. The
concept of sustainable forestry resonates well with these
landowners, as one might expect, given that their
ownership is motivated by a broad set of reasons. No one
in the focus groups said anything about expecting to sell
off land or liquidate their standing timber. It was far
more common to have them say that they intended to pass
the land to future generations, or would buy more land if
they had the money.
You see what strip miners do, you see what happens
when the neighbors start to move in, urban encroachment,
you see the gas companies, all those different things you
go down the road and you don’t like. You
can’t do nothing about it. But when you own the
property, basically that piece of land you can
control...I never got a dollar off a tree, I don’t
care. I just want to have control of that piece of land.
If I had more money, I would buy more land. (PA; FAM)
I figure that everyone that owns land should leave it
as good, preferably better, than when they got it.
(PA:NAM)
The stewardship/future generations motivation is also
echoed in this exchange between two people from
Oregon:
Participant 1:.there is a legacy element to it...Not
only improving something for your family or children or
whatever, but also being able to see the results of your
own planning and work.
Participant 2: Stewardship.
Participant 1: Yeah, stewardship—that is a good
word. (Oregon, NAM)
4.1.3. The landowners were aware of sustainable
forestry, but not clear as to its meaning
When asked if they knew about sustainable forestry,
the preponderance of focus group participants said that
they did. When asked more probing questions about
defining the concept or articulating what the term meant
to them, the response became much more hesitant or vague.
In many cases, people would respond with statements
resonant of sustained yield concepts (e.g., harvesting at
a rate no greater than growth) or by referring to the
program of a particular group (e.g, “that is what
TreeFarm is promoting” (OR; FAM)). Statements such
as the following were comparatively rare:
Sustainable forestry and forests require viable
economic markets…it means forestry will, in the
long run, support the economic, ecological, and social
demands placed on the forest. (MN; FAM)
4.1.4. The landowners have a high interest in
face-to-face technical assistance
Participants from every focus group said that they
would do a management practice they thought was important
even if there was no incentive program. Technical
assistance, however, was far more highly valued than
simple cost share. The need to have someone walk the land
with them, help them understand what was happening on
their land, and make decisions about what should be done
was strongly felt in every region.
I retired from the military in ’67, bought 140
acres. Over the past three or four years, we sold two
sales. I didn’t know trees were that valuable. I
couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have it. We
did what Penn State taught us to do. The service forester
helped us write the contract with the logger to protect
our trees. I couldn’t believe how lucky we were to
have all this help. (PA; FAM)
We worked with a wonderful forester…who sat down
with us, talked to us, figured out what we could do, and
told us how to do it. (MN; FAM)
I want to see somebody, I want to be able to look at
them and have them talk directly to me and walk on the
land. (SC; NAM)
You get better information and more tailored
information when you are dealing with someone face to
face on your own property. (SC:NAM)
The important role of education, particularly for new
landowners, was a common theme. One of the participants
in the Pennsylvania NAM focus group was very experienced,
and actually acted as a log buyer/contract logger. He
made the broad assertion that “most people
don’t have a clue about how to manage their
lands,” which generated a response from a recent
in-migrant:
When you say most of us don’t have a clue,
it’s true. As a newcomer, it’s nothing we
have been told about, or when I was a city slicker,
it’s nothing I cared about...with a little
education I’m learning that timber does need to be
managed. (PA; NAM)
This finding that direct face-to-face technical
assistance is highly valued by NIPF landowners is
consistent with a literature that dates back to the early
1950’s [
22,
23,
24]
4.2. A Synthetic Perspective on the Inter-regional
Variation
Describing the focus groups topic-by-topic and
state-by-state would require more space than this article
allows and, more importantly, would fail to convey one of
the emergent insights of the research. Such a piecemeal
approach would prevent an examination of the
intersectionality of forestry incentive programs,
sustainable forestry, and the management objectives of NIPF
landowners. The differences between the states are more
accurately understood as nuanced variations on a theme than
as wholesale departures from one another. So any discussion
of how the results differed geographically must be
understood in the recognition that they were also broadly
the same. Borrowing on a visual trope utilized effectively
in a recent article on community forestry [
25], it is possible to locate each of the regional
focus group results in a space that is defined by their
shared interest in three topics: forest continuity,
profit/benefit, and a commitment to do the “right
thing.” Although the particular language and detail
might change between regions in the country, these common
themes transcend the geographical detail. In
Figure
1the position of the focus groups within the space
is broadly indicative of the relative importance that the
participants from each state placed on the various topics
(based on a combined interpretation of the two focus groups
that occurred in each state).
Figure 1.
Graphical Representation of the Relative Importance
of Ownership Objectives among the Forest Landowner
Focus Groups from Pennsylvania (PA), Minnesota (MN),
South Carolina (SC) and Oregon (OR)
Figure 1.
Graphical Representation of the Relative Importance
of Ownership Objectives among the Forest Landowner
Focus Groups from Pennsylvania (PA), Minnesota (MN),
South Carolina (SC) and Oregon (OR)
The forest continuity concept is a two-fold concern for
landowners: keeping the land in the family, and keeping the
land in forest cover. Various pressures exist that make
achieving both forms of continuity a challenge. In the
northeast in particular, conversion of forestland to
residential development was a significant concern (but it
was less a concern in the west because of Oregon’s
land zoning practices). In every region there was
discussion about intergenerational transfer of the land,
which mixed in family issues (are my kids interested and/or
capable of managing it?) and estate tax issues, as this
exchange illustrates:
Participant 1: Parcelization. You know in our area,
there is no plan. And there’s a lot of big farms, and
the children live out of town. They are older people living
in our neighborhood. Big tracts of land going to be up for
sale, and probably parceled off. There’s some good
timber, maybe they’ll sell it.
Participant 2: It’ll get high-graded off and then
they’ll sell it.
Participant 1: Yeah, it is not going to be a good
outcome. Ten acre parcels they do; more money
Participant 3: In our county, there was a 90 acre parcel
with some ecological value. The person would’ve loved
to have passed it on to the next generation. He had some
estate planning, all of a sudden there was a corporate
trustee, and the daughter lived in Florida. She said sell
it to the highest bidder. (PA; FAM)
I see development occurring all around me…The 40
acres I own will never be developed. I just want to keep it
natural. (MN; FAM)
The day will come when I will not be able to afford not
to sell (my land) to a developer…the pressure I will
be subject to will be tremendous. (MN; FAM)
If you don’t have the financial assets, you will
eventually be taxed out of your forest land due to
development pressure. (MN; FAM)
The benefit/profit concept merely refers to the benefits
accrued through private land ownership. As noted before,
the concept of benefit goes far beyond economic profit. The
focus groups in South Carolina talked about economic return
as a primary benefit to forest land ownership more than did
the other regions (“we need more markets for
timber” (SC; NAM)), and even the southerners
expressed substantial interest in non-economic benefits
such as wildlife habitat/hunting. In the other regions, the
financial returns from forestry were regarded much more as
means to an end (“when I make money selling trees I
tend to reinvest it in my land” (OR; NAM)) than as
the end itself.
The “right thing” concept refers to the
broadly held notion that was broadly Leopoldian in
philosophy: a management action is right if it tends to
promote the overall health of the forest. Quite obviously
what constituted the “right thing” varied
considerably by region: in Pennsylvania it was combating
wild rose infestations and reducing deer herbivory on young
trees, in Oregon it might be restoring riparian areas, and
in South Carolina it might be appropriate use of prescribed
fire. But in every region there was the sense that as long
as the landowners knew the right thing to do, they would do
it.
It’s like the purpose driven forest—you hear
about the purpose driven life. My concern is when
we’re gone—then what? (PA; FAM)
The extent to which the landowners’ trilogy of
forest continuity, benefit/profit, and the “right
thing” aligns with sustainable forestry is not
entirely clear. At a philosophical level, there is no
apparent conflict; in fact, there is a great deal of
compatibility between the dimensions of this trilogy and
the “triple bottom line” of sustainable
business practices—equity, economy, and ecology [
26]. There are no values or objectives reflected in
the trilogy that are contrary to sustainable forestry, nor
are the typical sustainable forestry criteria omitted from
it with the possible exception of an explicit attention to
off-site impacts of management. But it is largely
impossible to determine if this philosophical alignment
would be manifest in on-the-ground practices. It may be
that the landowners’ definition of the “right
thing” is driven by aesthetics or traditional
practices [
27]
rather than scientifically grounded practices implemented
to restore ecological structure and function.
One sentiment that arose in all of the focus groups was
an anti-bureaucratic viewpoint. This was manifest in two
different ways. First was a reluctance to become involved
in programs such as forest certification if doing so would
allow other people to have influence on the
landowners’ decisions.
We don’t want anybody else telling us what to do
with our land. (SC; FAM)
The reason I got into contract logging, and the reason I
have forest land, is that I didn’t want some boss
telling me what to do and how to do it. (OR; FAM)
The second was a fairly broad anti-government sentiment:
that there was too much government intervention in the
private sector and too many restrictions on private
property rights, that some people received cost-share money
but did not perform the requisite management practices, and
that service foresters were too busy to return calls or
schedule technical assistance visits in a timely manner.
Under-funded programs were also a recurring source of
frustration among the landowners.
They (incentive programs) are in writing, but when it
comes time for allocation of money or the priorities,
it’s just not there. Again, it seems there are
government programs, they say ‘we have this, we have
that’, but the reality of it is it isn’t, it is
just on paper. But as far as can you get it? No, it is not
there. It hasn’t been allocated. So I would hope to
see the kinds of programs people could actually use to get
them that incentive to get going. Also it would be nice if
there was some help to get out there, more foresters, or
somebody you could call up. (PA; FAM)
(A) major problem is not enough information or where to
get (information) for it but not enough money to get any
and then there is always ten people ahead of you. (SC;
NAM)
In 1988 I applied for that thing and got it the year I
applied for it. In 1992 I applied for that money and got it
the year I applied for it. In 2003 I applied for that money
and they told me it would be a two-year wait maybe. (SC;
FAM)