Spearheading the East Texas Timberland Investment and Conservation Opportunities, The Conservation Fund has already preserved more than 75,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest in East Texas in the past three years. The Fund's recent projects and achievements include:
Often referred to as the "biological crossroads of North America," Big Thicket National Preserve is one of the nation's most endangered parks. The Fund is working with partners such as the National Park Service to conserve nearly 6,000 acres surrounding the Big Thicket National Preserve, securing habitat for 300 species of birds and continuing to provide the public with opportunities to hike, camp and explore Big Thicket's lush flowering plants, forests, cypress swamps, creeks and bayous.
In 2004 a broad-based coalition including the Big Thicket Association, The Brown Foundation, Entergy Corporation and elected officials joined with the Fund to protect 680 acres of spectacular forestlands surrounding the preserve's new visitor center. The recent purchase is part of a larger initiative to help save large tracts of hardwood forest throughout East Texas.
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The Fund is working in cooperation with regional and local planners to connect forest preserves, state parks and other protected natural areas within the 24 counties surrounding the Houston metropolitan area. The innovative program, known as the Houston Wilderness program, will provide wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts with the opportunity to experience the interdependence of plants and animals within an ecosystem from the prairies and woodlands to wetlands and estuaries in the Houston region.
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On behalf of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife service, the Fund and its partners are working to establish the Neches River National Refuge - 25,000 acres stretching approximately 38 miles along the Upper Neches River in Cherokee and Anderson counties. The Fund's recent acquisition of 7,000 acres will provide a buffer to the 33,000-acre Middle Neches River project, protecting the quality of water flowing through the Middle Neches River tract and establishing key habitat for the return black bears to the state.
Richard Donovan, a conservationist and East Texas native, tells the story of the Neches River and his quest to secure for it a National Wild and Scenic River designation in this book.
The Middle Neches tract, located along the Neches River, near Lufkin, Texas, contains some of the most significant forestlands in the south-important for both wood production and wildlife habitat. In 2003 the Fund and Renewable Resources, a private forest investment group, joined forces with Houston Endowment, the Meadows Foundation, T.L.L. Temple Foundation and several public agencies to acquire and conserve 33,000 acres of working forestland from International Paper in Angelina and Polk counties here.
In 2007, the Fund launched the Texas Pineywoods Experience, a large-scale initiative aimed to revitalize and protect the economy and environment of the Pineywoods region of East Texas. In its first phase, the $35 million initiative aims to combine land conservation and tourism to protect 30,000 acres of forestland and leverage millions of dollars from public and private sources to promote economic growth in the area.
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Nearly 4,000 acres of essential bottomland hardwood forest, bayous and cypress ponds in Eastern Texas were permanently protected thanks to an alliance of the Fund, Louisiana Pacific Corporation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. With financial assistance from the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission and the Houston Endowment, these lands are now part of the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge provides significant breeding, wintering, and stopover habitat for a wide variety of migratory birds.
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Our forests provide critical wildlife habitat, clean water, forest products and places to work and play. That’s why we've helped protect more than one million forest acres—and counting.
But even as these efforts continue, we confront an enormous challenge: Over half of America’s forestland is privately owned—and at growing risk of development or land conversion. By 2030, an estimated 26 million acres of forestland will be lost, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
That's why, in 2009, we launched the New Forest Fund. This fund is a dedicated source of conservaiton capital that will allow us to acquire and sustainably manage working forests with high conservation value, saving them from inappropriate development.
Growth of the New Forest Fund, with backing from foundations, private investments or donations of forestland, will be vital to our efforts to protect America’s forest landscape.
The New Forest Fund invests in working forests that have high conservation values and the capacity to generate necessary cash flow through diverse management strategies.
Although the lifespan of each project in the Fund’s investment portfolio will vary, we anticipate exiting individual project investments typically within a five to seven year period. OUr objective is to permanently protect each property either through eventual public ownership or selling to a private owner with a conservation agreement in place.
Attributes of a good NFF project include:
Read about the forests that have been saved through our New Forest Fund:
This project protects 11 miles along the Neches River, eliminates the threat of fragmentation of the landscape and complements the extensive work we have done along the Neches River. We expect to hold the land for five years, managing it for timber and recreation. After that time we plan to sell 2,500 to the Neches Wildlife Refuge and the remainder, with a conservation easement, to a private buyer.
In 2009, land valued at $3,905,000 was donated to the Fund thanks to the Mellon Foundation. We will hold most of the land for 15 years, netting a $2.2M return along with improved forest quality and habitat values.
By Rex Boner and Wesley Langdale
Clean air. Clean Water. Good jobs. Revenue to support education. Our challenge is balancing these pressing issues to sustain economic growth and quality of life. An often overlooked piece of this sustainability equation in Georgia is 22 million acres of commercial timberland owned by tens of thousands of private landowners.
Ninety-two percent of Georgia’s forests, covering two-thirds of the state, are privately owned. That land generates thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of revenue supporting government services. Georgia’s working forests also clean and cool our rivers and streams, consume and store carbon, provide habitat for a great diversity of wildlife, and surround us with scenic beauty.
Now, thanks to a just-finished University of Georgia study, we know that the value of these ecosystem services provided by privately owned forestland is more than $37.6 billion a year.
In these economic times, with limited public funds for forestland conservation, the role of private forest landowners is more important than ever. We want landowners to keep their land in forest production, providing ecosystem services to benefit Georgians and maintaining the state’s competitiveness in domestic and global forest product markets. But private woodlands—and with them our capacity to safeguard precious resources such as clean water—are shrinking.
Georgia’s working forests have not been here forever, and they don’t take care of themselves. Georgia’s private forest landowners must have economic incentive to grow, harvest and sell trees if they are going to continue to actively manage this renewable resource. Those landowners and the state’s forest industries face pressure today from growing global competition, local property taxes not reflective of the actual use of the land, and encroaching urban and suburban development. We need public policy that keeps the working forest working for us all, shaped by respect for private property rights, reasonable environmental protection requirements, and—most importantly—realistic tax policy.
For more than a century, Georgia’s most plentiful, renewable, natural resource—trees—has been turned into jobs and tax dollars. For generations the forestry industry has sustainably managed Georgia’s forestlands to produce turpentine, lumber, poles, posts, panels—and today an array of more than 5,000 forest products. The state’s forest-related businesses employ 118,423 Georgians in its second-largest industry. These manufacturing, technical and research jobs are among Georgia’s most sophisticated and highly compensated. The top two export commodities from Georgia’s ports in Savannah and Brunswick are wood pulp and paper/paperboard. Today, Georgia’s forest product manufacturers annually inject $27.2 billion into the state’s economy.
There is more on the horizon: Georgia is a leader in the emerging bio-energy industry, ranking first in the nation in announced biomass energy projects. Bio-energy projects alone have the potential to create thousands of additional jobs within new facilities and forestry operations to support them within the next 10 years.
Choices are being made today that will impact the amount of land that remains in forest cover. Without respect for private property rights, reasonable environmental protection requirements and realistic tax policy, Georgia will not continue to benefit from the clean air, clean water, jobs and recreation the forests provide.
About the authors:
Rex Boner is vice president of and the Southeast representative for The Conservation Fund. Wesley Langdale is the president of the Langdale Company in Valdosta and the Chairman of the Board of the Georgia Forestry Commission.
This feature originally appeared on April 21, 2011 as an Op Ed on The Atlanta Journal Constitution's website. To access this version click here.
Photo: Elaine/Flickr (top); CJ Peters/Flickr (bottom)
From pines in the Deep South to giant redwoods along the West Coast, forests are a part of our American character—and infrastructure. With about a third of our nation covered in forestland, forests provide critical wildlife habitat, clean water, forest products and places to work and play. We've saved 1.5 million forest acres across the country and continue developing promising conservation strategies to meet the challenges of a changing forestry landscape.
The Current State of America's ForestsOver the past decade, roughly 40 million forest acres changed ownership: As paper companies and other large-scale timberland owners merge or move on, they sell this land in fragments to investor-owners who consider the landscape an asset to buy, hold and sell. Market analysts forecast increasing forest fragmentation over the next two decades. With as many as 20 million acres going up for sale, ever smaller parcels will be divided and sold for development. The result: Our landscape—and the local economies and wildlife that depend on it—will shrink.
For more than 20 years, our approach has focused on collaboration, rather than confrontation, to develop solutions to the nation’s most complex environmental challenges—including major changes that have enveloped the forest products industry. Even as our efforts to protect forestland continue, we face an enormous challenge: More than half of America’s forestland is privately owned—and is at growing risk of development or land conversion. That’s why we’ve launched creative new efforts to help save these treasured landscapes, including:
The Fund has been at the forefront of forestland conservation through sustainable forestry. By taking this approach, we are demonstrating that sustainable forestry can be used as an effective tool to protect water, wildlife and jobs. On California’s North Coast, we’re pioneering new ways to protect and sustainably manage working forests. At our Garcia River, Big River and Salmon Creek forests, we’re restoring more than 40,000 acres of watersheds and forestland, directly benefiting the steelhead trout, coho salmon and other species that call this region home. We’re demonstrating a new way to sustainably manage these forests, as a nonprofit owner that uses both sound environmental strategy and sound economics—including a light-touch harvest regimen, sales of carbon offsets and a supply of local jobs. This emerging model of forest conservation can benefit our wildlife, climate and communities.
The Partnership for Southern Forestland Conservation (PFSFC) was created in 2008 after several forest conservation and management organizations met to discuss growing concerns about the future sustainability of large tracts of forestland in the South. U.S. Forest Service studies suggest that as many as 44 million forested acres will be converted to nonforest use by 2030 with the lion’s share in the South. The goal of the partnership, a loose coalition rather than a formal organization, is to protect 20 million acres of actively managed forestland in the South by 2020. The partnership will serve in a catalytic role to develop and implement strategies to address the conservation of forestland on a large scale.
The National Community Forestry Service Center, a new program within The Conservation Fund, coordinates the broad range of sophisticated intermediary services available through our organization to assist communities in identifying, acquiring, conserving, owning and building capacity to manage working forestland for the long term. We are focusing initial efforts on places of high rural poverty, especially in the Southern Black Belt, Appalachia, Upper Midwest and West Coast. The National Community Forestry Service Center will provide direct services to assist communities in owning and managing working forests, while also creating a framework to advance community forestry as a “place-based economic development” strategy.
The Natural Capital Investment Fund uses “patient capital” and targeted technical assistance to support natural resource-based businesses in startup, expansion and building capacity to create “triple bottom line” jobs for the long term. Established in 2001, NCIF is a certified community development financial institution that provides specialized debt and equity financing to a broad range of natural resource-based businesses including value-added forest products, value-added and specialty foods, ecotourism businesses and more. NCIF has invested more than $3.5 million in natural resource-based businesses in West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina and is exploring expansion to other states.
The Fund has preserved more than 75,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest in east Texas. Our work includes initiatives in Big Thicket—often referred to as the "biological crossroads of North America" and one of the nation's most endangered parks. We're involved in the innovative Houston Wilderness Program, and we established the Texas Pineywoods Experience, a large-scale initiative that aims to revitalize and protect the economy and environment of the Pineywoods region of east Texas. We also are working with partners to establish the Neches River National Refuge.
In 2009, we launched the New Forest Fund, a dedicated source of conservation capital that will allow us to acquire and sustainably manage working forests with high conservation value, saving them from inappropriate development. Growth of the New Forest Fund, with backing from foundations, private investments in the fund or donations of forestland, will be vital to our efforts to protect America’s forest landscape. "The New Forest Fund represents the heart of our mission—to build conservation strategies that achieve both economic and environmental goals," said Evan Smith, vice president of forestland acquisition and finance.
Click here to read more about the inaugural gift from the Richard King Mellon Foundation >>
The Forest Legacy Program, a voluntary program funded by the USDA Forest Service, works with state agencies and local landowners to protect ecologically important forests that are threatened with conversion to non-forest uses. The Program protects properties within areas designated by the state as important Forest Legacy Areas primarily through conservation easements with willing landowners. In order to become a participant in the Forest Legacy Program, the Wyoming State Forestry Division conducted an Assessment of Need (AON). The AON evaluated existing forest resources and conditions, identified threats to Wyoming forests, and designated Forest Legacy Areas.
The Conservation Fund was awarded the contract to complete the Wyoming Forest Legacy Program AON. The project was developed by The Conservation Fund with our public partners: the Wyoming State Forestry Division and the Wyoming State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee. The AON was completed in September of 2007. Download the Assessment of Need:
Please contact llynch@conservationfund.org with any questions or comments on the Wyoming Forest Legacy Program Assessment of Need.
The Forest Legacy Program, a voluntary program funded by the USDA Forest Service, works with state agencies and local landowners to protect environmentally important forests that are threatened with conversion to non-forest uses. The Program protects properties within areas designated by the state as important Forest Legacy Areas through conservation easements or fee-acquisition with willing landowners. In order to become a participant in the Forest Legacy Program, the State of West Virginia Division of Forestry conducted an Assessment of Need (AON). The AON evaluated existing forest resources and conditions, identified threats to WV forests, and designated Forest Legacy Areas.
The Conservation Fund was awarded the contract to complete the West Virginia Forest Legacy Program AON. The project was developed by The Conservation Fund with our subcontractors: The Sampson Group, Inc. and The Nature Conservancy of West Virginia and our public partners: the West Virginia Division of Forestry and the State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee. The AON was completed in June 2003.
1. Is it required that a landowner sell the development rights or participate in the program?
No. Participation in the Forest Legacy Program is completely voluntary. For a property to be considered for the FLP, the landowner must apply.
2. Is the State required to purchase property?
No. Each parcel of property will undergo a thorough application and review process by the State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee. The parcel must meet certain guidelines developed based on the Assessment of Need to be considered for purchase. In addition, the State can only purchase property to the extent that funds are made available for that purpose.
3. Can I change my mind and take a parcel out of the program after I’ve sold the development rights?
No. You will have sold a partial ownership of the property. You may sell the property but the state will continue to hold a permanent easement that will be binding on future landowners. Remember, the goal of the program is to keep forests as forests; flexibility on this point defeats the purpose.
4. Who should apply?
Owners of forestland properties within the designated Forest Legacy Areas will be eligible to apply. Only landowners that are interested in permanently selling their development rights and accept that future use and value of their property will be impacted should apply. Priority will be given to properties that provide environmental benefits and will be maintained as working forest.
5. If I have already sold the mineral or gas/oil rights to my property to someone else, can I put the property in the Forest Legacy Program?
Probably not, because this means someone else may already own the right to use all or part of the surface for some use other than forest. Some limited gas wells may be allowable.
6. What is a conservation easement?
A conservation easement is a legal document that restricts development rights. A landowner chooses to convey a conservation easement in order keep the property protected as open space and/or working forest. A conservation easement is a set of property rights and covenants that restricts the use of the property to provide a natural resource conservation benefit and provides for monitoring and enforcement of those covenants by a third-party, usually a land trust or government agency.
7. Who decided the location of Forest Legacy Areas and the priorities for projects?
The Division of Forestry in cooperation with the State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee (SFSCC). The SFSCC is a broad-based committee of members who are appointed by the State Forester.
8. What is the Assessment of Need?
The US Forest Service requires an Assessment of Need (AON) report by the West Virginia Division of Forestry that describes the need for Forest Legacy, eligibility criteria, and approved Forest Legacy Areas.
9. Who is developing the Assessment of Need?
The Division of Forestry bid out the completion of the AON and the successful bidder was The Conservation Fund, a national land and water conservation non-profit with an office in Shepherdstown, WV, and 24 other locations across the country. The Conservation Fund, with its contractors (The Sampson Group and The Nature Conservancy of West Virginia) were responsible for working with the Division of Forestry and State Forest Stewardship Coordinating Committee to develop the Assessment of Need.
10. What can I do and not do within an easement area?
Under most easements acceptable uses include: timber harvesting (subject to a Forest Stewardship Plan), firewood cutting, gathering (fruits, roots herbs and mushrooms), hunting, other outdoor recreation (including non-permanent campsites), and production of non-timber forest products (maple syrup, vines, etc.) Under most easements unacceptable activities include: all buildings, mining or quarrying that requires surface disturbance, trash or refuse disposal.
11. Can the way the forest is managed, and what it is used for, change after it’s entered in the Forest Legacy Program?
Yes. As long as the new use is compatible with the long-term sustainability of the forest, the Forest Stewardship Plan can be amended.
12. Can I build a house, or make other improvements within the easement area?
No. Any part of the property that you may want to use for improvements should be excluded from the easement area at the time the parcel enters the program.
13. Does participation in the Forest Legacy program have any effect on other landholdings I have outside the conservation easement area?
No.
14. Do I have to let the public use the easement area of my property for recreation?
No. You still control access to your property. The only required access is for monitoring by the Division of Forestry. However, if you choose to make your property available for public recreation as part of the easement, its priority for participation in the program may increase, depending on the local situation.
15. Will a conservation easement keep my property from being taken for a road or utility project?
No. The property is still subject to eminent domain, just as it is now. It is possible that project planners may make more effort to avoid a “conservation property” but that is not guaranteed.
16. Will participation in this program make my property more likely to be targeted for acquisition by the state or federal government for public land?
No. You will, however, still be able to offer the remaining rights to your property for fee simple purchase as public or private land if you choose. Attempts to acquire it as public land for conservation purposes may actually be less likely because it is already serving conservation purposes.
17. Where does the money come from to buy these conservation easements?
Up to 75% of the money comes from the United States Department of Agriculture as part of the Farm Bill. The other 25% must come from non-federal sources, either as cash or in-kind contributions from state, municipal or private sources.
18. What are the benefits of the Legacy Program?
To the Landowner:
To the Community:
19. What are the disadvantages of the Forest Legacy Program?
To the Landowner:
To the Community:
20. How much will Forest Legacy pay for development rights?
The rights to be purchased on each easement will be appraised to determine fair market value. In no circumstances can the program pay more than the appraised value of the rights to be purchased. The landowner can choose to donate the rights or sell them at a bargain price, which may provide tax benefits. The fair market value of an easement is the difference between the property's value "before" the easement (the unrestricted property) and the property's value "after" an easement (the restricted property). Development rights may also make up a large portion of the total value of a property in areas with high development pressures but a much lesser part of total value in areas with less development pressure.
21. What other states are participating in Forest Legacy?
Over thirty states are participating in Forest Legacy, including Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
22. How much funding is available through Forest Legacy?
President Bush requested $91 million for the FY2004 National Forest Legacy Program (an increase of $20 million from FY2003). It is reasonable to assume $1-3 million may be available annually for West Virginia projects.
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