SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS
Volume 69 Number 1
Oregon • Washington State • Alaska Societies
Western Forester January/February/March 2024
Moving Beyond Anecdotes: How do State Policies Affect Private Forest Management? By Andrea Watts In the United States, 58 percent of the nation’s forestland is privately held, and of the timber harvested, 89 percent is sourced from privately owned forests. State-level forestry policies, which by extension often reflect federal policies, such as the Clean Water Act or Endangered Species Act, dictate how private landowners manage their land. For many who work in forestry and natural resources, we are either monitoring private landowners to ensure they are in compliance with state policies or ensuring our clients are in compliance. With a number of the articles in this issue focused on specific forest policies, for the lead article I wanted a 30,000foot view of forest policies in the Pacific Northwest and how they compare to those in other states. Seven years ago, Mindy Crandall, an associate professor of forest policy
IN THIS ISSUE What’s New in Forest Policy
Oregon’s Private Forest Accord
4
Managing Smoke Better to Protect Human Health and Improve Forest Health
8
Shifting the Management Paradigm on the O&C Lands in Western Oregon
12
at Oregon State University, and colleague Erin Kelly, professor and department head at Cal Poly Humboldt, found themselves discussing the Mindy Crandall similarities and differences of state policies regarding private forestland in their respective states. At that time, Crandall taught at the University of Maine while Kelly had been discussing policies with someone in Texas. Crandall recalls them saying, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to really do a deep dive into all 50 states and figure out how they’re similar? What does a private landowner have to do when deciding to harvest their timber and sell it to a mill? How many regulations are there?” Between teaching and other research projects, Crandall and Kelly persisted in researching this question, and beginning in 2022, they published the first of several papers of their findings. • “State-level forestry policies across the US: Discourses reflecting the tension between private property rights and public trust resources”— Building upon previous research that identified regulatory and nonregulatory approaches to managing private forestland, they updated these classifications and expanded the approaches to a four category-typology: landowner stewardship, forestry expert stewardship, science-bureaucracy, and participatory conservation. https://www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S1389934122000697?via%3Dihub – Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, along with a handful of other states,
have predominately regulatory programs—“prescriptive programs created and implemented by state authorities that require landowners to take certain actions in order to implement forestry”—as compared to quasi-regulatory or non-regulatory programs that rely more on Best Management Practices. • “The cost of doing business”: Private rights, public resources, and the resulting diversity of state-level forestry policies in the U.S.”—Through interviewers with policy experts from 12 states, two of which were Oregon and California, the research team found that states employed different policy tools to find a balance between protecting private property rights and public trust resources. https://www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0264837723002582 • “By the Book: Examining California’s Private Forest Regulations from the Perspectives of Family Forest Landowners”—From interviews with 33 family forest landowners, the research team learned that while the participants were supportive of California’s forest policies, the financial burdens and regulatory uncertainty were significant concerns when it came to managing their property. Of note, the participants expressed nuance in how to balance protecting public trust resources and private property rights, suggesting there is common ground between these two seemingly opposed management policies. https://doi.org/10.1080/089419 20.2023.2286652 I spoke with Crandall to discuss what they learned about state-level policies in