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document Historic, archived Do not assume content reflects current scientific knowledge, policies, or practices. Owners Private Forest-land of the Western United States, 1994 Thomas W. Birch 'rn > '</> Abstract Informationfrom a recentstudyofforest-land owners has provided a newestimate ofthe numberofownerships and insight intothe attitudes andactions ofthis important groupofdecision makers. Nearly 71 percentthe privateforestland is in ownerships of more than 500 acres.An estimated 43 percentofthese owners have harvested timberfrom theirholdings atsometime in the past. Owners havea positive attitude towardtimbercutting at atimewhenthere is greaterdemandfor products from theforest. Interest in harvestingthetimberresource has created a situation in which watchful monitoring and good stewardship are needed to maintain the productivity ofecosystemsforfuture generations. The Author THOMASW. BIRCH, forester, received B.S. and M.S. degreesfrom Michigan State University in 1969 and 1974, respectively. Hejoinedthe USDA Forest Service's Northeastern Forest Experiment Station in 1974and currently iswiththe Station's Forest InventoryandAnalysis unit in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Acknowledgments This report has been ateam effort, involving the workand contributions of many people. Foremostamong these were theefforts ofthe privateforest-land owners whotookthetimetocompleteand return aquestionnaire. The help ofthe Forest InventoryandAnalysis Research Workunitsatthe USDA Forest Service Experiment Stations is greatly appreciated. Vickie Sharon was responsible foradministrative and secretarial services. Significantcontributions also were made byCecile Stelter, Beverly Grant,Anne Cane, RaySheffield, Gerald Craver, Patrick Miller, Jack London, Joanne Faulkner, Earl Leatherberry, Gem Blair, Dwane VanHooser, and Willem van Hees. Membersofthe Coordination Committee forthis study included Fred Kaiser, Chair (ForestService);Terri Bates, (National Association of State Foresters); Bob Smith and Jeff Goebel (National Resources Conservation Service); and Robert Moulton and Jim Bones (ForestService).The efforts ofthe Statistical Laboratoryat Iowa State University and Sarah Nusserin choosing the sample locations drawnformoststatesensured well-distributed coverage. I alsothankall thosewho gathered names and addresses, and contacted owners who had not responded tothe questionnairethroughthe mail, particularly state serviceforestersandforest inventorystaffs. Manuscript receivedforpublication 30 September 1996. Published by: Foradditional copies: USDA FOREST SERVICE USDA Forest Service 5 RADNOR CORP CTR SUITE 200 Publications Distribution RADNOR PA 19087-4585 359 Main Road Delaware, OH 43015 March 997 1 7 Private Forest-land Owners of the Western United States, 1994 Thomas W. Birch Contents Highlights 1 Introduction 2 Data Collection 2 Private Forest Owners 2 Owner Objectives 5 Timber Harvesting Behavior 7 Management Planning 7 Conclusion 8 Literature Cited 9 Tables 1-11 10 Appendix 15 Study Method 15 Estimation Procedure 15 Data Accuracy and Reliability 16 Definition ofTerms 1 Questionnaire 18 Index to Tables 22 An estimated 1.03 million private ownerships control more than 76 million acres of forest land in the Western United States. Nearly 71 percent of the private forest is in ownerships of more than 500 acres. Corporations, partnerships, clubs, and other ownerships with multiple owners hold 67 percent of the acreage, while "retired" owners control one-third of the remaining 33 percent. Forty-nine percent of the ownerships first acquired forest land since 1978; these owners control 22 percent of the private forest. Seven percent of the private forest-land owners have a written management plan; they control 53 percent of the private forest. Introduction report uses 9.9 million acres of private forest in Alaska on the basis of responses from Alaska owners. Our forest resources are vital to the social and economic well-being of our society. Good management of the forest In 1977, for comparison, 736.6 million acres of the United requires a thorough knowledge of the resource base and States were in forest; of this, 347 million acres were the factors affecting it. Forest owners are the essential classified as privately owned timberland (USDA For. Serv. connecting link between the general public and the land. 1982). The 1978 study of private forest-land owners of the This publication reports on the Western United States from United States used an estimate of 333 million acres a 1994 study of forest-land owners nationwide (Birch 1996), developed by USDA Economic Research Service, Natural and includes estimates of the number of private forest-land Resource Economics Division from the National Resources ownerships. Also described are ownership objectives, Inventory (NRI) of the USDA Soil Conservation Service. expected benefits, harvest experience, intention to harvest, The difference of 14 million acres (4 percent) was attributed and management planning. The first nationwide ownership to differences in definitions (Birch and others 1982). It was study forthe United States was conducted in 1978 (Birch felt that the proportions from the 1978 study could be and others 1982). This report also reviews trends that have applied to the timberland base for resource planning occurred between the 1978 and 1994 national surveys. purposes. The principal limitation of the 1978 survey was that it did not include a sufficient number of observations, In this report, an ownership unit refers to persons, especially for the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain States, combinations of persons or legal entities such as to provide reliable state-level results. Also, there were no corporations, partnerships, clubs, trusts, Indian Tribes, and observations forAlaska. The 1978 study also did not Native corporations. One person may own several parcels or consider the motivations or management intentions of partial interest in several parcels. An ownership unit controls forest-land owners, for example, their attitudes toward a parcel or group of parcels of land. Our sample is drawn harvesting timber. from the land itself (parcel by parcel), and the ownerof record (the apparent owner) is determined. Finally, an individual The other national estimate of forest-land owners is from who has some control of an amount of land (not exclusively the Timber Resource Review of 1953 (USDA For. Serv. the parcel sampled) responds to the survey. Therefore, 1958). The 1953 data did not include estimates of owners ownership units and not owners are being sampled. with fewerthan 3 acres in the East or fewer than 1 acres in the West. Therefore, direct comparison of numbers of Landowners have rights and responsibilities regarding their owners should not be made. The comparison by broad size land. These include the right to purchase additional land or classes could be of some use if coupled with trend data by sell existing holdings, determine land use, and choose the ownership group (Wall 1981). type and level of investment. Each of these rights all function within the limits allowed and imposed by society. The 1978 data were gathered from 11,076 sample locations Ownership of land fixes responsibility for decision making, by the USDA Economic Research Service. The 1994 study establishes a claim on income accruing to land, and was conducted by the Forest Inventory and Analysis determines how wealth in land is distributed (Lewis 1980; projects of the USDA Forest Service in cooperation with the Boxley 1977; Wunderlich 1978). National Association of State Foresters and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, in support of the Data Collection Forest Stewardship Program of the USDA Forest Service, State and Private Forestry. Questionnaires for the 1994 The USDA Forest Service's estimate of 736.7 million acres study were mailed to 23,334 owners of 28,194 privately of forest nationwide, essentially unchanged from 1977, owned forested sample plots. Sample plot locations were represents 33 percent of the total land area (Powell and from NRI or FIA plots. Specifics as to which plots were used others 1993). Of this, private "forest-land" owners (this and where are included in the Appendix. Responses from otherterms are defined in the Appendix) hold 423.8 million 11,745 ownerships that control 15,700 of these sample acres (58 percent). Two-thirds of the Nation's forests are plots are included in this report, as are responses from classified as timberland (490 million acres). Of this, 358 1,417 ownerships that control 2,584 sample locations in the million acres are in private ownership. This study is based West. The procedure for estimating the number of private on an estimate of 393 million acres of private forest land, forest-land owners by state and the questionnaire used for which includes essentially all of the private timberland plus this report are included in the Appendix. samples of "other forest" in Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and California. In addition, data obtained for Indian lands in Private Forest Owners Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah included "otherforest-land" area. Alaska has 6.2 million acres of An estimated 9.9 million private forest-land ownership units private timberland that was covered by Forest Inventory hold 393 million acres of forest land in the United States. In and Analysis (FIA) sample locations. The remaining 23.6 the 17 Western states there are an estimated 1,030,000 million acres of Alaska's private forest did not have ground private forest owners with 76.2 million acres of forest land. samples directly associated by ownership; it is owned These owners are diverse in legal organization, economic primarily by the same Native corporations that hold most of circumstances, personaf characteristics, ownership the state's private timberland. For estimation purposes, this objectives, and management experience. 2 INDIVIDUAL&JOINT13 PARTNERSHIP CORPORATION O OTHER 19780WNERS 19940WNERS 1978ACRES 1994ACRES Figure 1.—Distribution of private ownerships, by form of ownership, Western United States, 1978 and 1994. — Figure 2. Sub-regions of the West for private forest-land owners of the United States, 1994. About 91 percent of the private ownerships in the West are other ownership groups. Since 1978, "Other" ownerships individuals, collectively holding 33 percent of the privately such as sport and recreation clubs, undivided estates, owned forest land (Fig. 1, Table 1). Corporations hold 39 trusts, and Indian Tribes increased both in number and in percent and the remaining 27 percent is held by acreage held. Most of this increase resulted from the partnerships, undivided estates, clubs, associations, and reclassification of Indian tribal lands as private that formerly Indian Tribes. were classified as Federal lands administered by the USDI Bureau of Indian Affairs. The other major change resulted Since 1978, individual ownerships, including joint husband from the distribution of lands to Native Corporations in and wife and family ownerships other than family Alaska. Indian Tribes, including Native Corporations, are a corporations, increased in number but decreased in the particularly important ownership group in Alaska, Arizona, proportion of private forest-land owners. The area owned by New Mexico, Colorado, and several other states in the individuals increased and the proportion of forest land West. If the additional acreage of private "other forest" in owned increased slightly. The current study includes a Alaska not included in this report were added, private sample of Pinion-Juniper land in Oregon and California acreage in the West would total nearly 95 million acres. which was not included in the 1978 study and is owned primarily by individuals. Partnerships increased in number The data in this report were presented at the regional and of ownership units but decreased in the proportion of subregion level in Birch (1996). The West is divided into private forest land owned. Both the number of corporations three subregions: Pacific, Rocky Mountain, and Plains that own forest land and the forested acreage they hold States (Fig. 2, Table 2). Data tabulations by region, increased, though the latter decreased in proportion to subregion, and state are presented at the end of this report. 3 PERCENT OF OWNERS 1-9 10-49 ACRES1978 ACRES1994 50-99 100-499 1 1 500-999 1000+ 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 — Figure 3. Distribution of private ownerships, by size class of ownership, Western United States, 1978 and 1994. The distribution of ownership by size class has changed where concern about fragmentation and rapid turnover is since 1978 (Fig. 3, Table 3). The number of private concentrated. While many of these owners did not cite ownerships with fewer than 10 acres of forest land timber harvesting as their primary reason for owning forest increased from 474,000 (77 percent) to 601,000 (58 land, many have harvested and will harvest trees for sale to percent). The acreage in this class increased from 0.9 to forest-products companies. 1.9 million acres. The numberof ownerships with 10 to 49 acres of forest increased from 96,000 in 1978 to 293,000 in The implications of changing ownership patterns are 1994. The acreage in this class increased from 2.2 to 5.9 significant. The yearly transition to many new forest-land million acres. The number of owners with 50 to 99 acres of owners makes it difficult to impart information about forest increased from 15,000 to 68,000 and the acreage management and activities such as stewardship programs. owned increased from 1.0 to 4.6 million acres from 1978 to As a result, the use of mass communication, particularly the 1994. electronic media, is essential (Birch and Pywell 1986). Nearly one-half of the current owners acquired forest land The area in ownerships of more than 100 acres is forthe first time since 1978. These owners control 22 particularly important in the West. The proportion of percent of the private forest land (Fig. 4, Table 4). The ownerships with a written management plan increases with group with the largest decrease both in numbers of owners size of ownership. If the approximately 68,000 owners with and acreage owned included people who had first acquired more than 100 acres of forest worked with professional forest land between 1960 and 1969. The increase in foresters, nearly 84 percent of the West's forest could be ownerships and acres in the pre-1950 class resulted from placed under management. However, working only with this the reclassification of Indian lands and fewer "no answer" group would preclude the development of a broad-based responses. supportive constituency (Birch and Pywell 1986). The social and economic characteristics of private forest- More than 93 percent of the private ownerships have fewer land owners and their objectives must be considered when than 100 acres of forest land each; they control 16 percent developing management programs. As owners age, for of the private forest land. It is this portion of the resource example, some may harvest because they need money for 4