Pinchot focus areas:     Wisconsin Forestland Owner Study Results
Pennsylvania Forestland Owner Study Results
|
Understanding the Needs of the Next Generation of Forest Landowners
45% of America's family forests are owned by individuals over 65 years of age. During the next two decades, the U.S. will witness the largest intergenerational transfer of private forest lands in its history. What will this mean for forest conservation? Given the economic pressures for development and land conversion, what policy changes are needed to help landowners keep forest as forest?
The first of its kind statewide offspring study conducted by the
Pinchot Institute for Conservation found that the majority of offspring
of Wisconsin family forestland owners are not connected to the land;
have not been involved in the management of the land (female offspring
far less than male offspring); but still expect to inherit the land
from their parents. They believe their parents will require them to
jointly manage the family forests with their brothers and sisters –
potentially posing real challenges as these siblings already
demonstrate some high levels of internal disagreement on important
aspects of managing the family forests (i.e. generating income from the
land; determining what conditions might force them to have to sell some
or all of the family forests). In fact this is of such importance that Wisconsin offspring place sibling agreement on the top of their list as the key condition to maintaining forestlands in family hands. And new to the discussion of keeping forests as forests, both male and female offspring in Wisconsin fear that lack of access to funds to pay for major medical expenses (not taxes) would more likely force them to have to sell the family forests. Further, this next generation of Wisconsin forestland owner tunes-out to stewardship discussions, but tunes in to payment for ecosystem services (getting paid to keep the trees on their land growing as carbon banks). So tapping into their information pipeline will simply require different thinking and different messaging.
All-in-all, it’s a new ball game with new rules for parents, government
agencies, and universities in Wisconsin all tasked with plugging into
their next generation of family forestland owners. But it’s also a
ball game that may provide unique platform for new players – like
forward-thinking health insurance providers – to create new programs to
help address human health and forest health in ways never done before.
For more information:
Wisconsin Data Analysis:
Pennsylvania Data Analysis:
|
||||
|
