Page 21 - Georgia Forestry - Summer 2019

have not always operated fairly in the past. Following the 1999 class action lawsuit Pigford v. Glickman, the USDA agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to African American farmers who faced discrimination when applying for grants or subsidies they needed to operate. Lacking financial support or professional knowledge, many of these landowners were also kept unaware of their eligibility for cleanup and harvesting assistance programs after natural disasters and, over the years, their properties have suffered a great deal.
“There’s some history behind this,” said Steve Patterson, director of forestry services at CHPP. “The reason some heirs property is in a degraded state is that African Americans didn’t have access to the same programs that the rest of the public did, or they weren’t aware of them.”
In addition to the technical assis- tance, pro bono foresters might also offer insight into marketing and selling wood products for the best possible return. If clients are less interested in timber sales, the foresters can provide help with developing clients’ property as a wildlife habitat, so that it’s more amenable to use as a hunting preserve, or simply as a place to hike, fish and enjoy the outdoors.
Of course, this is assuming that all the co-owners are aware of their rights and have come to some accord. Not all families are good at staying in touch or agreeing on how to manage their shared assets, and as previously remote or unat- tractive corners of the state have become more valuable, it’s become common for outside speculators to deliberately seek out tracts of heirs-property forestland and attempt to purchase it from a single, isolated relative. Even if others object, judges have routinely ordered a partition sale as the simplest and “fairest” way to divide heirs property, regardless of who was caring for it or what its cultural or historic value might have been.
Policy Solutions
For years, few people in government were aware of these settlements, which have generally taken place in local courts, and between the parties with minimal financial or political capital. Heirs prop- erty affected a large number of farmers seeking redress in the Pigford case,
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