Page 14 - Georgia Forestry - Issue3 - Summer 2021

Here’s what we do know:
1 A 26-year supply of pine on the stump means our current low timber prices
could stay down for a long while.
2Land prices are up, driven in part by pandemic-era remote workers fleeing cities for cheaper, roomier suburbs and rural areas.
3Georgia’s forest owners are aging. When the Forest Service conducted a demographic study in 2008, almost half of forest owners were retirees. That number has surely increased in 2021.
So, when turf-hungry developers make generous offers on forestland, some landowners are finding the deals hard to resist.
HELPING LANDOWNERS
KEEP THEIR FORESTS
“I think landowners are caught between a rock and a hard spot,” observes Scott Davis, a Nature Conservancy veteran who now leads strategic initiatives at Keeping Forests, a high-impact coalition of conservationists and business leaders. “They’re passionate about their land, but at the same time, they have to make a living and have to pay their taxes.”
Thus, Keeping Forests and a host of other conservationists and forestry organizations are devising options for landowners who want to hang on to their forests during this challenging cycle.
The first step is hammering home the stakes.
Ecologically, we know that forest-to- developed-land conversion damages wild- life habitats, carbon and water sources. Another well-known conservation value is keeping forestland contiguous to maintain wildlife corridors, waterways and other ecosystem essentials.
Approaching conservation with such big-picture ideals is important. But equally vital, contends Katherine Moore, president of the Georgia Conservancy, is honing in — saving the most ecologically
“I want [kids] to have the physical experience of being in the woods, but I also want them to have that leading edge that has begun to think about forests as some of the most important natural systems that we have.” — Scott Davis
12 | GEORGIA FORESTRY
significant areas that are most at risk. “There are types of land sinks that are better from a carbon perspective, where we want to make sure we’re getting the biggest bang for the land conserva- tion buck,” she says. “One area where we’re seeing Atlanta metro growth, for instance, is in North Georgia and the piedmont region. That’s where our state’s densest forest is. So, loss of for-
estland there is more meaningful.”
The economic hit of forest loss is sig- nificant as well. As the Southern Forest Futures report outlines, 86% of the South’s forests are privately owned and two thirds of those owners harvest and
sell their trees.
In an April interview on the Keeping Forests podcast How the River Flows, Davis noted that there’s a cultural risk as well.
“I want my kids and grandkids to be able to understand ... if we don’t have ways of mitigating climate change, keeping our water clean and thinking about the wildlife habitat species diver- sity that are captured in these forests, then we’ve lost something that’s really, really important,” he said. “I want them to have the physical experience of being in the woods, but I also want them to have that leading edge that has begun to think about forests as some of the most important natural systems that we have,
MARILYN NIEVES