Page 16 - Georgia Forestry - Issue3 - Summer 2021

that deserve our attention, our invest- ment and our protection.”
172
The futures report, Davis says, was one of the things that inspired the cre- ation of Keeping Forests, which has organized its efforts into three catego- ries: Promoting forest products, creating emerging markets and generating criti- cal mass.
The report has galvanized a host of other stakeholders as well.
The Georgia Conservancy, for instance, is developing an online tool to aid leaders as they strategize for land use policy and investment. The tool, called Georgia Now and Forever, will quantify land use changes in every single Georgia county, breaking down the data by categories that range from grassland and wetlands to developed land and, of course, forests.
“No jurisdiction has seen a decrease in development. Everywhere has seen an increase,” notes a summary in the site’s beta version. “Forest and working farm- land are being lost at rates of 133 acres/ day and 172 acres/day respectively.”
133
acres
acres of forest are lost daily
of farmland are lost daily
“We’ve heard from landowners about the timber price challenges,” Farris says. “They’re asking, ‘How can we develop and improve markets to keep our forests forests?’”
Farris’s answer: entice water utilities to pay forest owners to keep their land in trees.
“Forests are the best use of land for protecting water quality,” he explains.
FORESTS AS
FUNDAMENTAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
Another new enterprise comes from the Georgia Forestry Foundation, which asked former director of the Georgia Forestry Commission Robert Farris to step into a role called “forest ecosystem services program manager.”
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