(Not) Counting Trees

Made an error in my description of woodlands and landowners owning 10 or more acres on my recent post: Extent of Woodland Leasing in Wisconsin: Insights from a recent landowner survey. This has been corrected. My apologies.

Key Findings

• Leasing occurs on 7-9% of private woodlands.
• 6.0% of landowners not enrolled in the Managed Forest Law (MFL) in a 2010 survey reported leasing land for activities such as hunting.
• Larger parcels are leased more frequently reflecting greater economic motivations for landownership.
• Demographically, those who lease have slightly higher educational attainment, but are otherwise similar.

Introduction

Yesterday was the second meeting of the Legislative Council Special Committee on the MFL. Audio and video are available via WisconsinEye. The Legislative Council staff have and will post other materials on their website.

There is large amount of carbon sequestered on Wisconsin's private woodlands, but to receive the economic benefits of carbon sequestration the land must be certified as sustainably managed. Only a fraction of these lands—held in thousands of small landholdings—are certified and the sustainable management future of these lands are in doubt with potentially negative environmental and economic outcomes related to the provision of ecosystem services like carbon sequestration.