Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Conservation Organization (Land Trust and Conservancy) Professionals Changes/Problems:In the adaptation of work to the COVID-19 environment, we were unable to attend state and national professional conferences to share the work and get input from successful forest conservation organizations. Focus groups of conservation organization employees were argued against by the organization leadership as they were being stretched thin with personnel changes and other budgetary concerns. The loss of our colleague Jim Finley was a devastating blow to our plans to apply and further disseminate the learning and resources created as a result of this research project. We continue to seek ways to share and build off this information. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As referenced above, on June 9, 2021, researchers hosted a 90-minute workshop on the importance of adaptive forest management to protect forest conservation values on lands held under easement. We had planned a fall 2021 roundtable conversation to build off the workshop and our continued work, but the sudden death of our colleague Jim Finley just prior pushed that effort into 2022. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have directly engaged with the land trust and conservation organization communities, at outlined above and below, to ensure that our work and learning is being applied in ways that are responsive to their needs, opportunities, and challenges. Jim Finley joined the policy committee of WeConservePA to advance these messages and import and we have continued to remain engaged within the larger community to ensure complimentary efforts are continued. While outside the time period of the grant, we have made plans for continued work to disseminate the results. In January 2022, we are hosting a roundtable, titled "Adaptive Forest Management Under Conservation Easement Roundtable." The conversation will include: How can conservation organizations best advance forest conservation? Once we have acquired land, how do we manage it? How do we move from the role of simply saying "no" to activities perceived to be contrary to a conservation easement's objectives to actively helping landowners optimize the stewardship of their forestland? Beyond individual parcels and conservation easements, how can we work to change the system in which our capacity to achieve conservation on a broad scale is highly constrained by lack of resources, political, cultural, and other barriers? It's doubtful that we will come up with all the answers and an implementation plan during this roundtable, but we can take a baby step or two. Please join friends and colleagues in this exploration with WeConservePA and the Center for Private Forests at Penn State, which was inspired by WeConservePA's June Forest Conservation Seminar. March 18, 2022, we are hosting a full day workshop as part of the Pennsylvania Land Conservation Conference 2022 to cover the following information: Part 1: A Deep Dive on Forest Conservation Values: The Importance of Forests (90 minutes) Forests, and the numerous conservation values provided, are often of the highest importance for conservation organizations. High-value wildlife habitat is one conservation value often cited as the basis for protection. To maximize the value of conserved forested wildlife habitat, it is essential that organization staff have a thorough understanding of the habitats that they strive to protect, the habitat condition of a parcel, and its contribution to the larger landscape. Part 2: Protecting and Restoring Forest Conservation Values: the obligation and responsibility of land trusts (90 minutes) Conservation easements and fee acquisitions achieve the first goal of forest conservation by protecting private forestlands from development in perpetuity. Once conserved, what is the role and responsibility of conservation organizations to enhance and restore the conservation values of protected lands? Assessing Forest Health and Resilience (120 minutes) Learn tools to assess current forest condition with an eye towards forest health and resilience. The goal is to build off the morning presentations and share assessment resources to promote organizational understanding, contribute to baseline documentation and potential management strategies to promote forest restoration, and help to interpret information coming from the natural resources professionals with whom organizations work. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1: Developing an adaptive forest management conservation easement database Key informant interviews were conducted to benchmark Pennsylvania's land trusts' practices against organizations known nationally to manage forests protected under conservation easement or conservation restriction. Interviews were conducted with seven organizations primarily holding easements on working forest and which promote active management of the forest. Themes were aggregated from the key informant interviews to facilitate interpretation and learning. From the seven organizations with whom key informant interviews were conducted, we aggregated their responses into three themes: 1) set target conditions rather than restrictions; 2) baseline inventory critically important; and 3) connection to forest management plans and oversight. A misperception about many conservation easement documents is that they tend to indicate what organizations can NOT do, instead of what is allowed. While allowances do allow for management, the successful forest protecting organizations highlighted the importance of settings target or goal conditions. The establishment of a desirable condition then allowed for variable activities to be justified within a plan or actions to get to the condition, incorporating an awareness of risk. A second theme of the key informant interviews demonstrated the importance of solid baseline inventory and its usage as a gauge to attaining metrics for success. Combining a strong and deep baseline inventory with the above-mentioned goals and conditions meant that organizations could evaluate success in multiple values. The third theme arising from the key informant interviews pertained to the importance of a forest management or activities plan and ensuring that a trusted natural resources professional was overseeing actions to move the forest in more sustainable direction. In states without oversight of harvesting activities such as Pennsylvania, organizations highlighted the importance of an approved forest management plan to ensure professional oversight of any activities occurring on the protected land. These organizations felt confident that the forest management plan allowed them to manage toward something, e.g., their goal conditions, and gave them concrete steps to achieve. These plans and the oversight of actions by professionals provided strategies to improve the forest conservation values for which the land was protected. Objective 2: Identifying what does and does not work with conservation easements on forested land in Pennsylvania To establish a baseline understanding of land trust perceptions of and activities allowed on protected forestland we conducted a survey of all easement-holding land trusts within the state. The survey, conducted at the end of 2020 and into the beginning of 2021, was sent to 60 land trusts holding easements on private lands. Of the 60 identified easement holding land trusts, 35 clicked through, but only 28 provided useable data (46.7% response rate). Survey results are outlined in the paper referenced above, but summary discussion of the results is as follows: We perceive a great deal of misalignments and misperceptions between land trust values and expertise and enhancing forest conservation values. Critical in this space are the recognition that organizations are acting as gatekeepers to allow or disallow certain activities, yet making these management decisions from a place wherein many don't have expertise. For landowners and organizations wishing to manage to improve forest health, or for other values, the hurdles to do so can be large and cumbersome. One clear result was the strength and pervasiveness of negative attitudes towards forest management, particularly when income is generated. There is an overarching perception that management is counter to protecting or enhancing forest conservation values. This represents a misalignment in what many within the forest management community practice, however, represents yet another hurdle - a distrust of those who would serve as experts in this space. The refusal to allow for income generation limits resources to invest back into the land, for example to undertake activities that would improve the residual forest or help create conditions for regeneration, such as competitive plant control or deer fencing. Conservation organizations act as gatekeepers as to practices allowed. Lacking clearly defined target or goal conditions within the easement creates the perception that forest conservation values are being protected to maintain current condition. The threats to the forest are vast and becoming more severe. Stagnant conservation condition is all but impossible and must be recognized and remedied with the creation of goals that define movement towards health and resilience. The absence of understanding or engagement with professionals who understand the complexities of the forested system, the tolerances of different species, and the intervention points to return or advance the forest to the protected state as defined by the conservation values means that those conservation values on forested eased acres may not be obtainable. Additionally, the absence of solid baseline documentation or forest inventory data on which progress and success can be measured creates significant problems for assessing movement towards forest conservation values. The lack of plan requirements that include solid inventory data, or the expectation that data will be part of the organization's own baseline, means that the starting point towards improving conservation values is uncertain and vague. Objective 3: Create a research-based model easement addendum to provide for adaptive management. As part of this work, we have engaged in regular updates and conversation with our Pennsylvania land trust umbrella organization, WeConservePA, formerly PA Land Trust Association. Through personal communications with the attorney who designed the Pennsylvania model easement document and the Executive Director of WeConservePA, it became clear that the model easement document itself was not the problem, but instead it came down to how individual organizations were interpreting and enforcing, through organization missions and execution, what was allowed on the protection areas under easement. Rather than create an unnecessary addendum, we turned our attention to the creation of resources and trainings to better help individual conservation organizations understand and allow for adaptive forest management in the face of forest health threats and challenges. Based on needs, we created a training program for employees and boards of Pennsylvania land trusts to build their understanding, and comfort, in the space of adaptive forest management to support their efforts to incorporate it into the long term allowed care of the forestland they are protecting through easement enforcement. The training program is a mix of synchronous and asynchronous activities over the course of eight weeks, titled: Working Forests under Conservation Easement or on Protected Lands: A Training for Conservation Organizations. Using an existing online Penn State Extension course, we will supplement with live, virtual events, and additional training resources to support plans, improved baseline data, and knowledge of resources available to support adaptive forest management, and will culminate in a hands-on project on lands protected by the organization to build better foundational information and decision-making ability to consider forest health protections as part of protection from land subdivision and development. We anticipate this being a fee-based course.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Muth, A.B., Ombalski, K., and J.C. Finley. (In submission) Identifying Conservancy Perspectives on Engaging Working Forest Management. Society and Natural Resources.
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