A race to reclaim forests: timber-managed land is up for sale, and forest communities are scrambling to maintain pristine environments and their way of life

American Forests, Autumn, 2005 by Jane Braxton Little

Balanced on a log suspended over a glacial pothole, Anne Dahl is searching the foot-deep water for endangered howellia and their delicate white florets no bigger than her baby finger. A red-naped sapsucker lands in an aspen above her, poking its head into a cavity to feed its chicks. It would not surprise Dahl to hear a grizzly bear making its way through the stand of larch and Douglas-firs just beyond her wetland perch.

She dreams of the day this area will belong to the loggers, contractors, teachers, and retirees of Swan Valley, her home since 1982. She and her neighbors have been working for five years to establish a community forest owned and managed by the residents of this spectacular valley tucked between the Mission Mountains and the Swan Range in western Montana.

They envision hunters coming here to stalk elk, loggers to fell selected trees. They imagine school kids learning how the fragile underwater beauty of howellia is linked to the rise and fall of vernal pools, and how the pools relate to the threatened grizzlies that roam nearby.

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"I fear we are on the threshold of losing all of this. We just want the opportunity to make a difference managing the lands that surround us," says Dahl, director of the Swan Ecosystem Center.

Across the country, communities like Dahl's are reclaiming the forests in their backyards. From the North Woods of Maine to the coast of California, citizen-based groups are acquiring local land and proclaiming themselves responsible for protecting and managing the natural resources that grace and nurture their communities.

It's more than public-spirited altruism. An unprecedented transfer of forest ownership has galvanized leaders like Dahl in communities surrounded by privately owned timberland. Lumber companies are unloading their holdings to meet the demands of a changing economy. Instead of traditional forest management to supply logs to their sawmills, they are divesting their land to free up capital, in part for overseas expansion.

Thirty million acres of forestland have changed hands since 1996, says Michael Goergen, executive vice president of the Society of American Foresters. Another 12 to 15 million will transfer out of industry ownership in the next decade. That's over half the approximately 80 million acres timber companies nationwide owned during the 20th century. By 2015, analysts predict, they will have sold a forested area as large as New England, leaving their combined land base smaller than the state of Indiana.

Transferring the ownership of this much forestland would have major implications under any circumstances, but under the current trend the implications are staggering. Financial institutions dominate the buyers: timberland investment management organizations (TIMOs), real estate investment trusts (REITs), limited liability and master limited partnerships. TIMOs alone have bought over a third of the 30 million acres of private industrial forests already sold, says Goergen. Another 5 million acres belong to various other financial institutions.

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Management by financial groups does not follow the traditional logs-to-the-mill approach. It is focused on diversified portfolios and bottom-line profits, which offers enormous opportunities for conservation. In addition to sawlogs and traditional forest products, huge tracts of land could be managed for wildlife, recreation, and eco-services such as carbon sequestration and water retention.

More likely, however, these lands will be sold for development. Because they are investments first and timberlands second, the forests being purchased by financial institutions are more vulnerable to conversion to nontimber uses than when they were owned by traditional timber companies.

"The green visors on Wall Street are calling the shots," says Goergen. "It's all about profits."

The alarm bells clanging throughout forest communities have sent leaders scurrying for solutions, shocked over these shifts in corporate timberland ownership. Although they have historically ridden out the booms and busts of resource-based economies, they have enjoyed relative stability knowing timber industry landowners were managing their forests for the long-term. Rural residents had access to the vast private lands in their backyards for hunting, fishing, and recreation and knew corporate owners depended on them for labor, services, and support. The new timberland owners have turned these traditional relationships topsy-turvy.

Rural communities are not waiting for Washington or corporate America to sort things out. They are striking out on their own--forging new partnerships, inventing tailor-made funding mechanisms, and determining for themselves their relationships with local forest ecosystems.

After years of involvement in the publicly owned forests in their backyards, rural leaders are turning their attention to private timberlands. It's a proactive movement aimed at self-determination, says Carol Daly, president, of the Communities Committee of the Seventh American Forest Congress. "They want to keep their communities the way they want them to be."