Evaluating the impacts of retention and disposal options for Minnesota's county-administered forest land

The elephant in the room: Absentee landowner issues in conservation and land management

“…Surveying landowners in Massachusetts and Vermont, the authors found that absentee owners had less intense enjoyment, production, and protection motivations for landownership, and in general were disinterested in forest management or conservation compared to 5 The remaining articles focused on: estimating the numbers of absentee landowners as compared to resident owners (e.g., Shaffer and Meade, 1997;Holley et al, 2008;Brown et al, 2010;Butler and Ma, 2011), describing and identifying opportunities for cooperatives/coordination of actions on property (e.g., Kittredge, 2005;Blinn et al, 2007), and future plans for their land (e.g., Amacher et al, 2002;Butler et al, 2007;Majumdar et al, 2008). resident owners.…”

Laws, Markets, and Local Politics Drive Outcomes of Minnesota’s County Managed Forests

“…The data we analyzed demonstrated that counties provide a stable source of timber to wood products markets & a significant source of revenue to local governments. The comparability of this revenue stream to taxing private land is not clear (see Ellefson &McKay 1999 andBrown et al 2010 for further discussion of this issue). County land management also provides a variety of other forest benefits, notably including recreation, although these are difficult to quantify (Brown et al 2010).…”

“…through cabin & hunting leases), because of the importance of 0.000 0.500 recreation to the regional economy, and because recreation helped build political support in the local community for public land ownership. Brown et al (2010) find that land that is sold by counties tends not to be under professional management and is more likely to be fragmented when compared to land that is retained by counties, however most sold land remains forested.…”

“…Land commissioners educate county elected officials about the benefits of public management, and reference recent academic studies comparing the costs and benefits of land retention. These studies emphasized benefits of county lands in terms of recreational access, professionalization of forest management, and stabilization of timber supply (Brown et al 2010;Ellefson and McKay 1999). Land commissioners reported that these arguments were typically effective, particularly when combined with the delivery of revenue.…”

“…Private ownership has also attracted critiques. Small nonindustrial private forests often lack professionally prepared management plans, potentially leading to poorly planned harvests that may be unsustainable (Brown, Kilgore, and Hibbard 2010). Environmentalists have long called for restrictions on environmentally damaging practices on large private forest estates (Lansky 1992;Ellefson et al 2004).…”