This research explores the intersection between the various federal and state forestry incentive programs and the adoption of sustainable forestry practices on nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) lands in the US. The qualitative research reported here draws upon a series of eight focus groups of NIPF landowners (two each in Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina). Despite minor regional variations, the dominant theme that emerged is that these landowners' purchase and management decisions are motivated by the "trilogy" of forest continuity, benefit to the owner, and doing the "right thing." This trilogy is quite consistent with notions of sustainable forestry, but somewhat more at odds with the objectives of many financial incentive programs, as well as specific
OPEN ACCESSForests 2010, 1 50 tactics such as third-party certification. A series of policy recommendations that emerge from this research is presented.
In the early nonindustrial private forest (family forest) research literature, size of forest holding was identified as a critical variable impacting the propensity of family forest owners to invest in and manage small forest properties. This literature discusses relationships between size of forest holding and variables like forest owners' financial and asset positions, forest management objectives, use of a forest management plan and professional forestry advice, and use of forestry cost-share funding. Since then, the literature has expanded and now relates to the major problem of forest parcelization. We reviewed this literature for historical themes, technical considerations, and continuing ownership problems, emphasizing the current circumstances of forest parcelization and its historical roots in the size of forest holding problem. Many of the sociological, economic, financial, and technical relationships identified earlier as foundations of the size of forest holding problem are shown to be also fundamental to the parcelization problem in forestry. We suggest that today's parcelization issues are partially a continuation of the size of forest holding problem and that earlier research may be relevant to parcelization problems. We provide a detailed literature review that relates parcelization to the size of forest holding problem.
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