DEVELOPING A FOREST MANAGEMENT ACTIVITY COST GUIDE AND CONSIDERATION CRITERIA FOR SMALL-SCALE NON-INDUSTRIAL PRIVATE FOREST OWNERS IN THE LAKE STATES, UNITED STATES

Abstract

Investing in the forest as a resource today provides long-term ecological, social, and economic benefits to the working mosaic of forestland owners, forests themselves, and society. However, small-scale (10 to 49 acres) family forest owners in the Lake States (Mich., Minn., and Wis.) lack readily available passive resources to approximate the cost of managing their forestland; such information is accessible in other regions of the United States. Therefore, to close the knowledge gap, an online survey was developed and distributed to forest practitioners in 2022 to capture the cost of 21 forest management practices following an accounting approach. The survey results were analyzed through a break-even analysis and used to develop the Lake States Forest Management Activity Cost Guide. This effort resulted in the publicly available online dashboard described herein is available at the Wisconsin Forestry Center's Research and Development webpage and serves to provide landowners with information to encourage transparent dialog between forest practitioners and small-scale family forest owners. Monitoring and reporting changes in management costs, remain essential for forest managers to plan for costs, provide data for future meta-analyses, and guide economic policy. Such efforts may support ecosystem sustainability and foster the Lake States region's leading forest product economic sector.