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Applying
Ecosystem Management on Forest Landscapes Dominated by Private
Non-industrial Forest Ownerships
Nathaniel
S. Appleton
Cooperative
Agricultural Research Program
Seminar Series
Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN
April 9, 2003
Concepts of
forest management have steadily evolved over the course of the past
century. The most significant in the last decade, has been the evolution
from stand-level towards the ecosystem or landscape-level approach to
forest management. Ecosystem management represents new thinking and
knowledge about forest ecology and the emerging needs of society for a
broader management approach in the wake of destructive utilization
patterns, forest fragmentation and the resultant loss of biodiversity
and forest functions. The ecosystem approach, in aggregate, requires
maintenance of the full array of forest values and functions and
coordinated management at the landscape level, including across
ownerships. It can enhance forest productivity with respect to timber
harvests, fish/wildlife habitat, botanical/zoological variety and
recreational or aesthetic benefits while minimizing impacts from forest
insects, and disease, wind and fire, and market changes. However, the
ecosystem management approach is not readily understood and practiced by
most private non-industrial forest (PNIF) landowners.
There are an estimated 400,000 PNIF
landowners managing about 10.5 million acres or 82 percent of the
forestlands in Tennessee. How these PNIF lands are managed is pivotal
for both economic production and environmental degradation on the
State’s private forest landscapes. Application of the ecosystem
management approach on such lands is marred in the complexities
associated with managing for the thousands of small ownerships with
diverse objectives and varied levels of natural resource stewardship
interest and participation. For the ecosystem management approach to
work, individual landowner’s knowledge of how their forest parcel(s)
relates to the adjacent property(s) and how it fits into the bigger
landscape would be essential. Cooperation and collaboration across
forest ownerships, and the willingness of individual landowners to work
towards providing some non-market or public goods, would also be
essential. In this presentation, I will discuss the ecosystem-based
approach to forest management, its attributes, and, outline steps for
applying the approach to PNIF lands. Research needs and a strategy to
simplify and implement the ecosystem-based management approach among
limited resource and underserved PNIF landowners in Tennessee and the
South, will also be presented.
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