With 20 years of resource management experience, I have talked with and listened to literally thousands of forest landowners&endash;owners that held 3 acres, 30 acres and 3,000 acres. We have conducted surveys, workshops, and focus groups, all trying to understand what landowners really need to know to be good forest stewards. Almost without exception, they all wanted a very simple question answered&endash;ìWhat is the right thing to do on my property?î Though the question is asked in different ways&endash;ìShould I harvest timber?î&endash;ìHow do I plant trees?î&endash;ìWhat should I do about this insect problem?î&endash;my answer has always been a firm, unwavering ìIt depends.î Most resource professionals will give a similar answer, and for good reason. The right thing to do on your land very much depends on:
The order of this list is significant. The overwhelming element that needs to be considered when deciding on the right thing for your land is what you want and need from owning the property.
Whatever your goals are, they are the
foundation on which to answer the question, what is the
right thing.
Several years ago, working on a timber harvest for a
landowner, I mapped out the perfect location for a landing&endash;a
gathering point for logs and equipment in a timber harvest. It was
relatively flat, good soil, far enough away from the stream to be
environmentally benign, close to an existing road so road building
costs would be minimal, plus it was close to many large mature trees
that would surely improve the bottom line. It was even well screened
from the neighbors who had expressed concern over the noise generated
by a timber harvest.
When describing my plan to the landowner, he surprised me saying that I could not put the landing right there. When I pressed, praising the value of a landing at that point, and condemning alternatives, I found myself just about fired. My perfect landing happened to be the same spot where my client had first proposed to and then married his wife. All of their children were married on that spot, and at least one grand child hoped to be married there. Needless to say, I found a suitable alternative landing.
Though the spot was well suited for a landing from environmental, economic, and legal points of view, the only viewpoint that ultimately mattered was the landownerís goals for that particular place. Because of the very personal nature of this goal, he was at first reluctant to share it . However, without that knowledge I was ethically bound to design a timber harvest that met economic, environmental, and legal constraints to the best of my ability. The right thing for this place was to avoid any disturbance at all.
Biological and environmental understanding play a large part in determining the limits of the right thing. Another landowner that I worked with had a large brush field that she wanted to clear and plant trees. Most landowners that I have worked with have wanted to plant trees at one time or another. Looking at this site though, we needed to understand why it was a brush field. The soil was thin and rocky. The soil itself was very poor, lacking nutrients for the plants. The site faced the southwest, getting the full force of the afternoon sun and was hot and dry. Though we could have, at great expense, cleared the brush and planted trees, any trees that were planted would never have a chance to grow well on the poor site. It was likely that they would have grown very slowly and because of the stress of that environment would have been susceptible to insects and disease. Again, the right thing was to do nothing here.
How do you determine, from all of the choices available, what is the right thing for your land.? The best way is to create a plan.
As a forest landowner, you should seriously consider creating a plan for your property. This plan is for your use to help you make more informed decisions about the future of your property&endash;even if that decision is to do nothing.
You already have a type of plan for the management of your forest. Just reading this shows that you are interested in doing something on your property. If you are doing nothing actively or intentionally, you are letting nature take its course. The Forest Stewardship Plan is a systematic way for you to consider what you own and manage and what you expect of it and how to go about achieving those expectations. A forest stewardship plan is simply a list of things you should consider when deciding what to do with your forest.
The process of planning itself helps you learn about your property and its management. As an owner of forest property, you are expected to abide by laws that govern property ownership&endash;taxes, timber harvest, trespass. You should be familiar with the biology and ecology of the forest environment to keep your forest healthy. You ought to be aware of the social setting, potential laws and regulations that influence the handling of your land. Most landowners want to know about the economic condition of their land:
To answer these and other questions intelligently, you need information. This plan is one way to organize and summarize the information you need to make the right decisions. Having this information in hand and organized helps reduce the time and expense necessary to prepare applications for permits, cost-share agreements, and environmental documentation like Timber Harvest Plans. This plan is very much your plan! It is not required by any government agency. This plan is a suggested method for you to organize information about your property, point out gaps in that information, and show you how to fill those gaps so that you can make the best decisions about your land.
You may be called to describe your property to others for a number of reasons. Maybe you are hiring a contractor to do some road work, possibly you would like to convince the assessor to change the propertyís valuation, you may need to hire a resource management professional, or you want to do something to your property that requires a permit from a government agency.
You ought to consider providing your family with a written record of the great store of knowledge that you have gathered on the history and future plans for the property.
You can use this plan as a basis for other types of documents that you will need to manage your property. If you are interested in government programs that pay you to mange your property, you will almost always have to create a plan that meets the requirements of the agency that sponsors the program. This plan will provide much of that information. For example, this plan should easily be certified as Forest Stewardship Plan after review and verification by a professional forester.
If you plan on selling timber from your property, you will need to file a Timber Harvest Plan (or exemption) with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. While a Timber Harvest Plan must be signed by a Registered Professional Forester, the information in this plan can be used by the forester directly, possibly saving some preparation time.
Some harvesting options do not require a
Registered Professional Forester. This plan can help you fill out the
required forms.
Think of creating a plan as a systematic process for
learning about your property and how it fits into an environmental,
legal, social, and economic system. The idea here is to learn by
doing, answering questions with materials at hand, looking up and
learning about new ideas, meeting the right people that can help you
do the right thing on your property.
The first step is documenting what you know already. If you are like most landowners, you probably have a file folder or manila envelope with records that describe activities on your property, deeds, tax forms, receipts, maps, and bills.
You also have a great deal of information about the history and management of the property in your head. Only you know what your goals for the land are. Only you can make the decision about the mix of uses that will occur on your land.
To create a plan, you need to tell the story of your family's forest. The attached plan will guide you in telling that story. No matter who you tell the story to, you need to describe the following:
When you fill out forms or talk to individuals,
these questions may be expressed in other terms but usually are
included in some form or another.
The plan is a template that you fill out to the best
of your ability. You should be able to answer some of the items in
every section just from your own experience, or materials on hand. Do
not worry about filling out every section completely. Some items may
not be necessary for your property. Others will take a lot more
digging to get the answers. Fill out as much as you can. Use the
blank sections to guide you to the topics that you will want to learn
more about.
While filling out the plan, links point to articles that discuss the question at hand. For example, there are several articles on taxes. When you arrive at the plan section that discusses tax issues, a link will take you to the list of tax-related articles. Scan the list and choose the article that seems likely to answer your question.
In this way you can move at your own pace, getting
information that will help you do the right thing for your land. You
can skip the sections that are less useful to your situation and
concentrate on those topics that interest you the most.
Entries that are Blue and Underlined are
links to more information in this series. Simply put your cursor over
the link, the cursor changes to a pointing finger. Click the mouse
button, and a description of the term will pop up. Each definition
has suggested reading, again, highlighted as a link.
This link takes you to the Tips page. The
Tips
link gives specific instruction for each section.
However, there is no BACK button. You can return to
the document that you were working on by closing the newly opend
window or selecting the document that you want to return to by name
from the Window
menu.
Entries that are Green and Underlined represent links to the World Wide Web. Simply put your cursor over the link, the cursor changes to a pointing finger. Click the mouse button, and your web browser will start up and take you to that Web page.
The plan on the accompanying disk, called PLAN.CWK is in ClarisWorks 5.0 format. PLAN.CWK is a stationary file, that is, it acts as a template. When you click PLAN.CWK link or double click on the file, or open it from the File/Open menu, a new blank copy is created. Be sure to save your plan under a different name. PLAN.RTF is in Rich Text Format - a file translation format that most word processors can read. Rich Text Format preserves some font and style information like bold printing and underlines.
ClarisWorks, soon to be renamed AppleWorks is an integrated word processing, spreadsheet, graphing, drawing, painting, database, and communications application. An integrated application works well for this plan because while it requires mostly word processing, it includes a mix of some spreadsheets that help you do calculations and a set of drawing tools that can help you illustrate ideas like the maps.
We chose ClarisWorks because the files are interchangeable on Macintosh and Windows computers. ClarisWorks is bundled with many computer systems marketed to small business and home users. The program can be purchased for about $100&endash;upgrades and competitive upgrades are usually cheaper. There is a free demonstration version available from Apple.
If you donít have ClarisWorks or want to buy a copy, or download a copy of the demonstration file, most word processors can convert these files, but you will lose all of the interactive features.
The plan uses many of the features of the ClarisWorks application. Most of the plan uses the word processor. A good plan will change over time. Using a word processor allows you to easily change those items&endash;addresses for example&endash;that need updating. The spreadsheet will help you with calculations. You can use the drawing features to create maps. If you feel uncomfortable with these tools, go ahead and draw the maps with a pencil and paper. Use a ledger and calculator to keep tax journal entries. Just attach a copy to the plan.
You create your plan by editing the entries to describe your property. Donít worry about parts that you cannot fill out easily. Place a marker on parts that you want to fill in later (I use ###) and then use the word processorís FIND command to quickly locate items that you missed.
On the title page, fill in the name of the property, who prepared the plan, and the date. On the first page (Who) fill in the same information in the footer.
From there on fill in what you can. Some of the information will require a trip to the County Recorderís or other government office or writing for additional information. Some sections can best be answered by consulting with the appropriate resource professional. Donít worry about parts of the plan that are not clear or complete. Part of this process is learning as you are doing. When you get to a difficult part, note it, look up the answer and move on.
It is often helpful to divide the property into smaller pieces that can be worked on easily. The plan sometimes requests that you describe stands. A stand is a group of trees or other plants, uniform in species composition and/or age characteristics, though not necessarily the same age. All trees in a stand are usually treated similarly in forest management practices. For your plan, you may want to identify portions of the property where specific activities have taken place, the plants are very different, like a meadow, or where a physical boundary like a road marker exists for a convenient stand.
Other times the plan asks for information about the property as a whole. For example, the deed describes the boundaries for the entire property. Often, stand level information, forest inventory, for example, is summarized and reported for the entire property.
A plan is a living document in many ways. You need to change and adapt it as conditions change. This is one of the reasons to use a computer file&endash;while most of the plan does not change, you can easily change just those parts that do.
How long it will take to complete the plan is
impossible to predict. A great deal depends on how much effort you
want to put into it. Remember that in creating the plan, you are
learning more about your property, resources, and resource
management. A truly useful plan is never really finished. As you
implement the plan, as more information comes in, and as you learn
more about managing resources, your plan will change.
For your first draft, estimate about 1 hour for every
10 acres that you own. You may need to add some time to make trips to
the County Recorderís office or local library.
Having the information on hand, organized, and summarized is worth the effort. It will allow you to make the right decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and maximize the enjoyment of your property.
In accordance with applicable State and Federal laws and University policy, the University of California does not discriminate in any of its policies, procedures, or practices on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, medical condition, or handicap. Inquiries regarding this policy may be directed to the Affirmative Action Director, University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources, 300 Lakeside Drive, 6th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612-3560. (510) 987-0096.
Publication of this series was in part funded by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection under Contract numbers 8CA96027 and 8CA96028