At the Finley Center: Looking Ahead for 2024

By Allyson Muth, Director, James C. Finley Center for Private Forests at Penn State

Happy New Year to you all!

At the Finley Center, our small staff use the end of the year to wrap up projects, finish out reports, and eventually take a pause to rest, regroup, and prepare for the year ahead. With the new year upon us, we are looking to two big efforts that we are excited to share more about.

We’ve been teasing the results of the recent Forest Landowners Survey for a while now and will soon be starting a series of presentations and workshops to share what we learned.

We used a different sampling methodology this iteration, in hopes of being able to look more closely at the values landowners hold for their land and the actions they undertake when things may be limited by parcel size and access to resources. We divided our landowner population into four quantiles, based on property size and numbers of landowners, so that we could look at different ways property size may influence how landowners view and care for their woods.

Estimates of the numbers of forest landowners in Pennsylvania vary between half a million (USDA Forest Service) and three-quarters of a million (past studies conducted by Penn State), but somewhere between 60 and 70% of those ownerships are held in properties less than 10 acres in size. With federal cost share monies being limited to properties of 10 acres and up, we wanted to better understand how owners of smaller properties were addressing stewardship of their forests. Where access to resources, like cost share, becomes more readily available, we wanted to understand how landowners of larger properties were caring for their land in small- and large-scale ways. As we further parse the data and look at the differences, we know that landowners care a lot about their land and want to do things that will leave it in good condition. Access to resources will always be challenged by sheer numbers of landowners who want to have help and those available to offer it. Our hope is that this research will help professionals and agencies guide approaches to education and access so that landowners seeking to care well for their woods can find the resources they need to do so. Stay tuned.

Regular readers of Forest Leaves frequently see news about the Pennsylvania Forest Stewards volunteer program (with many of you being members). In 2024, the PA Forest Stewards are continuing a “futuring” effort to assess where we’ve been, benchmark our volunteer program against others, and consider ways to scaffold a strong program for the 21^st Century, further strengthening the volunteer corps to support expansion of landowner education and engagement. A small committee of committed volunteers are collecting information and conducting interviews to lay the foundation of understanding from which we can assess and revamp, and we look forward to sharing with you the new opportunities this assessment will provide.

We hope the holiday season was a time of joy, health, and rest for you all, and that you’re looking ahead to what a new year can bring for you and the woods you care about. Thanks for being a loyal reader of Forest Leaves and thanks for your support of our efforts.