Fall 2005

Effects on the Two-Legged Creatures:
Where Will We Recreate?

by Carol Whitlock

In the South, forest ownership and recreation demand are trends heading in opposite directions, with consequences that could possibly change the culture of society, as well as the look of the landscape.

Most forestland in the South is and will continue to be in private ownership. Since early in the last century, large tracts of forestland have been in the hands of timber companies, a situation that benefited local communities by providing both high-paying jobs and access to recreational opportunities as long as recreation use did not interfere with forest management and harvesting. Some of these arrangements became formal with local clubs and counties leasing industry land for hunting, fishing, and other recreational uses. Regardless of specific use, southerners were accustomed to having abundant and relatively inexpensive recreation nearby.

This loose network of recreation users and willing landowners is now unraveling. Southern population growth outpaces that of the Nation as a whole, especially on the Piedmont Plateau, the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and the area adjacent to Mobile Bay. In addition, participation in recreation activities is growing faster in the South than in the rest of the United States.

On the supply side, there is a great shift of ownership from forest industry to other private individuals and corporations who have very different objectives and management philosophies. The result is fragmentation, which decreases both the practicality of new owners managing their land for timber production and the likelihood that they will seek assistance and develop management plans for improving their forestland.

“It is our expectation that these types of timberland divestitures will continue for a long time,” said Michael Clutter, University of Georgia forest finance professor, at a briefing during the Southern Group of State Foresters meeting in December 2005. “In fact, our study indicates that in three years’ time it’s possible there will be only one forest products company with timberland holdings exceeding a million acres in the U.S. South.”

Among the new owners are timber investment management companies, which have little connection to nearby communities. Local community members suffer when high-paying mill jobs leave and are replaced with lower paying jobs in service and tourism industries, and when they encounter gates on lands that they had come to think of as “theirs.” Increasingly forestlands are being developed and further fragmented to accommodate the huge demand for primary and secondary homes near natural amenities. Forested mountains, riversides, wetlands, and other natural amenities are likely to continue to attract such development.

Aside from the timber industry, private owners of forestland have generally been reluctant to allow people who are unrelated by family ties to engage in recreation on their land. In the last 15 years, land development has intensified this reluctance to the point where less than 10 percent of owners have any interest in being recreation providers. Further complicating the recreation access picture is the recent dramatic increase in the recreational use of allterrain (ATV) and other off-highway motorized vehicles on forestlands. ATV sales have skyrocketed, as has ridership. Unauthorized use creates informal roads, more fragmentation, and causes many private owners to close yet more of their previously open lands.

Lacking incentives for managing their forests as in the past, landowners are likely to continue the trend of further fragmentation and creating barriers to trespass by their neighbors. This puts greater pressure for recreation on the South’s public forests, which are already the second most heavily used, with each acre of national forest land supporting 1.9 visitors. It also changes the fabric of rural living, ending century-long traditions of community access to nearby lands for hunting, fishing, and gathering.

“The trend toward closing more private land to recreational uses is likely to continue into the future as those uses become more individual amenity based, rather than raw wood material production based,” says Ken Cordell, project leader of the Southern Research Station Recreation, Wilderness, Urban Forest, and Demographic Trends Research unit in Athens, GA. “This will put more demand pressures on public lands, where management challenges and recreation use conflicts are likely to escalate.”

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For more information:
Ken Cordell at 706–559–4264 or kcordell@fs.fed.us