Issue 6

Private Landowners hold the Key

The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV) was once home to abundant bottomland hardwood forests. Today, little more than 5 million acres of bottomland hardwoods remain in patches ranging in size from a few acres to tens of thousands of acres.

Fortunately, times are changing, and with the help of afforestation programs, bottomland hardwood forest acreage is gradually increasing. Area landowners are a mix of white landowners whose holdings typically exceed 700 acres, and African-American owners whose holdings are often less than 200 acres. Ninety percent of the land in the LMAV is privately owned, and 70 percent of that is owned by people who do not live on their land. Regardless of who owns the land or where they live, these private landowners can now benefit from converting marginal cropland into new forest stands.(...continued...)