Search this site:

Trends in Ownership

Ownership is at the center of many current issues surrounding the South's forest land. FIA identifies and tracks ownership of every forested sample location by accessing county records. Changes in the patterns of landownership, the number and types of southern landowners, and their many and varied reasons for owning forest land are important factors affecting the past, present, and future condition of the region's forest resources.

The South's timberland is held by two broad owner groups—public or private. Public ownership has accounted for between 9 and 11 percent of the timberland acres in the 13 Southern States over the past 46 years. In 1999, 21 million acres, 11 percent, were publicly owned (fig. 16.6 and table 16.2). Public land includes national forests and other public timberland administered by State, county and municipal agencies, miscellaneous Federal agencies, and Native Americans. Timberland in the "other public" category totaled 7 million acres in 1953 and 10 million acres in 1999.

The USDA Forest Service managed 12 million acres of southern timberland in 1999. This figure has changed little in the last 40 years. Much of the area that is now national forest was once cutover timberland and highly eroded cropland (Shands and Healy 1977). Legislative efforts to reclaim these areas began in 1907 with the establishment of the South's first national forest: the Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas and Oklahoma (U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service 2000). The reclamation efforts continued through the late 1930s with the purchase of national forest land in every Southern State. The last national forest created in the South was the Uwharrie established in North Carolina in 1961 (table 16.3). The National Forest System acreages reported in table 16.3 include nonforest land and are, therefore, higher than FIA estimates of national forest timberland.

Private landowners historically have held the lion's share of the South's timberland area. Private owners controlled 91 percent in 1953, and 89 percent remained in their hands in 1999. The two major groups of private owners are forest industry and nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners.

Until recently forest industry acreage continually increased, from 32 million acres in 1953 to a peak of 38 million acres in 1989 (fig. 16.6). Industry ownership Southwide declined for the first time between 1989 and 1999, falling to 37 million acres. Florida and Georgia combined showed a decline of more than 1 million acres of industry timberland since 1989, and both South Carolina and Virginia registered substantial losses (table 16.2). Industry timberland is typically the most intensively managed and the most readily available source of raw material for the South's timber products industries. Therefore, even small declines in industrial ownership can have major impacts. However, much of what was previously forest industry timberland is now in the hands of private corporations. Many believe these corporate timberland acres will continue to be managed for wood products.

Indications from inventory data just released for Alabama (Hartsell and Brown 2002), South Carolina (Conner and Sheffield 2001b), and the southern Coastal Plain of North Carolina (Conner and Sheffield 2001a) are that the downward trend in forest industry timberland has continued beyond the 1999 report year. Combined losses of forest industry timberland in these two States, and in North Carolina’s southern coastal region amounted to 1.4 million acres. If declines of this magnitude hold for the remaining States, additional new inventories may reveal even further declines in industry timberland Southwide.

NIPF timberland owners hold more acres than any other owner group, public or private. This remains true even though their holdings declined between 1963 and 1989, reflecting the decline in total timberland area throughout the South. NIPF timberland, which amounted to as much as 157 million acres in 1963, declined to 137 million acres by 1989. In 1999, NIPF timberland was up to 142 million acres, an increase of 4 percent over the past decade.

Trends in nonindustrial private timberland--

Private landowners often buy or sell timberland. Shifts in acres of timberland among NIPF landowners can have long-term affects on the extent, management, condition, and availability of southern forest resources.

Historically, the NIPF owner group included three ownership classes: farmers, corporations that do not manufacture forest products, and private individuals. However, beginning with the 1999 inventory of Tennessee, the farmer category was dropped; and these acres were included in the private individual owner class. To show general trends, the estimate of timberland owned by farmers from the previous survey of Tennessee was used to represent the recent inventory.

Timberland under NIPF ownership in Kentucky amounted to 11 million acres in 1999 (table 16.2), but the distribution of this area among farmer, corporate, and individual ownerships was unavailable. Therefore, the trends shown in figure 16.7 do not include Kentucky.

Trends in nonindustrial private timberland since 1982 revealed increases in both corporate and individual ownership, accompanied by declines in timberland owned by farmers. The decline in farmer-owned timberland is a long-standing trend. In 1952, it is estimated that farmers held as much as 88 million acres, or two-thirds of the area of southern timberland (Healy 1985). Farmer-owned timberland declined over the next 30 years to about 51 million acres in 1982 (fig. 16.7). Recent estimates place farm ownership at just 35 million acres in 12 Southern States. Only Arkansas experienced a recent increase in farmer-owned timberland—rising 7 percent to 3 million acres between 1989 and 1999.

Corporate ownership rose from 16 million acres in 1982 to about 20 million acres in 1999. Recent additions to the corporate owner class are the timber investment and management organizations (TIMOs), which include banks, insurance companies, agribusiness, and realty investment and development firms. “Pure” TIMOs do not own timberland, but rather manage the land for private landowners. Numbers are difficult to determine due to differences in the definition of TIMOs, but one estimate showed 4 million acres of timberland in the South were in the hands of “pure” TIMOs in 1999 (chapter 14). Using a broader definition of TIMOs raises this estimate to nearly 8 million acres.

The outlook is for increased corporate investment in the South's timberland by TIMOs and similar companies. The rise in corporate timberland and the decline in timberland owned by forest industry is a recent trend seen in several Southern States (table 16.2). If this trend continues, corporate timberland will eventually play a larger role in the South’s timber industry, perhaps offsetting the loss of acres owned by forest industry.

The final component of the NIPF owner class is private individuals. Individuals typically have owned the largest share of southern timberland and held 76 million acres in 1999. The 1999 estimate represents a 9-percent increase in timberland area held by private individuals since 1989 and an 18-percent increase since 1982.

Ownership, tract size, and the potential for forest fragmentation

One potential effect of an increase in the area of timberland owned by individuals is forest fragmentation—the breaking up of contiguous forest stands into smaller pieces due to clearing for agriculture and urban development (chapter 1). In 1990, FIA began collecting forested tract-size information for all nonindustrial private ownerships throughout the South (Thompson 1997, Thompson 1999, Thompson and Johnson 1996). Thompson defines forested tract size as the area of forest within a tract of land owned by a NIPF landowner. The total forested area within each tract can be a single contiguous stand, or the sum of two or more stands. This information will provide a baseline for measuring future trends. Changes in average forested tract size and estimates of the number of private forest landowners and parcels owned, as discussed by Wicker (chapter 9), can provide additional indicators of the potential for forest fragmentation.

To date, forested tract-size data have been collected in five Southern States—Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia—containing 56 million acres of NIPF land. Estimates from recent inventories show 30 million acres of NIPF timberland in these States were forested tracts totaling 100 acres or less, including 20 million acres in tracts totaling 50 acres or less (fig. 16.8). Less than 8 million acres of private timberland were classified as forested tracts greater than 500 acres.

Among forest management types, pine plantations tend to be in larger tracts. Nearly half of the 7 million acres of pine plantation on NIPF timberland were forested tracts greater than 200 acres, and another 20 percent were tracts containing between 101 to 200 forested acres (table 16.4). Only 18 percent of planted pine stands were in tracts where forested acres totaled 50 acres or less. In contrast, roughly half of the timberland acres in all other management types were in tracts with 100 forested acres or less.

Additional State surveys will tell if the forested tract-size distribution of NIPF land in these five States is representative of the entire South. If so, then more than half of the South's nonindustrial private timberland is composed of tracts in which forest land amounts to less than 100 acres, and less than one-fifth of NIPF tracts contain more than 500 acres of forest. Smaller forested tracts hold implications for wildlife habitat, and affect resource management decisions (chapter 1). Studies have shown that the practicality of timber management declines as forested tract size decreases (Birch 1997, Birch and others 1982, Thompson 1997, Thompson 1999, Thompson and Johnson 1996), and that landowners with the fewest acres of forest land have the fewest management options (chapter 15).