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Discussion and Conclusions

Forest recreation in the South has been growing steadily. Growth in demand for viewing and photographing nature has been particularly rapid. Also growing in popularity is the gathering of various NTFPs such as berries, mushrooms, and herbs. Nonmotorized boating also is becoming more popular. These are among the fastest rising activities in the region, adding the most participants year by year of all activities. Also growing are hiking, backpacking, bicycling, horseback riding, coldwater fishing, walking, and visiting nature centers. Camping and off-road driving also are growing, at rates much faster than the population of the South. Slower growing activities include motorboating, sightseeing, hunting, and waterskiing. Across the Nation, as well as the South, viewing, learning, and photography activities have usually topped the list of activities adding large numbers of participants. There is no end in sight to the growth in demand and the pressures it will place on the forests of the South.

Given the dominance of private land in the region, it would seem that the preponderance of these growing demand pressures could be met by private ownerships. Among individual owners, however, approximately 59 percent indicate that an emphasis in managing their land is maintaining and improving the lands’ natural components. For 37 percent of owners, improving the natural components is the primary thing they emphasize. Accordingly, only about 14 percent of owners in the South permit the outside public to use their land, even though the greatest growth in demand is for nature appreciation and photography. Unless conditions become more favorable for landowners, the percentage of them permitting public access is likely to continue to decrease, as it has been doing for several years. Increasing demands for off-road vehicle use, hunting, fishing, and other of the more consumptive recreational activities may bring about even more private land closure. Many individuals and families are purchasing land for their own personal recreational pursuits. These owners are even less likely to open their land to others for recreational pursuits. Thus, the weight of providing for increases in public recreation demand in the future is likely to fall mostly on public providers, who increasingly face significant budget and capacity constraints.

The percentage of private owners in the South who permit the outside public to use their land is likely to decrease even further, unless conditions for owners change appreciably. In that four of the nine activities adding the most participants are oriented toward viewing and learning, increasing numbers of partnerships between owners and potential users seem possible. These potential partners may represent for owners a better strategy for achieving their goal of improving the natural conditions on their land, while at the same time accommodating greater recreation use. Planting food species, improving and protecting habitat, monitoring users and mitigating their impacts may open a vast, untapped opportunity.

Public land will likely offer better immediate opportunities for new supply, but only to a limited extent. Lack of fiscal resources, movement toward low-impact use policies, and a greater emphasis on ecosystem health on Federal land focuses more attention on visitor capacity than it has in the past. This increased attention is especially true for activities frequently in conflict with other uses and for those that most impact natural conditions. As with private land, increasing interest in viewing and learning activities could represent an important way for land management agencies to get tasks done that are necessary for improving and maintaining these natural conditions.

Increasing recreational use of forests is not without its drawbacks. In a number of forested areas in the South, recreation participation is likely to place greatly increased pressures on forest resources, public and private. If we are to sustainably manage our southern forests, these areas, which we have identified as hotspots, must be closely monitored. If left to develop as pressures demand, long-term health and productivity of many of our southern forest areas may be seriously impaired. Where pressures are predicted to occur (or are occurring), collective, multiscale planning and actions are needed. The forestry community is in a unique position to act as a leader in such planning and collaborative conservation efforts. Being situated across all levels of government and in the private sector, forestry professionals, including scientists, can act as catalysts to action.

Efforts to sustain forest productivity and health must include not only timber and recreation; increasingly, they must also include NTFPs of a wide variety. Both animals and plants are increasingly sought for increasingly diverse personal and commercial uses. Typically, NTFPs introduce nontraditional users, many of whom have little knowledge of the makeup of healthy forest ecosystems. Looking for leaves, twigs, vines, ferns, cones, fruits, bark, foliage, sap, firewood, poles, and boughs, these gatherers can have very significant impacts by interrupting balances among species and their habitats. Removal of edibles such as walnuts, hickory nuts, ramps, wild blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, persimmons, and a wide variety of other materials reduces food supplies for wild species. While there is little hard data on the gathering of these and other forest products, it is clear that gathering is increasing and must become a more prominent component of forest planning.

In conclusion, recreation, aesthetic, forest product, and a wide variety of other demands are increasingly being placed on the South’s forests. While the profession of forestry often focuses much of its time and talent on stand inventories, game habitat, water production, forest health, and commodity interests, these rising nontraditional, aesthetic demands are beginning to assume a dominance over traditional forest resource demands. Greater research and monitoring attention is immediately needed to better understand the nature of these demands and their potential unfettered consequences.