Tag: Family forests

Helping families keep & sustain land

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Children often inherit their parents’ homes and land. But what if there is no will or estate plan? In such cases, state laws determine how real estate and other assets are divided. In most cases, property is passed to heirs in split shares. “Without a will, property is typically passed to heirs with a clouded…  More 

Forest Landowners and State Property Tax Programs

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Every state in the U.S. has a property tax program that lowers taxes for forest landowners. Greg Frey and Stephanie Snyder of the USDA Forest Service, with Justin Meier, Michael Kilgore, and Charlie Blinn of the University of Minnesota recently published two papers that build on their previous analysis of all fifty state property tax…  More 

African American Forest Landowners: Overcoming Obstacles

by Megan Bequette, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
African American landowners have had a historically difficult time becoming engaged in forestry due to a number of factors, including discrimination. Another factor is heirs’ property, which refers to land that has been passed down informally from generation to generation without a will. This often means that distant relatives co-own a piece of land, and…  More 

Promoting Ecosystem Services with State Property Tax Programs

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Every state in the U.S. offers tax breaks to forest landowners. But the details vary significantly – which makes it hard for policymakers to compare the programs, as a team of researchers from the USDA Forest Service and the University of Minnesota has shown. “State property tax programs incentivize ecosystem services,” says Forest Service scientist…  More 

Family Forests Are the Ties That Bind the Landscape

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Threat Center  • 
Family forests have an enormous capacity to provide ecosystem services such as clean air and water, timber and nontimber forest products, wildlife habitat, and scenic beauty and recreation — benefits that stretch far beyond property lines. According to USDA Forest Service research, sustaining these services depends on not only the condition of individual family forests…  More 

Who Will Own Southern Forests in the Future?

by Zoё Hoyle, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Forest ownership in the South has changed substantially over the past decade, raising questions about future landowner objectives and approaches to forest management — and ultimately about the retention of forest lands. Chartered by the U.S. Forest Service Southern Region and Southern Research Station along with the Southern Group of State Foresters, the Southern Forest Futures…  More 

U.S. Forest Service Co-sponsors Magazine’s 8th Anniversary Conference

by Teresa Jackson, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
More than 220 farmers, ranchers, forest landowners, and natural resource professionals from across the United States attended “Family Farms Strengthen the Local Economy,” the Minority Landowner Magazine’s annual conference held this year in Greenville, South Carolina. “Through the feature articles in Minority Landowner and through our annual conference, we introduce farmers and forest landowners to…  More 

Families, Forests, and Taxes

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
The Southern Forest Futures Project Technical Report is now available online, both entire and by chapter. The report provides an interdisciplinary assessment of potential futures of southern forests and the many benefits they provide. The Southern Forest Futures Project (SFFP) started in 2008 as an effort to study and understand the various forces reshaping the…  More