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Over the past 15 years the U.S. forest industry has almost completely divested its forestland holdings, creating new ownership opportunities for timberland investors, land trusts, and government agencies. Many newly available forestlands are adjacent to communities transitioning away from timber dependence toward economies based on recreation and real estate. This case study research examines changing ownership and management on two formerly industrial forests in central Oregon: a proposed land trust-owned community forest next to rapidly growing, wealthy Bend, Oregon; and a state-owned forest adjacent to the more isolated community of Gilchrist, Oregon. Through the case of these two forests, we illustrate the multifunctional transition and its relationship to community capacity in the U.S. West. We emphasize the importance of new allies and alliances in forest decision making, and the central role of forest degradation in the transition away from productivist forestry. Finally, we highlight opportunities and challenges for new conservation and government ownerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conserving threatened habitats on private lands requires policies that advance the interests of landowners and natural resource professionals alike. Through qualitative analysis of individual and focus-group interviews, we compared how family forest owners and natural resource professionals frame conservation of threatened habitat: the oak woodlands and savanna in Oregon. Applying constructionism to the analysis and design of specific policies, we explored policy options to facilitate cooperation and avert conflict between these stakeholders. Informants displayed three primary frames in discussions of oak conservation: the human-nature relationship, the rights and obligations of property ownership, and the role of policy in social change. Their motivations to conserve oak and preferences for conservation policy stemmed from their differing uses of these frames. Conservation easements, habitat mitigation banking, and voluntary grass-roots initiatives were three types of policy that seemed to accommodate the frames of both owners and natural resource professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Kaufman and Kaufman's seminal 1946 study examining the relationship between forests and communities, forest and community paradigms have shifted from (1) utilitarian views that stressed community stability and sustained yield harvests, to (2) ecosystem management and community resilience, to, we posit, (3) a new paradigm of forest and community health. The healthy forests, healthy communities paradigm both builds upon and departs from older paradigms. This article presents a case study of a small, resource-dependent community in eastern Oregon to illustrate the meanings and policy implications of this emerging paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]