Does Housing Development Influence How Private Forest Landowners Manage Forest Land?

Anecdotal evidence and some previous studies suggest that as development approaches private forest land, there's a decline in commercial timber management of those forests. At the request of Gary Lettman, then a principal forest economist with the Oregon Department of Forestry, Jeff Kline and Andrew Gray, researchers with the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, studied whether this held true in Oregon and Washington. They used data from the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory Analysis program and state data from 2001-2016 to determine if there was a connection. Kline also reviewed previous studies conducted across the country on the effects of housing development on commercial timber management. Both research efforts yielded similar results--site-specific productivity and socioeconomic factors influenced whether development reduced commercial timber management. Throughout the entire study area, stand and site characteristics were significantly correlated with the intensity of active management and harvest levels. Active forest management decreased in western Washington as housing density increased. In other regions of Oregon and Washington, increases in housing density didn't result in significant decreases in active management. This information may inform future policy decisions about land use. Another consideration is that as these areas urbanize, public values around forests may shift from commercial timber management to managing for a variety of ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]