Forests and forest management are crucial in achieving environmental objectives, including mitigating climate change by sequestering carbon, preserving biodiversity, and preventing the eutrophication of surface waters. Achieving environmental objectives heavily depends on the willingness of private forest owners to adopt environmentally oriented forest management practices (EFMPs...
Outreach to family forest landowners promotes sustainable forest management activities but shifting demographics may challenge the usefulness of conventional outreach approaches. COVID-19 also changed communication patterns, with unprecedented adoption of video conferencing (e.g., Zoom), creating a potential alternative for forestry professionals. We surveyed Arkansas and...
Our research targets the role of forests under the international Paris Climate Agreement, the EU Green Deal and Forest Strategy. In line with the latter objectives, Member States are expected to encourage forest owners to contribute to international climate goals via national strategic plans and new management measures. How forest owners will respond, however, to a range of...
This study explores attitudes and preferences of Finnish non-industrial private forest owners for voluntary temporary forest conservation. The survey data, collected with the best–worst scaling and discrete choice methods, focus on a conservation program that incentivizes forest owners for biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. Forest owners are willing to conserve...
Mangrove damage is caused by environmental changes in the surrounding area as well as direct and indirect pressures on the existence of mangroves. The preservation of mangrove forests is inseparable from the perceptions and behavior of the community in managing and utilizing mangrove forests. Community decisions to take action in the environment will be rooted in the reciprocal...
Palm fruits are important non-timber forest products for rural people's livelihoods in the Amazon region, as many are nutritious foods and have the potential to generate income. However, in Pando, Bolivia, their commercialization is in most cases still underdeveloped. This study aimed to assess the potential of four palm fruits for sustainable commercialization and to identify...
Forests play an important role in adapting to and mitigating the negative effects of climate change and environmental degradation through sustainable forest management. In Europe and North America, where private forest ownership dominates, private forest owners play a crucial role in achieving diverse policy objectives. Given the importance of private forest owner cooperation to...
Tree-growing support programs are being implemented widely to enhance farmers’ involvement in land restoration schemes. However, the reasons why farmers will continue to engage in restoration activities when support programs end, considered here as “behavioural persistence” has not been sufficiently explored. Taking the Mogazang landscape of Cameroon as a case study, a mixed...
Family forest owners (FFOs) are critical stakeholders in ensuring many conservation outcomes, including improved water quality. In the highly forested Lake Champlain basin of Vermont, FFOs likely play a particularly important role in addressing water quality impairment. This study focused on FFOs’ thinking and decision-making around management practices on their land. Based on a...
Systems for small-scale forestry are occasionally shaped by adopting models used by other countries. Such adoption is localized and adapted to suit needs and conditions of the country and reflects its specific characteristics instead of being simply copied. In this study, we examine the process of the adoption and adaptation of the forestry extension system in Japan and discuss...
A growing body of literature shows that the transfer of forest land from one owner to another in the US is associated with events such as parcelization of forest land and/or the subsequent conversion of the land away from forestry land use. For individuals and families who own forest land, a key driver of ownership transfer is the eventual or actual mortality of forest owners...
Historically, Queensland’s private native forests have supplied between 40 and 70% of the hardwood resource to the state’s primary processors. Hardwood timber production from state-owned native forests and plantations in Queensland has decreased substantially in recent decades, increasing the hardwood timber industry’s reliance on private native forests. However, timber...
In northern Sweden, large forest areas are affected by extensive damage caused by moose, fungi, beetle and other biological pests. For non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners this leads to large losses of value, not only in economic terms but also in the form of loss of biodiversity and amenity values. Therefore, several research projects are underway to develop new...
In the last decade, technological innovation in the forest operations sector has allowed levels of mechanization alternative to agricultural tractors and animal logging. These machines are used to load logs from skid roads and move logs to the next pile, until the load space is fully loaded. Fortunately, in recent years the development of new technological progresses in forestry...
Forest Owners Organizations can help small- and medium-scale private landowners stay competitive by conducting and sharing research and development (R&D) activities. This study evaluated R&D needs for silvicultural operations to inform an R&D strategy for the cooperative. Individual and group priorities were collected using the Analytical Hierarchy Process via a web survey and...
Agroforestry is widely considered as a sustainable land management practice with multiple ecosystem benefits that support farmers’ livelihoods. While there is much evidence that the technologies are not being embraced as expected, there is knowledge gap about farmers’ perceptions to help devising extension strategies tailored to farmers’ needs in many countries, including Rwanda...
In the management of private forests, it is important for a forester to understand and prescribe action rooted in sound science and technique but also in landowner values. Prior research has indicated that storytelling and sharing, which surface a landowner’s values, often result from an established, trusted connection with their forester. Empirical and experiential knowledge...
The more distanced forest owners become from their forests, the more room there is for different kinds of advice and service provision to help them in their forest management decisions. Therefore, the quality and adaptation of these services impact the use of forest resources significantly, including at a broader scale. Even though the forest owners’ decision-making at the...
Household livelihood preferences are crucial determinants of homestead biodiversity. Therefore, we conducted a temporal analysis (harnessing data from three different time points (i.e., 1994, 2004, and 2014) with ten years of interval starting from 1994) on three Bangladeshi subdistricts to trace the effect of managed interventions on homestead biodiversity. Our findings unravel...
Recent research identified twenty conditions that enable the participation of smallholder tree growers in timber value chains. This paper builds on that work. It delves deeper into how and when during the plantation investment cycle these conditions facilitate sustained trade between small-scale timber producers, processors, buyers, and other service providers. It also identifies...
Swedish forestry policy principles rest on voluntarism and a mutual interest among forest owners, the industry, and the state that timber production continuously be kept at a high level at the same time as environmental goals are achieved. An estimated 313,000 small-scale forest owners own half of Sweden’s forestland, and thus their objectives and values, and how these impact...
Non-timber forest products (NTFP) from trees are often collected using unsustainable practices, which contributes to the species’ decline and affects the livelihoods and wellbeing of the most forest-dependent groups, such as women, ethnic minorities and the landless. Here we assess opportunities to improve the sustainability of NTFP collection practices across two landscapes in...
Mixed-species systems are well-suited to smallholder and community forestry, but reliable evidence regarding and procedures to assess species performance in such systems is scarce. This field trial uses a pair of clinal plots with varying spacing and species composition to gain insights into competition between four species proposed for landscape rehabilitation in the Philippines...
Forest soils can be sensitive to traffic for various reasons, such as a high water table and the absence of sturdy ground, both of which can lead to fragile ground conditions under wet weather conditions. Extracting timber from such stands is a challenge, and cable-based systems might be the best option. While damage to the remaining stand and to the soil during extraction is not...