One of the biggest hurdles to landowner stewardship and enrollment in the American Tree Farm System (ATFS) is the time-intensive and often expensive process of creating an individual forest management plan. Forest management plans help landowners have a clear vision for their land and outline the subsequent actions they will take to achieve their goals. But, because of the detail and specifics needed for the plan, such as soils, water resources, threatened and endangered species, and more, it can take a forester many days to prepare each individual written plan, and this can add up when a forester has several individual plans to write for the landowners in the area.

With its expertise in forested ecosystems and the needs of landowners, the American Forest Foundation (AFF) considered how it could create a forest management plan that encompassed the forest types of that region and was comprehensive to that region – that a landowner, in turn, could adopt as their own.

From this came the Landscape Management Plan (LMP), a credible and equitable plan that fully meets the ATFS Standards of Sustainability that landowners can subscribe to in place of an individual plan. This plan expedites the process for both landowner and forester, and it also ensures that the work being conducted on different parcels of land supports the needs and goals of the entire ecosystem. In this process, the landowner still receives assistance from a forester and an individual plan of action to help them get started. Here's how it works:

The LMP, since the fall of 2017, has been piloted and tested in two key landscapes – across 22 counties in Northern Alabama and 16 counties of the panhandle of Florida. In each landscape, a LMP was created in partnership with state forestry agencies, and partners like conservation groups and universities. In these small, but distinct landscapes, the LMP has exploded enrollment to ATFS and helped to overcome key challenges for foresters assisting landowners:

Next Steps for the Landscape Management Plan

With the success of the LMP in two different landscapes, AFF is working with several states to create similar landscape plans that apply to specific regions. AFF intends to have these in the field for landowners in 2019.

“AFF is aggressively working to grow and increase the impact of ATFS,” said Paul DeLong, Vice President of Conservation and ATFS. “The Landscape Management Plan has been one of our key strategies, along with other pilots focused on expediting the certification process, while still maintaining our rigorous standards. The success we are seeing with these pilots showcases both the value and the opportunity of the program to landowners and partners. Now we are focused on rapidly expanding these strategies in places where there is a demand for certification.”

Stay tuned for more on how AFF is slicing the time it takes to get a property certified from weeks to days, working to help forest products companies and procurement foresters meet the demand for certified fiber when they need it.