A Forest Management Plan from AFM Can Guide Landowners to Success

After acquiring timberland, it can be challenging to determine the next steps. New landowners may ask themselves a series of questions, including: What are the objectives for the land? Where exactly are the property boundaries? Is there timber potential? Are there tax benefits? These questions can be tough to answer without a trusted forester by your side. Continue reading to learn more about how your qualified AFM forester can come alongside you and write a forest management plan customized for your property.

A forest management plan is typically written on a 10-year planning horizon; key elements include property description, maps, prescriptions for management, and a timetable of activities to occur over the horizon of the plan. When meeting with your forester, an essential question a new landowner can answer is, “What are the goals and objectives for owning this property? What do I hope to accomplish?” This guides the consulting forester as they determine the best course of action, complete with silvicultural activities and strategies designed to help the landowners meet their goals. There are numerous objectives a landowner may be aiming for, including wildlife habitat management/enhancement, timber sales and reforestation, agriculture, recreation, family legacy, conservation, and more.

Once goals are established, there are vital components the plan should address, and these include:

• Create property maps: The forester will acquire and create aerial photographs, topographic maps, soil maps, and a forest stand-type map, with the forest stand type map being the most important. Forest stands are areas of unique tree species by age of composition. Generally, the trees within a unique stand type are managed as a unit. Once the stands are delineated on a map, the forester will write a description of each forest stand type. This includes the tree species composition, whether natural or planted, age, stand condition or quality, and timber inventory information, if available.
• Forest prescriptions: The forester prepares silvicultural prescriptions for each stand that are directly related to the landowner’s objectives mentioned above. This may include timber harvest, site preparation and/or tree planting activities, wildlife/habitat improvement or creation, recreational improvements like construction of trails, food plots, or hunting areas, protection of family legacy through conservation of specific special sites on the property, wildfire mitigation including reduction of fuels or construction of firebreaks, and aesthetics improvements like buffers or opening view sheds.
• A timetable of activities: Your forester will map out a timetable of activities for up to ten years to illustrate each step the landowner will need to take and the time of year in which these activities or prescriptions should occur. As such, the landowner knows what to expect in the future.

Finally, your AFM forester can help you every step of the way to ensure considerations are not overlooked. For instance, if a landowner is interested in diversifying their revenue streams with recreational activities on their property, their forester can help them assess any liability issues by recognizing exposure and limiting it. This may mean delineating property boundaries, installing gates, attaining insurance and leases for hunting, and more. Financial considerations may also be at play, and foresters are well-versed in local land assistance or cost-share programs, which may be administered by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), local farm service office, state forestry agencies and programs, and cooperative extensions.

Regardless of the goals and objectives for your property, local AFM foresters can create a forest management plan to suit your needs, work with you over time to execute the plan, and help you achieve your long-term goals. At AFM, our business is based on long-term relationships with the land and the people who own it.