Conservation Solutions
AFF’s Conservation Solutions program works with partners to promote and develop incentives and market-based solutions for family forest owners to sustainably manage their lands by conserving and enhancing a multitude of ecosystem services. Over 10 million family forest owners hold 262 million acres in the United States. Development and land use change on these lands occurs at an alarming rate. The best means of combating these pressures and advancing conservation on private lands is through voluntary efforts. However, many family forest owners interested in managing for ecosystem services and declining wildlife species often lack the necessary resources and have concerns regarding regulations and lack of future management options.
Market-based conservation initiatives and regulatory assurances provide effective incentives for active forest management in the form of financial and technical assistance to encourage family forest owners to sustainably manage their forests. In addition to wood products, actively-managed forests provide important ecosystem services such as species habitat, water quality and quantity, and carbon sequestration.
The success of the program hinges on three key strategies:
engaging forest owners in innovative conservation strategies,
leveraging partners who can extend our impact to a broader target audience, and
creating synergies between on-the-ground conservation and policy efforts. Our program focuses on a select number of high-impact issues, where family forest owners are facing the greatest challenges and opportunities. We promote innovative on-the-ground strategies that make conservation forestry understandable and accessible to a growing number of forest owners. Our work intentionally leverages local, state and national partners, tapping an ever-growing network engaged in sustainable forestry.
Program initiatives are multi-year, ecosystem-based, collaborative efforts that strive to create a landscape-level change in forest conservation. Our initiatives bring together local, regional, and national partners to develop and promote conservation forestry strategies. The collective impact of family forest owners who adopt conservation forestry practices plays a major role in habitat and watershed conservation. The critical involvement, support, and expertise of forest owners, conservation groups, private organizations and public agencies allows for the implementation of regionally appropriate conservation projects on family forestlands across a landscape. These cooperative efforts utilize and augment the strength and expertise of each partner, resulting in a greater conservation benefit than any one partner could achieve alone.
More information about Ecosystem Markets can be found here. Examples of on-going projects: Sandhill Habitat Credit Bank With over 80% of land in private ownership in the Southeast, the greatest potential for restoration and management of sandhill habitat for the gopher tortoise and other declining species lies in the hands of family forest owners.
The American Forest Foundation in partnership with the Longleaf Alliance was awarded a USDA NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant to develop and implement a sandhill habitat credit bank on family forestlands in portions of Georgia and Alabama. Under the program, interested family forest owners become eligible for habitat management assistance and conservation credit payments through a process that considers the potential habitat contribution of the property in combination with the landowner’s bid requirements. Landowners selected to participate will be issued credits for verifiable gopher tortoise habitat and/or agreed upon management activities. These credits can then be voluntarily purchased by federal agencies (e.g., Department of Defense), state or county governments, or private industry to offset impacts on sandhill habitat and gopher tortoise populations. These banked credits may also assist the credit holder in meeting their regulatory obligations should the eastern population of the gopher tortoise become federally listed in the future. This is a new approach aimed at developing a voluntary incentive-based framework for a non-listed species.
READ MORE Northern Forest Watershed Services: Parallel Pilot Initiatives - Providing Incentives for Forest Management and Conservation on Private Lands The American Forest Foundation, Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, Western Foothills Land Trust, White River Partnershihp, and local conservation groups are developing an innovative and replicable market-based model to incentivize private forest landowners to restore, enhance, and protect aquatic resources in two critical watersheds in the Northern Forest region: the Upper Connecticut River watershed in Vermont and New Hampshire, and the Crooked River watershed in Maine.
Clean reliable water is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the country as climate change and development pressures affect water quantity, quality, timing, and distribution. The watershed values of forests have historically been undervalued with limited appreciation, monetarily or otherwise, especially from downstream users. There is, however, a growing awareness of the need to protect working forests as the costs of degraded ecosystems becomes more apparent. Municipalities and water suppliers increasingly recognize source protection as a potential component of a multi-tier approach to providing safe drinking water.
Innovative watershed services markets can provide effective incentives for sustainable forest management and have emerged as alternative financing mechanisms to ensure water quality and the protection of other important watershed services. When added to traditional forest revenues, these incentives can offer private forest landowners the means to stay on the land, managing their forests sustainably.
READ MORE National Ecosystem Markets Conference This annual event successfully brings various stakeholders together to focus on the challenges and opportunities of increasing the use of market-based approaches for conservation on family forest lands.
Based on the priorities outlined during the two days, the American Forest Foundation, U.S. Forest Service and other partners have developed the “The Ecosystem Service Projects: Community of Practice.” This is a collaborative network of organizations and agencies that are actively involved in the development of market-based strategies and tools aimed at the conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems like forests, farms, wetlands, and other open space. The Community of Practice fosters peer to peer information exchange, encourages collaboration on the development of common terminology, approaches, metrics, and guidelines for market operation, and accelerates implementation of market-based approaches. Hopefully these discussions will encourage new ideas and innovation that will contribute to keeping family forests and their associated ecosystem services intact.
READ MORE 
