Conservation Incentives
Ecosystem Markets: Making Them Work
July 9, 2009—The largest portion of forests in the US is owned by families, not the Forest Service or the big companies. In a time of climate change, development pressure, pests, and fire concerns, these woodlands need sustainable management and that means private landowners need healthy markets. Beyond timber, developing new markets can help provide income to private landowners for the ecosystem services—clean water, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, etc.—that their forests or natural areas provide for the public. To advance the creation of such markets, the American Foundation and Northwest Environmental Business Council (NEBC) co-hosted a national leadership conference.
Learn what 200 experts had to say about ecosystem markets.
Conservation Incentives (CI) 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 is occurring 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.
Until recently these ecosystem services were not properly valued, creating a system that benefited the public, but cost the providers — family forest owners. CI works to promote conservation incentives and develop and implement markets, such as conservation mitigation banks, habitat credit trading systems and water trading markets. These market-based tools have proven to be effective, enabling landowners to become better stewards of their lands while realizing new income opportunities. Innovative conservation incentives will turn private forests into an even greater asset, encouraging sustainable forestry, and combating biodiversity loss, fragmentation and land use change.
Development of these markets would not be possible without working in partnership with state and federal resource agencies, non-profit organizations, landowner associations, military installations, family forest owners, and other stakeholders. Through collaboration, CI works to raise the level of demand for ecosystem services and increase the awareness of the benefits of active forest management for conservation-reliant species and water quality. Through landowner outreach, demonstration projects and market development, CI will promote models that properly compensate family forest owners who offset the unplanned impacts of development and military projects.
Examples of Ongoing Conservation Incentive 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.
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.
2008 Market-Based Conservation Incentives Workshop: Strategies for Family Forest Owner Participation in Biodiversity and Water Markets With over 115 attendees from NGOs, federal and state natural resources agencies, academia, the private investment sector, forestry consulting, and family forests, the event successfully brought folks 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.
Presentations and Audio Recordings 
