If you’d like to pay higher taxes and don’t like the idea of a free consultation with a local forestry professional, a written plan for your woodland may not be for you. Otherwise, this post will help you understand these and other benefits. It will also describe your different options to get a plan.

Benefits of a written plan

Minnesota’s new lower property tax class requires a written plan. In order to qualify for Minnesota’s new lower woodland tax rate, you must have a current written forest management plan. Likewise for Minnesota’s Sustainable Forests Incentive Act, which provides annual per-acre payments.

Because both programs provide significant financial benefits, many woodland owners are expected to request a new Forest Stewardship plan in the coming months. The sooner you get on the list, the better.

Possible income tax benefit. As Mike Reichenbach writes in our ongoing Income Taxes and Family Forests series, a current written plan can be one important factor in your eligibility to write off woodland expenses on your federal income tax.

Free consultation with a local professional forester. Although written plans are not legally binding, they’re a great source of practical advice to help achieve your vision. A good plan will focus on your family’s specific vision and goals for your property. These goals may include wildlife habitat improvement, recreational uses, woodland improvement, income from timber harvesting, or other activities.

Some plans are written by Department of Natural Resources foresters, others by private consulting foresters. In either case, you get free advice from a professional based on your vision and desire for the future of the property.

Different ways to get a written plan

In order to qualify for most property tax, cost share, and incentive payment programs, plans generally must be written by a natural resource professional. There are at least two ways to obtain a plan:

1. Call your local DNR - Forestry Area Office and sign up for a free plan. If you have 20 or more wooded acres in Minnesota, you’re eligible for a free Forest Stewardship Plan (read more about Forest Stewardship Plans here.) DNR foresters prepare some plans themselves, but also administer contracts with approved local private-sector professionals to write plans. Either way, you’ll be contacted when your name gets to the top of the list.

2. Contact a local private-sector forester directly. Many private-sector foresters have active Forest Stewardship contracts and may be able to provide plans for free under that program. If not, paying for a plan is a small investment (typically a few hundred dollars, depending on property size) that will pay for itself very quickly through the programs described above.

Demand for written plans is expected to be very high over the next year or two. Working directly with a paid private-sector professional may be a way to get your plan completed quickly.

To find a professional, visit the Minnesota Association of Consulting Foresters or check our forestry professionals page.

To review: Written woodland management plans make you eligible for a number of financial benefits. These benefits include low property tax rates, incentive payments, and cost-sharing for woodland improvement practices.

You can get a written plan for free or for a small investment either from your local DNR-Forestry office or from a local forestry professional. Demand for plans is expected to be very high over the next year or two, so the sooner you get on the list, the sooner you’ll be eligible for the many benefits already described.

Two months ago, we asked MyMinnesotaWoods.org readers to help us write this story. Thank you to all who responded! Based on our readers’ suggestions, here’s our list:

1. Know what you - and your family - love most about your land. What’s your vision for the future of your land? Do you want more wildlife, more big trees, a quiet refuge, ski trails, a source of income, or something else? All of the above?

Developing a vision for the future of your land is an important step. This vision needs to be based in reality, both in terms of local ecology and also your family’s long-term interest in owning and caring for the land.

What to do: It may seem overly formal, but writing down your vision and talking to your family is a crucial step in achieving it.

2. Know how your woodland is naturally changing. Forests are constantly changing. Trees grow, trees die, wind and ice take trees down, insects come and go, climate changes…. All of these changes can affect not only the future of your woodland, but the value of your land and timber.

Sustainable forest management works with the natural forces in your woods. The more you know about these forces of change, the more you can guide that change to meet your objectives.

What to do: Careful observation of your land can be a great place to start. Watch carefully for which trees are dying, which trees are taking their place, what insects are present, which stands are overcrowded, and so on. Not sure how to interpret the changes? Talk to a professional forester.

3. Get a free Forest Stewardship Plan for your property. Forest Stewardship Plans are prepared by local professional foresters. Your plan will include a detailed inventory of your wooded property, including species, ages, stand histories, and more. You’ll also get information about the ecology of your landscape.

Your plan will include specific recommendations for each wooded stand based on your unique objectives. Every plan is specific to the property and the landowner. Whether your focus is wildlife, recreation, big trees, timber, or something else, the plan will recommend ways to get more of it, faster.

Your plan is not binding, but will be helpful as you plan for the future of your land. A current Forest Stewardship Plan is also a requirement for many cost-share and incentive payment programs

What to do: To sign up, contact your local Minnesota DNR Forestry Area Office. The best part? It’s FREE.

4. Know where to find financial and professional help. Local professionals can tell you about cost-share opportunities (to help pay for wildlife habitat improvement, tree planting, woodland improvement, and more). They can help you interpret changes in your land, tell you how wood products markets are changing, and more.

A local professional forester can plug you in to programs like the Sustainable Forests Incentive Act, which provides incentive payments to promote sound forest stewardship and keeping land forested. They can also help you understand recent changes to Minnesota’s woodland tax provisions.

Finally, if you choose to sell timber, a professional forester can help ensure that you receive top dollar, and also that you’re happy with your woods after the harvest.

What to do: Read about some organizations that may be available to help you, or read about different sources of professional help.

5. Get to know other local landowners. Minnesota has at least 20 local private woodland committees, councils, forest landowner co-operatives, and local chapters of the Minnesota Forestry Association (MFA).

You should also know about the Woodland Advisor program. The program offers between 50 and 75 classroom and field workshops every year for family forest owners. The program is managed by Extension, the Minnesota DNR, MFA, and numerous other private and public partners.

Workshops are offered in partnership with local organizations. These events can be an excellent opportunities to meet local landowners and professionals and get answers to your questions.

What to do: For a list of local woodland organizations, visit MFA’s website and click “chapters” on the left.

Add your thoughts: What resources have you found most helpful? What have we missed? Leave a comment to help others learn from your experience.

Bruce ZumBahlen wrote a guest post yesterday on the Vital Forests / Vital Communities blog describing changes to Minnesota’s property tax. These are exciting changes, favoring active sustainable management through consultation with a professional forester.

Every Minnesota woodland owner should know about these changes! An excerpt:

For the first time, MN has a law that provides the opportunity for woodland owners who are managing their property under a forest stewardship plan to receive a reduction in their property taxes payable in 2009 and thereafter.

Bruce and the Minnesota Forestry Association deserve great credit for their work to advance this issue.

Click here to read Bruce’s summary.
-eli

This month we’re excited to announce a new way of aggregating and displaying news on MyMinnesotaWoods.org. Our “In the news…” box is now set up with an RSS feed. The new list will automatically display any news items tagged in the social bookmarking site del.icio.us.

We’re excited about this approach because it offers the community a new way to contribute content to the site. This is one of several ways that we’re trying to do this.

If you’re not familiar with del.icio.us, it’s a free and simple way to store your bookmarks remotely. This means your bookmarks are accessible from any internet-connected computer. You can easily share your bookmarks, or just as easily keep them private. Learn more about del.icio.us.

If you have a del.icio.us account and want to add news items to our feed, contact Eli or Philip to find out how.

Just a quick note about an excellent source of free, high quality woodland info:

Cornell University’s Forest Connect series is the source for monthly live web-based seminars on a wide variety of woodland topics. The presentations are designed for woodland owners, and are typically offered at both noon and 7pm on the third Wednesday of each month. Even though the seminars tend to focus on eastern forests, many topics would be highly relevant to Minnesota woodland owners. And they’re completely free.

What have you got to lose? See a list of past presentations, or register to receive announcements of future events.

Have you attended one of these seminars? What was your take? Leave a comment below.

The US Endowment for Forestry and Communities is looking for information about community-based forestry. If you’re involved in this kind of work, I hope you’ll take a moment to fill in their survey.

What is community-based forestry? The overview document defines it as “the practice of developing locally appropriate, collaborative initiatives to create and sustain healthy working forests that generate value streams and benefits that support all members of healthy, forest-reliant communities.”

Does that sound like you or your group? If so, here’s more info on the survey, forwarded from the Endowment:

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities needs to know what you know about community-based forestry (CBF). They need to know what works and why.

Please click here to complete the survey.

Your information is essential and will help the Endowment identify opportunities to advance community-based forestry through their foundation grant-making program. In addition this information will provide many opportunities for funders and other interested organizations to advance the CBF field. Please encourage other CBF initiatives to take this survey as this information is vital for capturing all CBF activity on a national level.

Every organization that completes out this survey will be entered into a Participation Award drawing for $1000. The drawing will be on May 15, 2008.

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) was established in 2006 to work collaboratively with partners in the public and private sectors to advance systemic, transformative and sustainable change for the health and vitality of the nation’s working forests and forest-reliant communities. As a first step, the Endowment has contracted with the Consortium for Community Forestry to compile information about CBF initiatives around the U.S.

Thank you on behalf of the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities. Please click here to complete the survey.

We’re working on a new story: Five things every woodland owner should know. The new content will be featured in the June email update and be a new featured page on MyMinnesotaWoods.org.

We need your help building the list!

For this story, you’re the expert. Imagine yourself talking over a cup of coffee with a friend who just bought wooded acreage for the first time. What would you tell her or him and why?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts. We’ll use your responses to build our June story.

The proposed 2009 Federal budget would include major cuts in private forest stewardship and protection programs. These programs are of great interest to family forest owners. They fund the development of forest stewardship plans by professional foresters, cost sharing, and education.

The magnitude of the cuts varies by program, but will have a broad impact. According to the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, funding for state and private forest programs would drop more than $100 million, about 58 percent.

Cuts in the Forest Legacy program are even greater, estimated at about 85% according to National Woodlands magazine.

About these programs:

The Forest Stewardship Program provides technical assistance, through State forestry agency partners, to nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners to encourage and enable active long-term forest management (source). In Minnesota, well over a million acres of private woodlands have a written Forest Stewardship plan.

Forest Legacy protects “working forests:” those that protect water quality, provide habitat, forest products, opportunities for recreation and other public benefits (source).

Both of these programs are administered as partnerships between state and federal agencies. The National Association of State Foresters, whose members administer most of these programs, has denounced the proposed cuts.

Many MyMinnesotaWoods.org readers have benefited from these programs. If you have a Forest Stewardship plan, you’re one of them. Likewise if you’ve ever attended a Woodland Advisor class.

You can learn more about the proposed budget cuts in news articles from the New Hampshire UnionLeader, the Portland (Maine) News Herald, the Environment News Service, and National Woodlands Magazine (see page 7).

How has the Forest Stewardship program affected you and your land? Share your story in the comments.

It’s been a while since I checked in on site usage stats. Overall there seems to be a steady trend upward in monthly pageview and visitor counts between our launch on April 1 and the end of October. Some figures to illustrate the trends:

The first chart (above) shows monthly pageview and visitor counts between April and October, 2007. The y-axis shows the total number of pageviews (blue) and unique visitors (red) for each month. For example, in October about 3400 different people viewed about 7800 different pages.

I interpret the trend as a big initial curiosity-based jump after the launch, then a drop and steady trend upward from month to month thereafter. (The server, and our site, were down for about 10 days in August, and we got no usage data for most of the month.)

Next, a typical one-month trend in pageviews and visitors (above). This period starts on October 9, the day the email update went out. There’s a spike after the email, then normal variation or perhaps a slight decline for the rest of the month. The last day on this chart is November 11, the day before the November email update goes out.

Finally, daily visitor counts between April 1 and October 31, 2007 (except for the server outage in August). There’s a monthly spike in visitor counts on the day that the email update goes out. After the spike, we pretty quickly return to normal variation in daily visitor counts.

Median daily pageview and visitor counts for the period October 12 - November 11 are 228 and 88, respectively. These numbers are 12-15% higher than the corresponding median values over the total 7-month span.

Good evaluation goes well beyond these numbers, but for the time being this is what we’ve got. We’re saving data as we go and hope to develop a more thorough understanding of how the site is being used over time.

For now, we’re pleased to see an apparent steady upward trend in usage.

Philip created a new template for the web version of the monthly email updates.  The November 2007 update is built on the new template.  This is a vast improvement over previous web versions, created by copying, pasting, and then trying to fix the HTML from a preview message.

Constant Contact, which we use for our email updates, has some nice features.  But one feature that makes us mad month after month is how hard it is to build a web version of your email.  They want to charge extra for that.  The HTML is a complete mess, and this process is never as easy as it should be.

Now that we have the new template, we just have to manually copy and paste each story from CC into our page.  Still a waste of time doing something CC could very easily provide for free, but at least it allows us to avoid fighting with CC’s coding.  And this way it actually renders properly.