Message from Stewardship Program

While Wisconsin is rightfully known as America's Dairyland, 16 million acres of forest cover nearly 50% of our state's land area. Wisconsin's forests are storehouses of vast biologic, cultural, aesthetic and economic treasures. Through Wisconsin's history, forests have played a primary role in supporting her people. The forests of Wisconsin are dynamic, living systems that change with the human demands placed on them as well as through natural occurrences such as succession and severe weather events. People have shaped and defined the location, density, diversity and abundance of flora and fauna in the area since the diminishing of the last glaciers.

Today Wisconsin's forest industry is the second largest industry sector in the state and leads the nation in forest industry shipments valued at $20 billion. Wisconsin also leads the nation in paper production and in forest industry wages with a $3.5 billion annual payroll. In addition to the economic value of Wisconsin's forest industry, forest based recreation brings another $3.5 billion to our state.

In addition to the economic value, our forests provide tremendous ecological and social values to our state. Wisconsin's forests purify surface and ground water to recharge our abundant clear water lakes and streams. Over 90% of the surface waters in Wisconsin that are considered impaired by non-point pollution are located in areas of the state that are less than 50% forested demonstrating the importance of forested landscapes to water quality.

Wisconsin's forests provide habitat for a wide variety of both game and non-game wildlife. White tail deer, black bear, gray wolf, fisher and ruff grouse are among the list of abundant wildlife that thrives in our forests. Our forests also provide the recreational and scenic setting that attracts visitors and residents to our state.

In Wisconsin, 70 percent, or 11.4 million acres of our forests are privately owned. The largest single forest land owner group is the non-industrial private forest landowners who own nearly 10 million acres of forestland in Wisconsin. These lands provide 68% of the raw material for our forest industry, so their sustainable management is critical to the flow of raw material to our forest industry. Additionally, the NIPF lands contain the majority of the ecological values found in our forested landscapes so their management is critical to sustaining those values.

Studies have shown that in Wisconsin, less than 25% of the NIPF lands have a forest management plan and less than 18% of the timber harvests that occur on NIPF lands are conducted with the assistance of a professional forester.

The Forest Stewardship Program is a means of reaching the NIPF landowners with educational, technical and financial assistance. The primary goal of Wisconsin's Forest Stewardship Program is to increase the amount of nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) lands managed following multi-resource stewardship principles. Stewardship plans include an expansion of management intent beyond a singular or limited goal to encompass compatible aims contained within forest stewardship.

To date, the Wisconsin Forest Stewardship Program has provided over 25,000 landowners with comprehensive total resource plans on over 1.5 million acres. We have reached thousands more landowners with management information and educational outreach programs.

However, while numbers of landowner contacts, management plans and acres under management plans indicate the extent of management activities, we will not lose sight of the importance of quality in management activities. Additional goals for the Program include providing: high quality full resource management plans, excellent technical assistance, continuing educational opportunities for natural resource professionals, and actively seeking new, effective delivery methods. The accompanying challenge will be to continue broadening and enriching the skills of those preparing management plans and increasing the landowners' appreciation and understanding of the role they can play as land stewards.

Another important goal of the Forest Stewardship Program is to increase the knowledge and appreciation of NIPF lands and sustainable forest management techniques by the public. This will be accomplished by promoting projects that seek to educate the general public as to the importance of NIPF lands.

State Forestland Statistics:

• Total forestland = 15.7 million acres
• Privately owned = 8.9 million acres
• Forest Industry = 4.7 million acres
• Industry=1.1 million acres
• Federal= 2 million acres
• State=200,000 acres
• Private Corp. = .62 million acres
• Tribal Lands = .31 million acres

Stewardship in Wisconsin:

• Number of stewardship plans = 25,000
• Acres covered by stewardship plans = 1.5 million acres

Links:

• Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - Bureau of Forestry
• University of Wisconsin, Extension Service
• The Nature Conservancy, Wisconsin Chapter
• EPA: Global Warming Impacts on Wisconsin
• 1000 Friends of Wisconsin and the Land Use Institute
• Wisconsin Bird Conservation Initiative
• Wisconsin County Forests

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