CAUV Program: this is one of two programs in which Ohio landowners may enroll qualifying parcels of forest or farmland into. The goals of the program are ensuring land management for commercial production of timber or other crops, while reducing the tax bill for the landowner. CAUV stands for current agricultural use value. The exact amount of reduction in taxes is dependent on the specific soil types present on the farm.
OFTL Program: this is one of two programs in which Ohio landowners may enroll qualifying parcels of forested acreage into. The goal of the program are ensuring land management for commercial production of timber, while reducing the tax bill for the landowner. OFTL stands for Ohio Forest Tax Law. If your land is enrolled in OFTL, the forested acreage (which may or may not be the entire property) qualifies for a 50% reduction in the tax rate, independent of differences in soil types across the farm.
Wildlife Habitat: depending on what types of wildlife you want to support on your land, your management activities may look radically different. You may want to foster particular game species like deer, wild turkey or trout. Other people may prioritize managing habitat for specific species of song birds such as prairie warbler or cerulean warbler. If you have state or federally threatened species on your property, such as hellbenders or Allegheny woodrats, you might decide to manage for these. Some people want to manage for everything. At the landscape scale- say 50,000 acres- you could certainly manage for every single species you’ve ever heard of. But on the scale of 10 acres or 100 acres, there are some tradeoffs. Certainly it’s possible, even at this smaller scale, to create more diversity in habitat types by changing the forest structure. Because every species of animal has a slightly different ecological niche, more diversity in forest structure is generally regarded by foresters as better. When we say ecological niche, we mean something like the typical “lifestyle” needs, diet, habitat requirements for feeding, breeding, rearing young, etc. for any specific species.
Increasing/Maximizing the Value of your Standing Timber: the value of a log depends on its species, and qualities encapsulated by the “grade” (think grades in school) of the log quality. Historically, black walnut and white oak are the most valuable species. The grade/price of a log is a factor the log length, diameter, and how many linear feet of trunk is straight and free of defects. If you’re formulating a plan for maximizing the value of your timber in preparation for making a timber sale, there are a few things to consider. The first is, buy low and sell high! If you have some traditionally valuable species with good form, but the market for selling the timber is temporarily depressed, as long as the stand is not “overstocked” (read: so crowded with trees that the rate of growth has stagnated) it might make sense to hold off on a sale until the price recovers to something closer to the historical norm. The second consideration is to effectively treat all undesired invasive species BEFORE a timber harvest. If there are invasive species present, the soil disturbance and increased light levels on the forest floor and skid trails will cause the invasive species populations to explode, and growing trees in the future will likely be impeded by these pernicious weeds. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. A third consideration is, what trees will replace the ones that are harvested? A landowner will probably need a forester’s help in order to really answer this question. Once the question is answered- what trees will replace the ones harvested- a landowner will very often not like the answer. There may be trees left standing, but a logger would prefer to buy the most valuable trees, leave woody stems that are crooked or stunted or just not a valuable timber species. Loggers also are not paid to ensure that there are seedlings of desirable timber species vigorously established on the forest floor before they conduct a harvest. Thus, if a landowner wants to allow another profitable timber harvest in 20 to 100 years from now, they would be wise to get help from a forester to manage their woods until the seedlings they want are in place- and then they can harvest some or all of the overstory. There are many techniques that alone or together may need to be employed to get the replacement trees locked and loaded. These techniques include but are not limited to: thinning the overstory species, conducting prescribed fires, “cut the worst first” for firewood and mushroom logs or cabinetry, planting the right trees in the right place at the right time with adequate tree shelters, or girdling undesirable overstory trees to create snags for wildlife habitat.
Payment for Ecosystem Services: landowners might choose to manage their native woodlands and grasslands for public benefit, which is a laudable and idealistic goal, but sometimes difficult for an individual to financially justify. Because of this, certain programs have been created to pay landowners to manage their land for public benefit, on behalf of other parties. The Nature Conservancy’s Family Forest Carbon Program is an example of payment for ecosystem services.
Cultivating Non-Timber Forest Products: there are many valuable herbs, mushrooms, nuts and fruit (and other things) that people may cultivate or manage for eventual harvest and sale from their grasslands and woodlands. Managing for these non-timber forest products (NTFPs) can happen simultaneously with other types of land management, but it requires specific timing and sequencing in relation to the timber management cycles, and the changing of the seasons. Even foresters certified by the Society of American Foresters are not required to know much about this aspect of forest management. However, Paradise Ecological Services has world-class expertise and experience with many aspects of this complex topic and can help landowners develop management plans to generate additional ROI from NTFPs. Cultivating NTFPs is often referred to as “forest farming” in the US.
NRCS Conservation Practices: the US government recognizes many different valid conservation practices, land management techniques that are useful for reducing soil erosion, storm-water runoff, biodiversity protection and air quality enhancement. Every fiscal year, state-level NRCS offices release updated “scenarios” for implementing approved conservation practices, including details on typical costs of getting these conservation practices executed.
Prescribed Fire: a planned fire that burns across the ground and is lit and controlled in order achieve land management objectives such as killing invasive species without the use of herbicide, stimulating wildflowers to flower and seeds to germinate. Prescribed fires are also sometimes called “controlled burns” or “prescribed burns”. A forester, ecologist, range management specialist, or holder of traditional ecological knowledge, can “prescribe” a fire in the way a doctor prescribes a medication- to treat a particular set of undesirable conditions in the patient/landscape. The prescription entails a set of environmental conditions (temperature, relative humidity, wind direction and speed, and many other things that support the probability of meeting the burn objectives. In Ohio, the Ohio Division of Forestry manages the state’s prescribed fire program.
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