If you are thinking about native woodland or grassland in our region, we can help. Our service area includes parts of Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia or Pennsylvania. We serve a diverse clientele: hunters, tree farmers, herb and mushroom growers, and people who don’t identify as any of that, and just want to save money and generate income from your land. We have the experience and knowledge to help you! We are writing and implementing land management plans for with you, to help define and achieve your land management goals. Our forest management goals can save you a lot of money through reductions in your property tax bill, without ever saving a log. Our agroforestry services are unmatched in the region, and our prescribed fire offerings are constantly expanding. If interested, reach out and we can schedule a 15 minute, no obligation call to discuss what’s possible..
Paradise Ecological Services offers value-based pricing of the following services:
Writing your Woodland Management Plan: if you have 10 or more contiguous acres of woodland in Ohio, you can start a net savings of money in year one via a reduction in your property taxes. To do this, you need a Woodland Management Plan that qualifies you to enroll your land in one of Ohio’s two property tax reduction programs. Depending on unique attributes of your property, you may save more money in either the CAUV program through your county auditor’s office, or the OFTL program through the Division of Forestry. Both programs reduce property taxes as incentive to responsibly steward forests on Ohio private lands. We help clients determine what the most financially advantageous program is for their property.
Either way, your woodland management plan reflects your own unique goals for the property. We can help you articulate these goals. Some common goals from clients include:
-meet the minimum requirements of the tax savings program and thereby minimize investment in the project
-cultivating non-timber forest products in the understory, openings or periphery
-improve habitat for specific types of wildlife and game species such as wild turkey
-enrolling your property in a payment for ecosystem services program
-maximize the value of your standing timber
Sometimes, ambitious landowners have many different goals. We can help foster synergy among your goals, using an integrated plan. We do not shy away from solving complex problems and enjoy taking our craft to a high level of quality. Whatever the landowner’s goals, our product offers a specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable set of instructions with a timetable to keep the project on track.
Implementing your Woodland Management Plan: let’s take the same hypothetical landowner from above, who wishes to fulfill their minimum obligations to CAUV in order to enjoy the tax benefits of a woodland management plan. This same landowner wants to rehire us to mark 10,000 linear feet of property boundary twice in 10 years, and treat the invasive species that vary in infestation intensity across the landscape. We could offer an estimated cost of implementing our conservation practices based on our own experience and costs, with reference to Ohio NRCS’s publicly available cost scenarios for the current fiscal year.
What this may look like
A hypothetical example: a customer purchases a 98 acre farm with 26 acres of woodland. They purchase a woodland management plan in order to enroll their entire farm in CAUV. After the woodland management plan is written (good for 10 years), the landowner would pay 73% less per year in property taxes. You can find out how much you would save by calling your county auditor, and calculate the current value of the property tax savings over a decade. In this example, based on calling the county auditor office, the landowner would enjoy an ROI of 434.5% after 10 years, or an average of 53.45% ROI calculated annually, assuming a 5% annual discount rate for inflation and a steady property tax rate.
When writing any plan together, we start by interviewing the client to assess and develop a set of clear goals. The Certified Forester then walks the property together with the landowner, to make observations together, ground-truth any assumptions, and start formulating the land management strategy together. After the initial site visit, we set out to inventory the overstory and understory of the woodland using specialized tools, training and knowledge accumulated over 18 years of experience. This precise and statistically defensible data is crunched, and informs what and how the forest management practices from the landowner’s strategy will be planned for. A plan for managing the woodland is written. We submit a finished draft to the landowner for comment. We accept the comment and make minor revisions. In this example, we would charge 8.5% of that 434.5% ROI.
To implement the plan to the minimum required specifications required by law, the landowner would need to do two management activities. First, they would need to mark their property boundaries once every five years. They would also need to successfully treat all invasive species present. They would have enough information in their written plan to confidently do these activities themselves, and our team is available for free 15 minute phone calls to answer any quick questions that might arise. If the landowner decided they would rather hire a professional instead of make forest management a DIY project, the fee for our services in this example would be another 10% of that 434.5% ROI value. Purchasing the plan and its implementation from us would cost this landowner 18.7% of the property tax savings they enjoy from enrolling in CAUV.
Writing and implementing your prescribed fire management plan
Do you have a pollinator planting, or fields of native warm season grass for deer habitat, or oak-hickory woodlands that you see are in decline? These highly sought after land cover types in Ohio are fire-adapted and greatly benefit from regular prescribed fire for maintenance and establishment. Paradise Ecological Services can field an Ohio Certified Prescribed Burn Manager with 9 years of experience in prescribed fire and wildfire suppression. We can write prescribed fire plans to meet a variety of land management objectives, as well as implement your prescribed fire in a safe and lawful manner. Our burn plans can and are often used to apply for a waiver to Ohio’s statewide burn ban, that exists for the months of March, April, May, October, and November. If you are interested in learning more about prescribed fire- the how and why- we offer a 2 hour introductory workshop every November, and a Learn and Burn event which is a hands-on training opportunity. Learn and Burn is weather dependent and often happens in January/February. Estimates for prescribed fire plans are based on the complexity level and size of the burn.
More to come
Watch this space for additional offerings related to agroforestry practice design and implementation and timber sale information.
Paradise Ecological Services 