| A unit of Lasting Forests
evolving since March 30, 1999 |
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A Total Forest Management Plan
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No longer directly describing the area, this brief section suggests things that some people see in the land. They are potentials, future uses, opportunities. Realtors discuss "highest and best use" but often this is no more than the next good idea for use of a tract of land. Most land purchasers or owners already have a clear view of what their land is and how it will be used. Others like to learn about what others think or see as they consider options for sale, expansions, and development. Of course the wise buyer will be looking for limitations and threats and assessing the risks. A good view of the prospects can help evaluate the net risks.
This unit tries to help people understand the forests, pastures and rangelands, waters, wildlands and to assist them in becoming a part of the invaluable community of rural resources of a region. These forests and related lands and waters provide many very important services and roles, provide products, and offer rarely-seen potentials.
Laws have prompted detailed ecosystem analyses, and a library of thoughtful writers is responding to the importance of forests and the need for their care and management. Importantly, the concept is not directed to individual forests or tracts but to the forests of the region. Increasingly, a broad, landscape view is being recognized as both needful and useful. Preserved forests, both public and private, will serve as one framework within which other ecological, esthetics, economic, and energetic considerations and land use decisions occur. "Preserved" has connotations of things in a museum, locked up, untouched. This is not the intent of wildland management. It is now widely known that land must be managed; things change; productive forests must be rejuvenated or they will be replaced by undesirable vegetative conditions. The linkages of land and fish, of grass and air, of birds and tropical forests are now widely recognized. No act on the land is singular any longer. Each act affects other people and other lands. This recognition motivates Rural System staff and encourages efforts to select areas for modern preservation while not creating restrictions that result in significant private or regional net economic loss or significantly reduce future development potentials. The areas that may be designated as preserved blend ecological and human needs, perpetuate a broad spectrum of values and services, all the while reducing future ecosystem restoration costs. Around and adjacent to these areas, superior, profitable, comprehensive long-term wildland management is practiced. It is the insights of the Rural System staff about these potentials that may be of interests.
While the following activities may be done on the land by the landowner or associates, Rural System provides a mechanism to assist in developing these opportunities, often in concert with other developments on the land. Not just a "bunch of ideas", the following are small businesses that may be run cost-effectively as a diverse mini-conglomerate within the region:
The above list has meaning when viewed as a whole; few of the suggestions will "work" when attempted alone. Economies of scale, value additions, and synergism for these and others can be gained through work with Rural System.
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This Web site is maintained by R. H.
Giles, Jr.
Last revision July 20, 2001.