Incentive Payments for Ecosystem Services

1
Incentive Payments for Ecosystem Services

• A Southeastern Perspective

2
A Changing Audience

• Three emerging groups of landowners
• Aging landowners who want to retain land in the
  family, although heirs are unlikely to live on it
  or work it
• Halfbacks Retirees from outside the region
  who retire to south Florida, become disillusioned
  and move halfway back
• Affluent professionals or groups of professionals
  who own significant acreage primarily for
  recreation

3
Motives/Objectives

• Revenue timber, recreation, enhanced resale
  value
• Stewardship biodiversity, aesthetics, wildlife,
  rare species, easements
• Not mutually exclusive

4
Some real world examples

• Numerous incentives to re-establish and restore
  longleaf pine
• CRP
• NFWF/Southern Company
• USFWS Partners
• USFWS PSGP Stitching Together the Fragments

5
Incentives

• Reduced Costs
• Potential for timber income
• Wildlife Habitat, particularly bobwhite quail
• TE species
• Restoration
• Just want my kids to see the kind of woods I
  grew up in

6
Bobwhite Quail

• Programs to provide enhanced habitat
• CRP CP 33
• Georgia state program Agricultural land
  enhancement
• Quail Unlimited Assistance
• NWTF Assistance
• Wildpower

7
Native Groundcover

• Restoration for wildlife, particularly quail
• Prescribed Fire
• Aesthetics
• Biodiversity
• Covered in several programs
• NFWF/SoCo
• Partners
• PSGP

8
Groundcover Proposals

• FSA CRP cost share
• Pilot project in new continuous longleaf CRP
  proposal
• Omnibus Project Many partners with shared
  responsibilities
• Species selection
• Seed collection
• plug production - protocols
• Seed Orchard establishment
• Seed to private sector nurseries
• Stimulate markets and suppliers simultaneously

9
Other markets

• Carbon
• Still developing market, but promising interest
  from utilities and others
• Recreation/Aesthetics
• Green Space
• Easements
• Payments
• Water
• Watershed protection
• Easements
• Payments

10
Summary

• Changing landowner demographics
• Population growth
• Primary cause of loss of forest land
• Changing demands on forestland
• Pressure on water resources
• Developing markets
• Private/Public partnerships hold promise for the
  future of Southeastern forests and for the
  quality of life many of us have until recently
  taken for granted