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Huge areas of forest land are lost each year to
development. Even forests that are not converted to urban or suburban land are
fragmented by the development that occurs around and near them. This
fragmentation is bad for the general environment and bad for the health of
private forests. Recent studies show that in the United States 1.5 million acres of private
forest land are fragmented each year by development pressures and another 1.2
million acres are converted and lost forever to development.
A recent conference of experts on forest
fragmentation made some disturbing findings. The conference was
"FRAGMENTATION 2000- A Conference on Sustaining Private Forests in the 21st
Century," and it was held September 17-20, 2000, in Annapolis, Maryland.
The summary report of the Forest Fragmentation 2000 Conference can be accessed
here: SUMMARY of the
Forest Fragmentation 2000 Conference.
The web
site for the conference is here. Some of the major
findings of the conference are: "1. Fragmentation
rates are increasing faster than population growth. Development-supporting
economies keep expanding out over the landscape, replacing
forest-and-farm-supporting economies. 2. A “bow wave effect” extends far in
front of expanding development. It raises land prices, taxes, social and
regulatory pressures that discriminate against rural land uses well before a
development rush. 3. Subsidized development demands subsidized services, which
increases demand for more development… Most residential development costs
government more in services than it pays in taxes. 4. Plants and animals
thriving on edge-and-disturbance effects expand; those needing large undisturbed
expanses decline. 5. Exotics and invasive weeds replace native systems.
Vulnerability to insects and diseases increases. Plantings at developed sites
create 67% of the invasive exotics in the U.S. according to Alavalapati. 6.
Timber harvests “go terminal” in and near developed areas. One last cut is
made in preparation for development; then the infrastructures and economic
incentives helping keep land in forests disappear. Since this is not accompanied
by a reduction in U.S. demand for forest products, imports rise, driving up
harvests outside the area while local forests are unused. "FRAGMENTATION
RATES ARE INCREASING FASTER THAN POPULATION GROWTH From1945 up to 1992 each new
person added to the U.S. population caused the conversion of about half an acre
of undeveloped land to urban uses. The rate more than doubled between 1992 and
1997 as each new person added to the population converted 1.2 acres of
undeveloped land to urban uses. About 40% of the land used is forested, meaning
that each new person converted .22 acres of forest prior to 1992 and converts
about .50 acres now. "Death and taxes: people who
inherit valuable land are forced to subdivide it to pay taxes. People who are 65
and older hold 48% of all private timberland acres, meaning that land keeps
getting divided among heirs. Owners of high-value land who haven’t made
complex legal tax-avoidance arrangements before dying leave their heirs with the
problem of being forced into selling land and timber to pay high estate taxes.
According to Greene and others, the number and percent of estates owing federal
estate tax has risen in recent years. At the same time, increased stumpage
prices and urban expansion have driven up the value of both the timber and land
components of forestland, pushing more land into higher brackets. Greene
estimates that there are presently about 87,000 forest estate transfers
annually. Ownerships forced to sell timber or land to pay the federal estate tax
range from under 100 acres to several thousand acres of forestland, and average
over 500 acres. "The South is the next most
densely populated region and very heavily forested. It contains 50% of the
nation’s private timberland. The population is growing rapidly, creating
massive expansions of urban areas. Between 1960 and 1990, the South’s share of
the U.S. population increased by about 3%, but the amount of southern land
covered by metropolitan areas more than doubled, increasing from about 10% to
more than 23%. Florida is gaining population at the rate of nearly 900 people
per day, decreasing timberland from 19.7 million acres in 1936 to 14.7 million
acres in 1995 This is expected to increase, creating significant negative
impacts on the environment and the economy. Georgia has the most timberland of
any state in the country but also now ranks third in the annual rate of
development (USDA FS 1999. US Department of Commerce, 1992). American forest
industries have been concentrating in the south in recent decades because of the
region’s highly productive private forests, but many of those same forests are
now under fragmentation pressure as urbanization increases."
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