The Upper Midwest is experiencing a turnover in forest ownership from individuals who primarily owned property for financial investment to a generation of owners who prefer to manage for aesthetics, recreation, wildlife, and other ecosystem services. However, emerging markets for bioenergy, carbon, ecosystem services, certified products, and green buildings represent new economic prospects for non-industrial private forest owners (NIPF). A discussion of these potential markets also represents an opportunity to communicate with new forest owners about benefits of active forest management.

This project will encourage NIPF owners to participate in these new markets; build a network of resources to help landowners and foresters understand management options and market potentials; and convene a regional Private Lands Summit to communicate lessons learned, promote the public values that NIPF lands supply, and identify strategies to expand new markets and conserve private working forests.
Working with Dovetail Partners, Inc., the Alliance's goal for this project is to provide NIPF owners with the tools and knowledge to help them make environmentally sound, socially acceptable, and economically feasible decisions. There are three objectives for the project:

Develop a clearinghouse of information to help private landowners and foresters understand the range and implications of management decisions and market opportunities.

Convene four workshops in 2011 to explore the mechanics of new markets and obtain expert review of the “toolbox” of market information.

Convene a regional Private Lands Summit in 2012 to roll out and describe the market information.

Contact Mike Prouty (651-468-8006) or Katie Fernholz with Dovetail Partners (612-333-0430) for more information about the workshops or other aspects of the project.

Northern Wisconsin Shared Landscapes Initiative
Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges of our times. A thoughtful, cooperative approach to this challenge that incorporates a variety of management goals and objectives across forest ownerships will leave a positive legacy and healthy forest ecosystems for future generations.

The US Forest Service, the Michigan Technological University's Northern Institute of Applied Carbon Science (NIACS) and other members of the forestry community in northern Wisconsin are designing a Climate Change Response Framework (CCRF). The CCRF document, "Forest Adaptation Resources: Climate change tools and approaches for land managers" (FAR) will provide guidance and management considerations to better adapt forest ecosystems throughout the area, including Chequamegon/Nicolet National Forest. The Framework addresses changing climate, mitigating carbon emissions, responding to climate change impacts across ownership boundaries and rapidly incorporating science and monitoring information into forest management activities.

Shared Landscape Initiative

A critical component of this Climate Change project is the development of the Northern Wisconsin Shared Landscapes Initiative (SLI) Work Group. This SLI work group includes land managers within the landscape and others with a stake in the landscape. This group identifies potential landscape management activities consistent with landowners' objectives that will help adapt to and mitigate changing climate conditions. The SLI also provides a long-term forum to share cross-ownership issues and land management responses to climate change, with an emphasis on open communication and cooperation among all members and ownerships in the forest community.

The Great Lakes Forest Alliance supports and manages this SLI Work Group. In this capacity, the GLFA:

• • provides project management and coordination capabilities to the Shared Landscapes Work Group.
• • helps coordinate and communicate among and between the SLI work group and steering committee
• • helps develop actions of interest to the Shared Landscape Work Group, consistent with the CCRF "FAR" for northern Wisconsin.
• • helps identify next steps and share results of the northern Wisconsin CCRF with local communities and land managers throughout northern Wisconsin.
• • captures lessons learned and works with and through others to assist in exporting the northern Wisconsin CCRF model to other geographic areas as interested and appropriate, in spatial coordination with NIACS and its partners.

SLI members are currently working in the following four areas:

• • Human Dimensions & Economics
• • Ecosystems
• • Inter-Organizational
• • Communications/Technology

For more information, contact GLFA Executive Director Mike Prouty (651-468-8006) or US Forest Service Field Representative Barb Tormoehlen (651-649-5276).