Conservation Incentives

Conservation Incentives works with partners to promote and develop incentives and market-based solutions for family forest owners to sustainably manage their lands by conserving and enhancing a multitude of ecosystem services.

Over 10 million family forest owners hold 264 million acres in the United States. Development and land use change on these lands is occurring at an alarming rate. The best means of combating these pressures and advancing conservation on private lands is through voluntary efforts. However, many family forest owners interested in managing for ecosystem services and declining wildlife species often lack the necessary resources and have concerns regarding regulations and lack of future management options.

Market-based conservation initiatives and regulatory assurances provide effective incentives for active forest management in the form of financial and technical assistance to encourage family forest owners to sustainably manage their forests. In addition to wood products, actively-managed forests provide important ecosystem services such as species habitat, water quality and quantity, and carbon sequestration.

Until recently these ecosystem services were not properly valued, creating a system that benefited the public, but cost the providers family forest owners. The Center promotes conservation incentives and develop and implement markets, such as conservation mitigation banks, habitat credit trading systems and water trading markets. These market-based tools have proven to be effective, enabling landowners to become better stewards of their lands while realizing new income opportunities. Innovative conservation incentives will turn private forests into an even greater asset, encouraging sustainable forestry, and combating biodiversity loss, fragmentation and land use change.

Development of these markets would not be possible without working in partnership with state and federal resource agencies, non-profit organizations, landowner associations, military installations, family forest owners, and other stakeholders. Through collaboration, the Center raises the level of demand for ecosystem services and increase the awareness of the benefits of active forest management for conservation-reliant species and water quality. Through landowner outreach, demonstration projects and market development, the Center promotes models that properly compensate family forest owners who offset the unplanned impacts of development and military projects.

Current Conservation Incentive projects:

Sandhill Habitat Credit Bank -- Developing a sandhill habitat credit bank that operates using market-based incentives offers an innovative, cost-effective, and replicable approach to encourage landowners to manage for the gopher tortoise. Most of the current systems focus on the recovery of endangered species. In contrast, this innovative and proactive approach encourages management for the gopher tortoise on private lands with the goal of helping to preclude the need to federally list.

Northern Forest Watershed Services -- Clean reliable water is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the country as climate change and development pressures affect water quantity, quality, timing, and distribution. Thus, sustainably managed forests play a critical role in protecting watershed services in the future and co-benefit carbon sequestration and biodiversity. This project develops markets for family forest owners to recieve credits for the clean water services their forests provide.

National Market-Based Conservation Workshop -- To address these development and implementation issues to progress market-based conservation, the Foundation annually hosts a National Ecosystem Markets Conference. Each year, the conference attracts over 150 national and regional experts, innovators, resource professionals, buyers and sellers, and hands-on users of evolving market models. Panels discuss recent progress, what transactions can be done now, and how these markets will affect family forests. The lessons from the conference help increase family forest owners' ability to engage in market-based solutions to conservation leading to both ecological and economic gains, helping keep private forests as forests.