The U.S. government is investing $265 million in 17 states to save private forests from development, while improving rural economies, mitigating wildfire threats and reconnecting wildlife.
The U.S. Forest Service recently announced the grants in its latest batch funded by the Forest Legacy Program. The October awards were made through Inflation Reduction Act funds. These new grants will help protect some 335,000 acres of vital forest lands in 21 projects.
The projects are in Alabama (Dugdown Mountain Corridor), California (Lake Arrowhead ridge), Hawaii (East Maui rain forest), Idaho (Stimson Timberland Legacy), Iowa (Searryl’s Cave forest), Massachusetts (Fitchburg Reservoir), Montana (Great Outdoors Project), North Carolina (Buffalo Creek), Ohio (Sunfish Creek), Oregon (Tualatin Mountain Forest), South Carolina (Pee Dee River corridor and basin), Tennessee (Fayette County), Vermont (Ninevah Forest), Virginia (Albemarle Sound), Washington (Stimson Timberland Legacy and Kitsap Forest) and Wisconsin (Border Lakes, Upper Wisconsin River Legacy Forest and Iron County).
“Landowners face many pressures to convert forests to other uses and this investment is key to keeping the economic, social, and ecological benefits that these forests provide,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Oct. 29 in press statement about the recent round of grants. “Local communities, and our country as a whole, depend on private forests to provide clean water, habitat, recreation, and jobs.”
The total allocation for 2024 will amount to nearly $420 million in grants to 47 projects to save 500,000 acres of forest land.
Over the last three decades since the program began, the federal government has saved 3.1 million forest acres in 479 completed projects.
The Forest Legacy Program encourages those who own lands in forests across the country to either sell it completely or sell the land’s property development rights to states or other government bodies.
“The use of a conservation easement, a legal agreement between a landowner and a non-profit land trust or governmental agency, allows the land to remain in private ownership while ensuring that its environmental values are retained,” the Forest Service explains.
Tennessee is getting a new state forest (Ames State Forest) thanks to a federal grant for $16.9 million to buy 5,477 acres in Fayette County through a fee simple (complete) acquisition. The conservation effort will safeguard 30 miles of streams, over 1,500 acres of wetlands and an aquifer that provides drinking water for 2.8 million residents.
Wildlife connectivity extends through many of the recent grants.
For example, in Alabama’s Cleburne County, a $19.5 million grant will expand the state’s forest acreage by nearly 70% through a fee simple purchase of 9,888 acres. The new addition will lengthen “one of the South’s most vital forested climate resiliency corridors,” according to the Forest Service. This new connectivity will enable wildlife to move freer from the Talladega National Forest to Georgia’s Sheffield Wildlife Management Area in Paulding County.
Montana will receive $35.8 million towards the second phase of its Great Outdoors Project that aims acquire a total of 85,792 acres of key timberland. The land will benefit wildlife since it is within a key migration corridor and year-round habitat for grizzly bears, bull trout, white-tailed and mule deer, moose and Canadian lynx. The state established lynx protection zones in critical habitats there in 2015 since the animals are protected under the Endangered Species Act.
A $600,000 grant is making possible a conservation land easement to protect nearly 1,000 acres of forest around Oma in Iron County, Wisc. and other lands to connect a pair of county-owned forests in Wisconsin and Michigan. This acquisition will improve the habitat for Wisconsin’s endangered American marten, which has been facing a dwindling habitat.
“Forests provide innumerable benefits to people and communities, and for nearly 35 years the Forest Legacy Program has allowed us to support states and landowners in their efforts to conserve important forestlands,” Forest Service Chief Randy Moore commented in a press statement.
He noted that the federal government is “protecting parcels we never thought we’d have the resources to secure and even more acres of vital forestlands so that future generations of Americans will be able to enjoy all the irreplaceable benefits they provide.”
These U.S. government expenditures to preserve forests and reconnect lands are lasting investments for both present and future generations of Americans. Not only do these Forest Legacy Program grants benefit people, but also safeguard our environment, wilderness areas and threatened forms of wildlife.
