Landscape Management Plan: Frequently Asked Questions
Background
1. Why is there a need for a Landscape Management Plan (LMP)?
LMPs were designed to achieve a couple of important objectives and address a few challenges in the process. First, an LMP is a tool to help increase family landowner engagement in forest conservation on their woodlands, provide technical assistance and resources to help them meet their goals, and better enable their participation in certification and assistance programs such as the American Tree Farm System (ATFS) and the Forest Stewardship Program (FSP).
An LMP does this by reducing the most significant barrier to landowner engagement: the need for an individual forest management plan, which can be both costly and time intensive to create. Without the need for their own individual plan, landowners can move through the first phases of the enrollment process in the ATFS certification program in a couple of weeks, rather than months. ATFS provides landowners with greater access to U.S. and international markets and recognition for their stewardship.
In addition, an LMP offers a mechanism for coordinating landscape-scale conservation priorities across small and family forest ownerships, which represent nearly 40% of the forests in the U.S. This approach maintains the credibility required for ATFS certification and other programs while providing landowners with the essential technical support needed to sustain their forests and protect critical ecological, social, and economic services such as clean drinking water, wildlife habitat, and sustainable fiber supplies.
2. Does the LMP replace a traditional individual management plan? Does it replace the work a forester would do for a landowner?
An LMP is the management plan and does replace the need for a traditional individual management plan. However, the LMP does NOT replace the valuable contribution of professional foresters or their ability to customize goals and objectives for a landowner's unique needs and vision. Rather, it is intended to help foresters minimize the time and paperwork that is usually required to create plans, and maximize their focus on forestry, relationships, and tapping the previously unengaged landowner base. The LMP opens the door to building relationships with unengaged family forest owners, who make up approximately 85% of all family forest owners.
3. Who is eligible to participate in the LMP?
Family forest owners, as well as other landowners, who reside in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia are welcome to use and benefit from the LMP. The LMP supports a wide array of landowner objectives and operations. Even in cases where a landowner may have very distinctive goals for their land, the LMP is designed to be implemented adaptively in diverse conditions.
It is important to note that individual landowners who would like to go on and participate in the ATFS certification program must meet the ATFS eligibility requirements.
4. How does a landowner participate?
Upon establishing a relationship with a forester, the landowner and forester would walk the property together, assess the forest condition, and gain an understanding of the landowner's objectives and goals for the property. The forester would then use the LMP as a reference in the advice they provide to the landowner regarding stewardship activities and management.
If the landowner is interested in going on to participate in ATFS or FSP, and the forester is a qualified ATFS inspector or FSP forester, the forester can then submit the associated paperwork (the 004 Form for ATFS, and program materials for FSP) to complete the process.
Partner Participants
5. Who is involved in the development of the LMP?
The American Forest Foundation (AFF) works with a large network of local partners, experts, and stakeholders in the development of the LMP. This might include state and federal agencies, universities, forest consultancies, conservation organizations, forestry associations, and industry stakeholders.
For example, for the Florida LMP, members of several organizations were part of the LMP Support Team, including but not limited to the Florida Forest Service, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), U.S. Forest Service, Florida Tree Farm Program State Committee, The Nature Conservancy, University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Florida Forestry Association, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, WestRock, Georgia-Pacific and Enviva Biomass. Additionally, AFF worked with partners at the regional and national level to ensure that the plan development process was credible and equitable to all family landowners in the region.
The American Tree Farm System (ATFS)
6. What happens if a landowner changes their objective?
Landowner objectives often change over time with changing conditions in the forests, as well as changes in life situations. The LMP is designed to flow with these changes, supporting adaptive management on the ground.
During return visits to the property (re-inspections as required under ATFS certification), the forester would review the landowner’s objectives and provide advice regarding stewardship activities on the ground to reflect changing goals. The forester would also document any change in landowner objectives on the ATFS 004 Form.
Individual Tree Farm Management
7. How are sensitive resources/FORI/other issues at or near the site addressed, and how is their protection accounted for under ATFS certification?
The ATFS Standards outline the need for consideration and protection of important resources and features within the forest landscape, including threatened and endangered species, cultural sites and unique or important landscape values. The geodatabase that accompanies the LMP includes maps to help understand the presence of unique resources and features. A forester can confirm these noted presences onsite.
There may be cases where such resources are not identified in the geodatabase but are identified on a specific property. In such cases, these resources would be documented within the ATFS Inspection Form (004 Form), where appropriate. The record would then be confidentially secured in the ATFS national database.
8. What happens if family landowner property is found on or adjacent to a forest of recognized importance (FORI)?
The ATFS Standards recognize the unique values represented by FORIs and the role family landowners may play in protecting and enhancing those values. Given the size and scale of family ownerships eligible for ATFS certification, landowners may be limited in their abilities to significantly impact FORI presence and quality through management on a small scale. As such, family landowners are not required to take specific actions, beyond any relevant federal, state or local laws or regulations that may apply. However, where present, forest management activities should maintain or enhance forests of recognized importance.
For family landowners, a more likely scenario is that their property is adjacent to a state- or federally-protected area and identified as a FORI at a landscape scale. In this case, landowners should consider the impact of their activities on the neighboring FORI and what opportunities exist to support and promote specific values or attributes in their planning and implementation.
Based on the best available science, the LMP Support Team has identified a spatial FORI layer, which is available in the geodatabase.
ATFS Inspection Process
9. How does an ATFS Inspecting Forester complete the ATFS Inspection Form (004 Form)?
The Forester’s Guide to Implementing the Florida Landscape Management Plan provides step-by-step guidance on how an inspector completes the 004 Form. You can also download an example 004 form here.
Third-Party Assessment Process
10. Does this LMP qualify for third-party certification?
ATFS certification requires a forest management plan be in place to guide forest management according to landowners’ objectives and forest conditions. The LMP meets all of the requirements for management plans under the ATFS Standards and brings additional rigor and credibility, through the diverse expertise of the partners and stakeholders who contributed to the development of the plan.
11. How are Tree Farms audited/assessed under the LMP?
Assessing Tree Farms using the LMP will be very similar to assessment using an individual management plan. However, related documentation of landowner goals and actions in the 004 form will be particularly important to the assessment process. The third-party assessor will consult the LMP, the 004 form and interview the landowner, while reviewing the property for conformance to the ATFS Standards.
Because the LMP is a new tool for foresters and landowners, and has not been utilized in an assessment before, AFF anticipates that there will be learnings from the first assessment of landowners supported by the LMP. This will provide additional guidance to foresters, landowners, state committee people and auditors.
