The remaining 12 million acres are held by private owners, estimated to be over 700,000. Said another way, about 1 in 8 households in the state owns some forestland. The average ownership size is estimated at 17-21 acres, with an average ownership tenure of only 7-13 years, and an average age of 57. The decisions these landowners make affect the strength of our forest-based industry, employing about 90,000 workers and contributing 17 billion dollars to the economy of the state. In addition, private forests provide ecological services such as clean air and water, supply habitat for wildlife, and contribute immensely to our quality of life.
Pennsylvania is blessed with an abundance of public land but this is not the case with most eastern states. Western states, on the other hand, have an abundance of public land. In some western states the US government owns more that 50% of the land base. So why such a difference? An article recently posted by the NY Times does a good job of explaining.
Why the Government Owns So Much Land in the
West
By QUOCTRUNG
BUI and MARGOT SANGER-KATZ JAN. 5, 2016
The United
States government owns 47 percent of all land in the West. In some states,
including Oregon, Utah and Nevada, the majority of land is owned by the federal
government. Of course, it used to own nearly all of it.
And that
remaining ownership and management of large tracts of forest and grazing lands
is the core of the problem for antigovernment protesters in Oregon. They have
taken over a federal building, the latest in a long history of fights between
the government and Western settlers about how the lands should be used.
Which Federal Agency Controls the Most
Land?
(In Millions
of Acres)
Bureau of
Land Management – 247.3
Forest
Service – 192.9
Fish and
Wildlife Service – 89.1
National
Parks System – 79.6
How did the federal government get the
land?
The history
of federal land ownership has been largely one of divestiture and public use,
not acquisition. As the United States expanded across the continent, it did so
by purchasing or taking the land that became new states. (Among the groups it
took land from were Native Americans.)
Over time,
it transferred land to state governments and individuals, largely through
homesteading and land grants, which allowed farmers to procure parcels of land
for agricultural use. The government also tended to allow free use of unclaimed
lands by ranchers and others, though there were skirmishes over the years when
settlers tried to fence in public land or claimed land in Indian territories.
That
strategy worked well in the Midwest, where very little land remains in federal
hands. East of the Mississippi, for example, the federal government owns only 4
percent of land. But in the
11 states in the West (including New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, and
not counting Alaska), a combination of geography and politics slowed things
down. “The whole
disposal system sort of hits a speed bump,” said Patricia Limerick, a history
professor and director of the Center of the American West at the University of
Colorado.
The many
mountainous, arid and difficult-to-reach tracts of land in the West simply
weren’t attractive to farmers. Settlers claimed the few valleys where farming was
feasible and built towns. The only thing most of the remaining land was good
for was grazing, but cattle ranchers and sheep herders needed large tracts of
land to feed their livestock, not the smaller parcels they could claim through
homestead policies. More
recently, federal law eliminated homesteading and set up more formal systems
for management of the remaining land.
To read the
rest of the story click here.
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