These six steps are designed to guide you through the forest stewardship planning process:

1. Identify Your Goals

The first step in developing an Investment Management Plan is to identify your forest goals. How did you come to own your forest property? What do you and your family do when you are there? What outcomes do you seek from owning your forest?

Sample goals may be to:

• Create habitat for a wide range of wildlife
• Maximize income from wood
• Provide the best possible deer or elk
• Graze livestock as a summer range
• Offset global CO2

If you have multiple goals, prioritize them or determine where they apply to your land. Your broad, property-‐wide goals may require you to develop more specific objectives in different areas of your forest. Sharing a list of clear, specific goals and objectives with an Investment manager guides them when recommending appropriate management practices to you. Consider your management plan as a living document that you can refine as you learn more about your forest and its capabilities, or as your needs change.

2. Inventory and Evaluate Your Property

Evaluate your property. We can assist, or you might be able to bring a local forester on site to guide your thinking. Begin by accurately locating your property boundaries and marking them with a fence, paint marks on trees, rock piles, stakes, or other means. Clear brush from your property lines to avoid trespassing when you or your neighbors carry out forestry practices. If the boundaries are not clearly identifiable, you may want to have your land surveyed.

Gather historical facts concerning previous land use or management activities that could have influenced the development of your forest. Such activities might include livestock grazing, agricultural cropping, timber harvesting, tree planting, fires, and pest outbreaks. Foresters use information about these events and their timing to analyze the development of existing forests and to predict the results of future management practices.

A written plan should include these components:

• Your name and contact information
• Legal description of the property and boundaries. Include a complete list of parcels in this plan
• Your management goals
• Description of the ecosystem in which your property is located and ecological issues that directly or potentially could affect your quiet enjoyment of your forest lands
• Inventory of known or potential historic and cultural resources (for example, cemeteries, burial mounds, foundations). Your forester may be able to obtain this information from a state-‐ wide database of such
  Inventory of known or potential threatened, endangered, or special interest species that are or may be present on your forest lands. Your forester may be able to obtain this information from a statewide database to provide the data you need
• History of your property’s management.
• Map or aerial photograph of the property

Historical aerial photographs are invaluable as they mark the rate of change that is going on. A good photo will give you:

• Property boundaries
• Forest boundaries
• Land uses
• Roads and trails
• Utility wires, pipelines, or other rights-‐of-‐way or easements
• Buildings
• Water resources
• Unique natural, historical, or archaeological resources

Aerial photographs are especially helpful as a foundation for the map. They usually are available from local offices or from your state forestry agency.

If the property is large and hilly, topographic maps may help you assess slope and aspect as they relate to forest access and tree growth. Topographic maps are available from the U.S. Geological Survey, but also may be available online or sold on CDs and DVDs at outdoor stores. 106 can provide this detailed information for you as a client.

Inventory of forest resources such as:

• Location of timber stands
• Estimates of timber quantity, quality, size, product potential, carbon offset potential, regeneration potential, and other characteristics by species and stands (A stand is an area of the forest [usually 2 to 40 acres] that is sufficiently uniform in its tree species composition, spacing, and size; topography; and soil conditions that it can be managed as a single Management practices area for things such as planting, thinning, and harvesting are carried out more or less uniformly across a stand.)
• Site factors affecting tree growth including soil depth, texture, moisture, fertility, chemical properties, and landscape position (such as north or south slope, ridge or valley).
• Location of trails, roads, and equipment
• Water resources including riparian and ephemeral streams, lakes, wetlands and seasonal ponds, seeps, and
• Location of all flowing water (current or historical)
• Wildlife habitat (including location and quality of food, cover, water, breeding, and nesting sites for significant wildlife species or groups of species).

Your forest may be just one piece of a large forested landscape, but the cumulative effects of the management decisions you and other landowners make can greatly alter the forested landscape over time. Identify land uses on adjoining property and find out what plans your neighbors have for managing their land. This will help you to evaluate the potential impact of your forest management activities on the whole forested landscape. Coordination among neighbors can produce a forested landscape that meets individual landowner objectives without adversely affecting the neighbors or the environment.

3. 106 Reforestation Developed Stand Objectives and Management Alternatives

An inventory shows the current condition of your forest, but a forester can use the inventory to predict the future development of each stand by considering:

• Which tree species currently dominate the over-‐story (overhead canopy of trees)?
• Which species are present in the understory (trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants beneath the over-‐ story)?
• Considering site characteristics, which tree species show the greatest potential to dominate the site in the future? (A site is an area of forest with relatively uniform growing conditions such as soil, moisture, and slope.)
• What undesirable tree species are currently competing for the resources on the site?
• How will the tree species that are present respond to different management practices?
• What damaging agents are present or likely to occur in the stand and how will they affect the stand in the future?
• What is the estimated fire risk to the property in its current state

More than one management practice is usually available for each stand, but it may not be easy to reach your property goals, given the forest resources and sites on your property. A forester will ask you to choose a management objective for each stand. Knowing your objectives will narrow your choice of potential management practices for each stand.

Such practices may include:

• Planting
• Improving the timber stand (thin, weed, cull, and prune).
• Harvesting
• Fencing out
• Improving wildlife
• Installing erosion control structures on the property
• Constructing access to the interior of the land
• Establishing fire protection or controlled buffer zones
• Controlling pests (insects, diseases, animals).
• Controlling weeds and brush.

4. 106 Reforestation Assess Management Constraints

Consider these management constraints when choosing which practices to implement:

• The amount of time you have available to do the work
• Your experience and expertise
• The availability of skilled contract
• The equipment
• Your financial resources available to be applied to the Forest Land
• The availability of government financial grants
• The potential economic return, including the tax benefits
• The eligibility of carbon credits on the land
• The presence of cultural resources and threatened, endangered, or special interest species that are regulated by state or federal rules.
• The zoning laws or forest practice regulations in effect in your area
• The prevailing attitudes of neighbors or the general

5. 106 Reforestation Create a Schedule of Management Practices and List Them.

Prepare an activity schedule, covering at least five to ten years, that lists management practices and the approximate dates when they should begin and complete. If your forest is large, perhaps several hundred acres of activities may occur every year. If it is smaller, management activities may occur less than ten times per year, or perhaps only once every ten years. Regardless of its size, inspect your forest at least annually. Walk through the forest and look for damage by pests, fire, or wind, unauthorized harvest, damaged fences, and soil erosion.

6. Keep Good Records

It will be easier to update your forest lands investment plan and make sound decisions about the future when you keep accurate records of what you have done. Records also will be important when filing income tax returns, selling property, or settling an estate.

Management records may include:

• Management plan
• Timber inventory
• Management activities accomplished (what, when, where)
• Sources of forestry assistance (name, address, telephone, e-‐mail addresses and web sites)
• Association memberships
• Suppliers of materials and equipment
• Contracts
• Insurance policies
• Forestry income and expenses
• Deeds and easements