- Okay, well, hello everyone.
My name is Joshua Benes
and thank you so much for attending my presentation titled
"Cooperative Forest & Wildlife Habitat Management
in Central Wisconsin."
Before I begin,
I wanted to put a quick plug
into the work I'll be doing in my new role.
I am now the Assistant Director for Operations
for the Mount Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center.
I'm working with UVM facilities management
and researchers to explore the possibility
of a new biological research station
that will be located at the top of the toll road
on Mount Mansfield in Vermont.
The field station will focus on promoting the health
of northeastern mountain ecosystems
by catalyzing collaborative science and stewardship.
If you have any questions about this or my new role,
please do not hesitate to contact me.
And so, today's presentation
is also about collaboration and stewardship.
And it's about a project that I managed
when I worked for Golden Sands Resource Conservation
and Development Council.
Golden Sands RC and D,
is a regional conservation nonprofit
that serves central Wisconsin and the nonprofit's vision
and mission revolves around building cooperative efforts
and working across county lines to address local concerns.
The nonprofit serves 13 different counties
in the state of Wisconsin,
relatively the same land area and population size
as the state of Vermont.
The nonprofit focuses on implementing conservation projects
around sustainable agriculture, healthy forest,
clean water and abundant wildlife.
And so, today's presentation,
I'll be focusing on a project
that this nonprofit put together called,
"Cooperating for Woods and Wildlife,"
but I wanted to be able to lay the foundation
on why this project came together
and what it was aiming to do, during this presentation.
So, the first thing that I'll be covering,
is the conservation concerns associated with fragmentation.
And then I'll be digging into the need for cooperation
amongst private land owners.
I'll provide information
about the state's Deer Management Assistance Program
or DMAP, that's located in Wisconsin
and how our program, Cooperating for Woods and Wildlife,
use this program to connect neighboring land owners,
to be able to consider
and adopt stewardship activities on their properties.
And then I'll close out with just ideas
and models for cooperative efforts among private landowners
that may be adopted in the Northeast.
I'm really excited about the work
that I was doing in Wisconsin.
And I think there's value
to thinking about how to be able to adopt work
amongst private land owners,
to create these collaborative efforts
in the Northeast.
And I'm happy to engage with any of you about ideas
or ways that that can be done.
And so first, fragmentation.
I believe, with the audience here,
most of you should be familiar with fragmentation
but it's the process of breaking apart forest blocks,
it can be done with a road
or it can be done via parcelization.
And in Wisconsin,
we're seeing forest blocks break apart
into smaller and smaller pieces over time.
In 1997, the average force parcel size was 37 acres,
in 2013, it was 26 acres.
And this is a real problem
because in order to adequately manage for wildlife habitat,
we need to be able to think about
larger scale land management and in 80% of the Wisconsin,
land owners cite wildlife
as a reason for owning land on their properties.
And so, this is not only a problem for wildlife habitat
but also the land owners that manage these properties.
And so, just briefly,
just giving an example of two different species
and their space needs.
So, I have a white-tailed buck and a ruffed grouse.
A white tail buck, on average,
needs about 640 acres of space
in order to meet its habitat, food, water and shelter needs.
And the ruffed grouse, typically needs about 40 acres.
And when you overlay property boundaries on top of that,
you see that there's multiple land owners
that are managing their properties in different ways,
that certain individual wildlife species
and individuals will be overlapping on multiple properties.
So, when we're thinking about creating wildlife habitat
and thinking about the different needs
of different secessional forest types in a certain area,
we need private landowners coming together
to be able to think about how each of their properties
plays a role in different types of habitat
that are needed for individual species.
In addition,
fragmentation is an issue for invasive species.
If many landowners are managing
or controlling invasive species on their property
but there are some landowners that are not doing anything,
those properties that are not managed for invasive species
can be seed sources for other invasives
going onto other neighboring parcels.
And smaller parcels also lead to less efficiency
for timber sales.
And so, you have to be able to transfer equipment
from site to site to be able to do a timber sale.
And if a forest parcel is very small,
it is difficult to be able to manage the timber
on the site appropriately.
And also, if it's not economical
to be able to conduct those timber sales,
it becomes a problem for managing forest health
and creating healthier forest ecosystems.
So, what I'm painting a picture here is,
that there's really a need for cooperation.
We need private landowners to be able to collaborate
and work together.
We need communities of landowners
thinking about how to be a better steward of their land.
And we also need private landowners to have a relationship
with natural resource professionals as well.
And so, because of this need,
we need to be able to develop strategies to catalyze
and bring these landowners together
and also develop relationships
with natural resource professionals.
And in order to develop relationships
with natural resource professionals,
what Wisconsin has done is,
adopt this a relatively new program,
it's about five or six years old now,
called the Wisconsin Deer Management Assistance Program
or DMAP
It has deer in the name
because what really motivates landowners in Wisconsin
is usually creating high quality deer habitat
because they're very hunter focused.
But overall, the program focuses on strategies
to create quality wildlife habitat.
And it's a cooperative effort
between the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
and private land owners.
And by participating in the program,
land owners receive habitat management assistance.
So, they receive access to informational materials,
they can attend workshops,
they can be able to receive habitat management plans
at certain levels.
And so, there's kind of an increased access
between these landowners and natural resource professionals
that are within the state.
And so, there's multiple levels
of the Wisconsin Deer Management Assistance Program.
There's levels one, two and three.
Level one doesn't require any minimum acreage.
Any landowner can enroll
and it's free for these landowners to enroll
into a level one cooperative.
They can attend the workshops
that are occurring throughout the state,
educational workshops.
They can be able to access online materials
that are available through DMAP,
to learn more about forest and wildlife habitat management
and they receive ideas and networking
and consider ideas on what they can do
on their properties to enhance wildlife habitat.
Level two and level three
have a certain amount of funding that is required
from the cooperative to be able to pay.
So, for level two, all the landlords of the cooperative
have to pay $75 every three years to enroll.
So, it's a very minimal fee for these land owners
and either a landowner with 160 acres themselves can apply
and be part of a level two DMAP level
or you can have neighboring land owners,
that are a maximum distance of a half mile
away from another participating landowner,
enroll together into a cooperative.
And then those neighboring landowners
can collectively get the benefits of a level two DMAP
and they can get the site visit
from a wildlife biologist and forester
and also a habitat management plan,
where that helps them plan and understand what they can do
on their individual properties to enhance wildlife habitat.
And it's a non-regulatory program.
So, it basically gets a lot of these landowners in the door
and has them start thinking about what they can do
on their properties to enhance wildlife habitat.
And so, it's an extremely successful program in Wisconsin.
There's also level three DMAP cooperatives
that are at least 640 acres in size.
And when you're a part of a level three DMAP,
you also get first access into Snapshot Wisconsin,
which is a trail camera network
that exists throughout the state.
And so, there's all of these various benefits
by being involved in DMAP
and many landowners find it appealing
and want to participate.
But sometimes, they find it difficult to connect
with their neighboring landowners to form these cooperatives
so that they can participate in these higher levels.
And that's where our nonprofit, Golden Sands RC and D,
stepped in to form the Cooperating for Woods
and Wildlife program.
We received a Landscape Scale Restoration grant
from the US Forest Service,
with match from state and local partners.
And we built this program with a regional management focus
and focus on connecting land owners
with natural resource professionals
and having conversations like these,
where land owners are able to interact
with natural resource professionals,
learn about what they could do on their properties
and also connect with their neighbors as well.
The goal was to be able to form
level three DMAP cooperatives of at least 640 acres.
And we wanted to be able to form
at least one of these cooperative groups
in each of these eight different counties.
And we were successful in doing that.
We formed 10 cooperative units through this first program
with 10 different cooperatives
in eight of the counties
with over 10,000 acres of land enrolled.
And the formation of these cooperatives,
the first step was identifying priority areas.
And we really leaned on natural resource professionals,
that were within the individual counties,
to be able to form and identify areas
within the county that were relevant
to forming these individual startup cooperatives.
And once we identified those areas and ranked them,
we sent out mailings to landowners
that were within this region.
We also sent postcards
and then we also followed up with phone calls.
And so, we invited these landowners to an initial meeting
that we held in their communities
with the natural resource professionals that were involved
in the state's Deer Management Assistance Program.
And once we had these initial meetings,
we established our first network of landowners in the area.
And usually, there was one land owner
that was particularly enthusiastic
and that we used as a resource
and as a leader for that individual cooperative
to go forward.
And once we developed that network
and foundation of land owners,
those land owners formed an individual cooperative,
enrolled into the program,
received their initial site visits
and then the following year,
after they received their site visits
and habitat management plans,
we invited neighboring land owners around them
to participate,
any other landowners that were within a half mile,
to be able to grow and expand those cooperatives.
And this was really an effective strategy,
bringing in motivated, enthusiastic landowners
that were already involved
and having other landowners around them,
thinking about what they're missing out on
and how they can participate and get involved as well.
And so, overall the program was successful,
we received funding for our new program,
from the US Forest Service,
Landscape Scale Restoration grant,
to expand it to 12 counties.
We, so far to date, between the new program
and the old program,
we enrolled over 13,500 acres of land
into the Deer Management Assistance Program.
We had over 125 landowners enrolled so far.
Another element of this project as well is,
that we received some funding
to match with private landowners
to restore Karner blue butterfly habitat on their properties
within these cooperatives.
And so far, we've restored over 100 acres
of Karner blue butterfly habitat,
which is a federally endangered species.
And overall,
we formed these countless landowner connections
and landowner opportunities as well.
And that's something that's been most inspirational to me,
just seeing the communities of landowners
that come together and are interacting
and thinking about stewardship,
that would have never done this in the past.
And seeing those landowners learn from their neighbors,
some landowners may be involved
in the Environmental Quality Incentive Program
or other cost share activities on their properties
and they have information and ideas about the stewardship
that they can share with their neighbors.
And so, seeing these communities of landowners form
and many landowners that never interacted with one another,
starting to interact with one another through this program
has been particularly inspirational to me
and the work of this project.
And so overall, I'm particularly enthusiastic
about the work that we have done with Golden Sands RC and D
and the Cooperating for Woods and Wildlife Program.
And I would love to be able to see a similar work
being done here in the Northeast.
One nonprofit model that I know of,
is Cold Hollow to Canada.
I haven't connected with the group personally
but I have heard and seen their website
and that their mission is to maintain ecosystem integrity,
biological diversity and forest resiliency
through the Cold Hollow to Canada region in Vermont
with a focus on community led stewardship
and the conservation of our working landscape
in the face of a changing climate
and their pillars are sustainable stewardship,
forest land conservation and community empowerment.
And so, I think that there's different ways
to be able to catalyze
and bring different communities together,
to be able to consider stewardship.
And I think this is a model of that.
There could also be other similar state programs
that may form in the Northeast.
There's none that I know of right now,
that are similar
to Wisconsin's State Deer Management Assistance Program.
But if any of you know of any of that I'm not familiar with,
I would love to learn from you.
And then also, maybe there's a way
to be able to build this into Current Use.
I know that Current Use is a prevalent program
here in the Northeast.
Maybe there's a way to be able to bring landowners together
and incentivize them to work to with one another
and conduct management with one another,
with a land taxation model in some way.
And maybe that's something that's more difficult to do,
policy wise
but may have the most catalyzing effect.
And so, those are just the ideas that I wanted to share,
that I think may be relevant for the Northeast.
I'm happy to learn from any of you
and also answer questions, Golden Sands RC and D's website
for the Cooperating for Woods and Wildlife Program
is right up here.
And you can learn about the program.
We also did a video series
and we were originally planning on doing a workshop
for land owners throughout the region.
We ended up doing a video series due to the 2020 pandemic.
And so, we have interviews with landowners
throughout the region, natural resource professionals
about the value of this project.
So, I encourage you to visit the website
if you want to learn more.
And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.
The current Executive Director
is also willing to answer questions,
that I trained to take over this project.
Her name is Hannah Butkiewucz
and also my email address,
in my new role here at University of Vermont
is provided in here as well.
So, with that, I'm happy to answer any questions
and thank you so much for your time.
- Right, thank you for the great presentation.
All right, were are you seeing mostly landowners
from the MFL program
or landowners from outside of it as well?
- Ah, somebody knows Wisconsin.
So, MFL is the Managed Forest Law program.
And we were seeing landowners,
both within the Managed Forest Law program,
which is similar to Current Use here, in the Northeast,
that it incentivizes landowners
to do management on their properties
and they get a tax benefit from that.
And so, we were seeing,
maybe the majority of the first landowners
that we were working with,
were already involved with Managed Forest Law
because they were the ones
that were already getting involved in stewardship.
But as we were growing, we were getting more landowners
that weren't involved with Managed Forest Law as much.
And so,
I think that's part of the exciting part of this project is,
that you set the seed of individual landowners
that are really excited and motivated
to be able to work with one another.
And then you can start reaching out to other landowners
that are really not engaged
and not thinking about stewardship.
And they're afraid of missing out
because their neighboring landowners are doing this
and they want to have good wildlife habitat
on their properties as well.
- Well dude, just one more question.
How did this play out in the longterm?
Did landowners stay in the program
and were there penalties for pulling put?
- There's no penalties for pulling out
and it's a non-regulatory program.
Landowners, when we had the opportunity
to re-enroll landowners into the program after three years
because this is a three-year enrollment,
all the cooperatives that I was managing in the beginning,
re-enrolled this last year.
So, landowners have been re-enrolling
into these cooperative units
and depending on the cooperatives,
there's different levels of engagement of landowners,
different levels of enthusiasm
but it all depends on the individual community
and the individual players within each cooperative.
- Great, thank you so much.
And if there are any more questions,
please reach out to Hannah and Josh.
- Yes. Thank you so much everyone.