Privately owned forests comprise around 60% of the total forest cover across the contiguous United States and are managed for a range of economic outputs. Such private working forests contribute to large-scale conservation outcomes across the US and the globe. Voluntary conservation programs aim to motivate private forest owners to adopt biodiversity-focused management actions. However, it is often assumed that such management, and by extension, participation in programs, meaningfully increases financial costs borne by forest owners. Thus, these costs may preclude biodiversity-focused management across working forests. We use maple syrup production to test the claim that biodiversity-focused management incurs additional costs, especially for those enrolled in conservation programs. We analyzed reports of forest management actions, management costs, and conservation program enrollment among 70 individuals who manage 5, 252 hectares of forest for maple syrup. Our core findings were that 1) most private forest owners engaged with several management actions linked to improved biodiversity outcomes, 2) there was no difference in management costs between those who implemented many “biodiversity friendly” management actions and those with fewer actions. Additionally, relationships between maple syrup yields and management costs did not differ across the number of management actions adopted, nor with producer enrollment in conservation programs. This finding suggests that the maple syrup industry, valued globally at 1. 1 billion USD, could play a significant role in delivering habitat at minimal cost to producers. Beyond maple syrup, our study provides a backdrop for future work investigating the opportunity costs of biodiversity-focused forest management in working forests across the globe.
Pratson et al. (Sun,) studied this question.