The 2020 Forest Action Plan is undergoing finishing touches, setting the state’s goals for forest management in the coming decade, UNH Extension State Specialist Steven Roberge said.
Most people aren’t familiar with the once-a-decade Forest Action Plan, he said, but the goals it sets address issues occurring in the state’s forests, which affect universal interests like clean water, recreation, and the economy, and Roberge encouraged residents to look through the new plan. This year’s version reflects the increase in forest-based recreation and climate change impacts that have emerged since 2010, he said.
“Forest is our dominant landscape, a resource we all have access to whether it’s a backyard, a town forest, or the White Mountains,” Roberge said. “The issues and opportunities our forests are facing affect all of us. Having a broader or more encompassing audience for this plan would be important,” he said.
The plan’s goals are fewer and broader than the last go-around, Roberge said, but that should still be enough for state agencies and nonprofits to come up with potential solutions. There’s currently a bill in the state house that would organize a committee tasked with identifying what the state legislator can do to further the priorities and recommendations, and the plan’s goals determine what projects are likely to receive US Forest Service grants in the coming years, he said. The New Hampshire State Forest Action Plan team is responsible for developing the plan, with review and guidance from the Forest Advisory Board, of which Roberge is a part.
In addition to recommendations, the hefty 233-page report delivers a thorough update on the state of New Hampshire’s forests. In the late 1800s, forest cover was down to just 47 percent of the state’s area, but rebounded by 1960 to a high of 87 percent as farms were abandoned. An area of forest about the size of Sullivan County has been lost since that peak, mostly to development, and coverage is currently at 82 percent, according to the report, with more than 70 percent of that in private ownership.
Southern New Hampshire’s growing season has increased 15 days since 1960, to 52 days today – and it’s expected to increase in the next century. New Hampshire’s average annual temperatures have increased by three degrees since 1900, and annual precipitation increased by 4.5 inches from 1895 to 2009 in the southern part of the state. Extreme weather events are also up. All those changes affect where different plant and animal species can survive, timber harvesting, and even recreation: snow pack and stream flows are susceptible to the new climate patterns, and trails can be affected by precipitation extremes and mud, rather than ice, in winter.
The plan’s goals include staging more species surveys to locate exemplary natural communities and rare plants, and encouraging landowners to manage for biodiversity, protect important natural communities, and to conserve land in a way that forms large, contiguous parcels – even while growing high value forest products. It also recommends developing incentives for landowners to sustainably manage forests, such as forest carbon offset markets, or ecosystem service markets, which reward landowners for the benefits their land provides, such as water and air filtration and erosion control.
Educational opportunities are at the heart of several plan goals, including climate adaptation workshops for forest managers, and support for landowners as they manage legal and illegal recreation on their property. “There are many more people talking about recreation impacts as compared to a decade ago, both motorized and not,” Roberge said.
There are some new strategies among the goals for managing and protecting forests, such as a web-based system for citizens and professionals to report forest health concerns as they observe them, and using fire to maintain ecosystems while also figuring out how to better respond to large, complex fires and mitigate piles of excess fuel generated by ice or windstorms.
The goal is to have a final version of the 2020 Forest Action Plan ready by December, he said, although the draft version is available online.