07/26/2000 Env Bd Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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• • WILDLAND URBAN INTERFACE PROJECT "Integrating Natural Resource Guidance to Enhance Smart Growth in Wildland -Urban Interface Communities" March 2000 - September 2001 Contact: Dave Schuller, DNR Forestry; 1200 Warner Road, St. Paul, MN 55106; (651) 772 -7931; e-mail: dave.schuller @dnr.state.mn.us Briefing Paper on Landowner Guidebook - with May 2000 status report The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) (with support from the USDA Forest Service) is kicking off a new project called the "Wildland Urban Interface" project. This project has two primary parts - one working with local units of government and the other to develop a guidebook for landowners to better manage their natural resources. This paper is on the second of these - development of the landowner guidebook. Background: Need & Response Natural resource agencies have many discrete programs which assist landowners to manage their natural resources. Too often this guidance is piecemeal, too late, or even conflicting. Furthermore, unless such guidance is timely and cohesive, opportunities are lost to fully incorporate natural resource and ecological concerns into landowner decision making. Of particular concern to DNR's Forestry Division and the Forest Service are the individual landowners who own wooded tracts for their personal or family's own use - typically called non - industrial private forest land (NIPF) owners. Such owners that have more than 20 acres of land are served through the Woodland (or Forest) Stewardship Program through which individual landowners receive natural resource guidance (including a forest stewardship plan professionally prepared for the property) as well as financial assistance for forestry and habitat improvements. However, in Minnesota, 800,000 of the 6,000,000 acres of NIPF land is in parcels of less than 20 acres and the category is growing quickly. While this category is only 15% of the land base, it represents the large majority of landowners. About 40,000 people own between 10 and 20 acres. If parcels less than 10 acres are included, the number of owners probably jumps to the hundreds of thousands. Professional natural resource service for this group of landowners is now lost between existing programs. Such landowners are not organized by communities to the extent that they can benefit from traditional urban programs. And while these landowners have a high interest in their land and appreciate the one-on -one assistance provided by traditional rural programs (e.g. Forest/Woodland Stewardship), the sheer number of landowners and their higher turnover make it nearly impossible to have any significant effect through personal contacts. In response, the DNR has just kicked off a new effort aimed at providing more useful and better integrated guidance to landowners on the urban fringe (also called the "wldland -urban interface). This project is possible at this time because the DNR received a modest grant from the USDA Forest Service for a project on "Integrating Natural Resource Guidance to Enhance Smart Growth in Wildland -Urban Interface Communities" which will largely cover the expenses for the guidebook's writer, illustrator, and printing. Project Purpose & Scope The DNR assembled a broad -based work group in March 2000 who will over the next 18 months develop and distribute copies of a landowner guidebook to conserving and managing their natural resources. The primary audience for the guidebook will be smaller scale rural/wildland -urban interface landowners (typically owning 5- 20 acres). The intent of the guidebook is not to re- create anything that already exists, but rather to bring together 1