Abstract
Private forests in the southeastern US are critical for providing a variety of ecosystem services, including timber production and water resource protection. Restoration of longleaf pine (LLP) forests and savannas tends to enhance some ecosystem services, including water supply, over timber production. A variety of payments for watershed services (PWS) strategies have emerged to address the market failure associated with private forests and public water supply. The nature of these programs suggests that biodiversity protection may be a positive externality, or third-party benefit, to water resource protection. This paper uses a critically engaged research approach and expert interviews to investigate how PWS programs may help prevent land use change and promote LLP restoration. We also offer recommendations on how to sustain emerging efforts to implement PWS strategies while including LLP restoration objectives.
Highlights
Strategies that protect and enhance provisioning and regulating forest ecosystem services have the unique advantage of simultaneously enhancing multiple services at once [1,2].In recent decades, payments for watershed services (PWS) have emerged to address the market failures associated with private forests and clean water resources [3,4]
Payments for watershed services (PWS) have emerged to address the market failures associated with private forests and clean water resources [3,4]
We investigate how strategic collaborations between advocates of longleaf pine (LLP) restoration and PWS programs could provide important ecosystem service bundles to diverse stakeholders and help advance forest restoration in the southeastern region of the United States
Summary
Strategies that protect and enhance provisioning and regulating forest ecosystem services (e.g., water supply, filtration, and attenuation) have the unique advantage of simultaneously enhancing multiple services at once (i.e., ecosystem service bundles) [1,2]. Payments for watershed services (PWS) have emerged to address the market failures associated with private forests and clean water resources [3,4] These programs increase the value of keeping forests as forests by offering landowners an additional stream of revenue. A wide variety of stakeholder groups, including conservationists, hunters, researchers, and land managers, have expressed concern for this ecosystem, which has led to the establishment of America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative This initiative has brought together federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations (e.g., Longleaf Alliance, Nature Conservancy, Forest Landowners Association), and other private sector partners through an ambitious 15-year goal to increase longleaf pine acreage from 4 to 8 million acres on public and private lands by 2025. Our findings are expected to help inform ongoing activities and add to broader conversations about payments for forest ecosystem services
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