Likelihood of implementing fuel reduction treatments on nonindustrial private forest lands

Abstract

Nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) landowners are a dominant forest landownership group in the south-eastern United States and play a crucial role in regular fuel management for effective landscape-level wildfire hazard reduction. However, little is known about their intentions to implement fuel reduction treatments in the future. This study estimated the likelihood that NIPF landowner will implement a fuel reduction treatment in the next 5 years using a binary logistic regression model. This likelihood was associated with landowner attitudes towards wildfires, forest landownership and socioeconomic characteristics, and forest location attributes. Approximately 30% of landowners were likely to implement a fuel reduction treatment and a majority were interested in treating pine plantations. Management of undesired vegetation, promotion of tree growth, wildlife habitat improvements and reduction of wildfire severity were primary motivations for implementing treatments. Past implementation of fuel reduction treatments, previous wildfire experiences, concern about wildfire-related property damage, familiarity with wildfire prevention programs, ecosystem service maintenance as an ownership objective, forest land area owned and implementation of fuel treatments by neighbouring landowners were positively associated with the likelihood of fuel reduction treatments. Findings will be helpful in developing more effective programs encouraging landowners to regularly treat hazardous fuels in their forests.