Local policy and landowner attitudes: A case study of forest fragmentation

Abstract

Wisconsin is known for its extensive forest resources and its attraction to visitors and permanent and seasonal homeowners. Development, due to this attraction, within the state’s private forestland has been a growing phenomenon for many years and communities are struggling to implement tools to reduce its negative impact. One group of tools is local land use policies, but many communities are not equipped to regulate more than the basics, such as minimum lot size, and it is not clear that moving beyond the basics would conserve future forest resources or whether or not private landowners would find more restrictive land use policies acceptable. In this paper, we conduct a case study of northern Wisconsin by analyzing two dimensions: the possible effect of local land use policy on forest fragmentation and landowner attitudes to policy. The purpose is to uncover whether conventional or density-based zoning conserves more forestland and which policies local landowners would support. We find that, one, density-based zoning can conserve more total and core forest than conventional zoning. Two, when landowners view a particular scenario as a severe threat, they are more inclined to support some forms of land use regulation over others. These findings indicate that local governments can open up a dialogue for more restrictive local land use policies for conserving forest and limiting forest fragmentation, if landowners understand the impact among various alternatives.