Woodland Wisdom Part 1

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- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

We're starting a new video series called Woodland Wisdom, and I'm joined by my colleague...

- Calvin Norman.

- And we're gonna be talking about the two questions we often like to ask forest landowners when they come to us with problems or issues that they need answers to.

The first question is, "What do you own?" And the next question is, "Why do you own it?" So, "What do you own?" is a question that lots of times people often answer with, "Well, I know I own this many acres and there's forest on my property." but lots of times they don't know how much forest they own or how many acres they really own.

They don't even know if their boundaries are marked clearly.

Then they say something about the trees on their property.

They say, "Well, they're big or some are small." but they really can't define it very well.

And so we're saying, you know, we want to teach them that they need to know the age and the species that they have on their property and the commercial potential as well.

And then there's a host of other things that forest landowners may or may not own, and these are important to know about such as oil, gas, and mineral rights, rights of way through your property, whether you own some rights of way to get there, or whether someone else owns it on your property.

Next, you have things like water resources on your property or natural areas of special concern.

Are there any historic features on your property you want to protect or any potentially archeological important areas too?

And lastly, things like threatened and endangered species.

Those are very important to know about if they're on your property.

Your property may also be in a unique location, providing something for wildlife that isn't provided by other areas, and so those are important to know too, your place in the landscape.

If it's a valuable area for wildlife.

Now, Calvin's going to talk a little bit about why do you own your forest land?

- Thanks, Sandy.

So like Sandy mentioned, I'm going to talk about why you own your forest.

Now, for some people why they own their forest is very easy.

They like to hunt deer, or they like to go walk their dog at night and that's great, but not everyone knows that.

So for other folks, I want, I encourage them to do this simple activity, take the next two or three days, and just jot down on a piece of paper on your phone, in the notes section, you know, what do you like doing on your forest?

Or what have you done in your forest recently?

That'll help you figure out your why.

And then once you have your why, you can, it makes management much easier.

For example, if you like to hunt deer, what a healthy forest looks like for you is going to be a little bit different than someone who wants to go out there and see hemlocks on their forest.

Deer and hemlocks don't always get along.

So you want to see different things and different management activities that need to take place.

And so that's why the why you own your forest is very important.

- Okay. Thank you, Calvin.

We'll be back with more in this series and we thank you very much for listening.