Forest stewardship
We work with a good number of landowners every year helping balance land stewardship with quality hunting. You can take care of the woods and craft a solid whitetail hunting plan at the same time. Often times the timber income covers all the planned changes to the property, with money put into the landowners pocket.
If you need help or have questions on how to take care of your forest while implementing a solid hunting plan, give us a call.
The DNR Forest Stewardship Program helps woodland owners manage your woods through advice and education, cost-share programs, and Woodland Stewardship Plans. We work through a statewide network of DNR, public, and private foresters specially trained in forest stewardship. We are ready to help you achieve your woodland goals, whether it is to create wildlife habitat, increase natural beauty, improve trails, enhance environmental benefits, or harvest timber.
Managing Your Woods
Forest management is all the things you do to keep your woods healthy and beautiful. This work tends to happen in small steps over multiple years. For example, if you want to improve wildlife habitat you may need to remove invasive plants to allow native plants to grow, and then plant the right trees to increase food for wildlife. After time, you may need to remove some trees to decrease competition between trees and increase the health of remaining trees. These actions make your woods attractive to wildlife and also provide environmental benefits. We use Woodland Stewardship Plans to help you organize and complete all of these steps.
Woodland Stewardship Plans
A Woodland Stewardship Plan helps you understand what is in your woods, how to improve them, and when to do work. A unique plan is developed for your woods based on your land management goals. The plan can help you stay on track over the long-term and keep your woods healthy and beautiful. Plans are written for woodland owners with 20 to 5,000 acres where at least 10 acres have or will have trees. Plans are updated every 10 years to stay current with your needs and your woods.
Plans are developed and written by foresters trained in woodland stewardship from the DNR, environmental organizations, Soil and Water Conservation Districts, and consulting foresters. The cost for a Woodland Stewardship Plan depends on who writes it and the size of your woods.
While a DNR forester can write your plan, you can also hire an approved Minnesota Woodland Stewardship Plan writers to do the work.
Financial Benefits of a Woodland Stewardship Plan
A Woodland Stewardship Plan registered with the DNR qualify you for woodland tax and financial incentive programs.
Cost-share Program: The DNR has cost-share funds available to help woodland owners complete projects to improve your woods (these are the steps outlined in your Woodland Stewardship Plan). A DNR forester works with you to develop a project plan. Project work can be done by you or a contractor. Sample projects include: wildlife and pollinator habitat improvement, tree planting, bud capping, invasive species removal, tree thinning, and forest road work. More information can be found on the DNR’s Cost-share for Woodland Owners webpage.
Incentive Programs: The Minnesota Sustainable Forest Incentive Act (SFIA) jointly managed by Minnesota Department of Revenue and DNR is an incentive program to keep forests as forests on our landscape. Created in 2008, 2c Managed Forest Land (link is external) is a property tax designation that offers Minnesota woodland owners a property tax rate of 0.65 percent on actively managed woodland. For both programs, landowners with at least 20 acres of forest land under a registered Woodland Stewardship Plan may be eligible.
The Forest Stewardship Program (link is external) is funded by the USDA Forest Service and run by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.