Worksheet 3: Reasons for Owning a Family Owned Forest
Table 1: Area and number of family owned forests in the United States* by reason for owning forest land, 2006. The numbers include landowners who ranked each objective as very important (1) or important (2) on a seven-point scale where 1 is very important and 7 is least important.
| Reason | Area in Acres (thousands) | Area (percent) | Number of Ownerships (thousands) | Ownership (percent) |
| Aesthetic | 158,447 | 63.6 | 7,152 | 70.2 |
| Nature Protection | 128,198 | 51.5 | 5,494 | 53.9 |
| Land Investment | 116,707 | 46.9 | 3,807 | 37.4 |
| Part of home or cabin ** | 127,817 | 51.3 | 6,609 | 64.9 |
| Part of farm | 100,394 | 40.3 | 2,809 | 27.6 |
| Privacy | 134,039 | 53.8 | 6,349 | 62.3 |
| Family Legacy | 148,982 | 59.8 | 4,919 | 48.3 |
| Non-timber forest products | 25,014 | 10.0 | 756 | 7.4 |
| Firewood production | 37,139 | 14.9 | 1,293 | 12.7 |
| Timber Production | 78,085 | 31.4 | 1,020 | 10.0 |
| Hunting or Fishing | 108,556 | 43.6 | 2,645 | 26.0 |
| Other Recreation | 84,107 | 33.8 | 2,912 | 28.6 |
| No Answer | 2,906 | 1.2 | 119 | 1.2 |
* Numbers above are for the continental U.S. and exclude interior Alaska , Hawaii , Nevada , western Texas , and western Oklahoma.
** Includes primary and secondary residences.
This table comes from the USDA Forest Service, National Woodland Owner Survey and are draft figures. Designed for review purposes only.
- Create a bar graph for 2006 showing the reason for owning land compared to the amount of land owned for that reason.
- Create a second bar graph for 2006 showing the reason for owning land compared to the percentage of owners owning land for that reason.
- Using the worksheet 3 chart and your graphs, what are the top three reasons that people gave for owning family owned forests in 2006?
- Using the worksheet 3 chart and your graph, what are the three reasons given that had the largest amounts of forestland (acres in thousands) in 2006?
- Were you surprised by these graphs? Would you like own private forestland? Why?
- A similar survey was given in 1993; however, forestland owners were only given the following choices: aesthetic, land investment, part of farm or home, family legacy, timber production, recreation, and no answer. What “reason” choice changes were made to the 2006 survey? Why do you think they might have added these new options?
