ORONO – A University of Maine cultural anthropologist has begun what could be the first study of landowners’ stewardship strategies for Maine forests, research that should help explain owners’ management decisions.

James Acheson, professor of anthropology and marine sciences, said the timing of the study of forest management was important as ownership of Maine’s 17 million acres of timberlands is changing rapidly – as is the entire forest products industry.

The forestry industry generates $5.6 billion in gross economic benefits to the state.

Acheson, an expert on resource management and governance, has received an $85,000 anthropology grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct the study. He’ll work with a team of interviewers to survey representatives from four stakeholder groups – timber companies, pulp and paper companies, small private landowners and forest contractors.

The study may be the first of its kind for the nation’s most heavily forested state. Acheson’s preliminary research has turned up a plethora of studies on forests and forest management practices but remarkably little information on the attitudes of landowners, who may employ vastly different management techniques.

“We’re trying to understand why people do what they do,” he said. “Right now a lot of land is being bought and sold, and there are a lot of new environmental easements that didn’t exist 30-40 years ago. What’s going on?”

By asking about social, cultural, economic and political factors behind management decisions, Acheson hopes to gain better insight into conditions under which decision makers do or do not conserve forest resources, and how. In many cases, Acheson said, landowners do a good job; in other cases, they do not.

“Who’s to say the people doing the heavy cutting are irrational and unsuccessful?” Acheson said. “I don’t think it is at all clear that those people who are holding onto their land and not doing anything with it are necessarily wrong, either. Under some circumstances, it may be good to clear cut.”

Different uses of forest lands can dictate different management practices. For some, timber harvesting is the primary reason to own forestland. For others, forests may be used primarily for recreation, hunting or privacy, Acheson observed.

Some woodland managers harvest mainly inferior trees and leave healthy, stronger trees to reproduce high quality stands. Others harvest the better quality trees, and leave poor quality trees to regenerate genetically inferior replacements, Acheson said.

Forest management raises questions that are both interesting and complex. Questions about public access, recreational use, pesticides and differences between publicly and privately owned forests usually generate a multitude of responses and opinions.

Acheson wonders whether existing state conservation programs that provide tax incentives in exchange for forest conservation have comparatively few takers. Are there too many disincentives in the regulations?

“It is issues of these kinds that we hope to get at,” he said.

Questions about common property management and the degree to which government should be involved in managing privately owned lands are bound to arise as policy makers consider the state’s need to preserve and protect its natural resources. Acheson’s research could be used as a basis for drafting or revising forest or other resource management policies.