“The cost of doing business”: Private rights, public resources, and the resulting diversity of state-level forestry policies in the U.S

In the U.S., the combination of federal, state, and local forest rules and programs create the policy environment in which private forest landowners manage their land, which in turn impacts the quality and conservation of ecosystem services produced. While previous studies provide overviews of forest policies impacting private landowners at moments in time, they lack the depth and perspective needed to describe the political context of forest policies, including the mechanisms underlying this diversity: the how and why of particular policies. This study fills that gap by utilizing interviews with policy experts from 12 case-study states to investigate the range of forest policies present in the U.S. We also explored the perceived trade-offs between protection of public trust resources and private property rights on private forest lands in their states, and the key actors (groups) influencing policy changes over time. Overall, the strong role of private property rights in the United States was consistent across case-study states, although most experts indicated a balance between protecting public trust resources and private property rights. The variability of policy tools employed among states suggests many avenues to achieve this balance, including policies that are created through market-based mechanisms rather than the state (i.e., certification). We also found that local-level regulations contributed to diversity and, at times, conflict and confusion within states. Finally, although landowner stewardship is not a policy tool, we found that states implicitly and explicitly relied on landowner knowledge and values to protect public trust resources, a strategy that some participants agreed fostered trust between the state and its private forest landowners.