The Forest Landowner Assistance Program Helps Tennessee Landowners Succeed
In partnership with: Tennessee Department of Agriculture
The Forest Landowner Assistance Program helps landowners like David Shiflett support and maintain their private forest land.
Shiflett is deeply connected to his family history. He’s traced his ancestry back to the state’s first settlers who came to East Tennessee before it joined the United States in 1796.
The Knoxville real estate developer and his family have also been thinking about how they want to be known by their future descendants. That legacy is taking form on nearly 1,100 acres they own in Morgan County. Like Tennessee itself, the land boasts a beautiful diversity of ecosystems, from mature forests to idyllic stream banks and a rugged sandstone bluff above the Obed River.
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“The whole idea is to be good stewards of the land for all future generations, and we have a long-term view of that,” Shiflett says. “We want everyone to have the opportunity to be connected in the natural world.”
Protecting and improving the property is a big project, but the Shifletts aren’t going it alone. They’re among the thousands of residents that the Tennessee Department of Agriculture Division of Forestry (TDF) has helped through its Forest Landowner Assistance Program.
Seeing the Forest and the Trees
While Tennessee boasts wide expanses of woodlands, like the Cherokee National Forest and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 83% of the state’s forests are in the hands of comparatively small-scale private landowners like the Shifletts.
Philip Morrissey, Stewardship Program specialist with TDF, says the Forest Landowner Assistance Program is meant to give those landowners the support they need to manage their forests sustainably.
At the program’s core are 27 area foresters, who spend their days visiting landowners to assess their properties and plan for the future. From July 2023 through June 2024, those foresters made nearly 1,200 site visits and developed more than
720 forest management plans, together impacting 70,000 acres.
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According to Morrissey, most private landowners prioritize conservation and want to promote healthy forest ecosystems but are concerned about the expense of doing so. The Forest Landowner Assistance Program’s free consultations overcome the first cost hurdle, and its staff connect landowners with other state and federal programs that can help support sustainable practices.
TDF foresters emphasize that a healthy landscape is often also economically productive, with investments in good management simultaneously yielding benefits ranging from boosting timber value and supporting habitat conservation to promoting scenic qualities.
“Some folks think they’ve got to spend a lot of money to improve the wildlife separate from the timber. But if you manage your timber properly, you’re managing wildlife and the scenery,” Morrissey explains. “It’s not a bad thing to harvest a tree. It’s a product that can be managed sustainably over time.”
Stewardship in Action
The Forest Landowner Assistance Program also helps landowners put their plans into practice. For the Shifletts, the program’s biggest contribution has been assistance with prescribed burns, in which a trained crew carefully deploys fire to achieve specific objectives.
The prescribed burns promote the growth of new white oak trees, a fire-tolerant but slow-growing species that’s both economically valuable and a key food source for wildlife. Below their canopy spreads an open landscape of native grasses, shrubs and wildflowers, the perfect habitat for foraging birds like the ruffed grouse.
Those trees won’t be ready to cut for decades – well after Shiflett will have become an ancestor himself – but he’s already reaping a harvest of beauty and hope for the future.