Ethan Goss
Forest certification such as the American Tree Farm Stewardship (ATFS) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification was developed as a way for industry to have more ecologically sound forest management practices. With this in mind these certification systems are not cheap to become enrolled in. This is a problem for both the certification institutions and the family fores owners. Family forest owners own over 50% of the forest in the United States, this is a huge demographic that the forest certification organizations are missing out on by the high cost of the certification. To enroll as an individual land owner in the FSC it can cost anywhere from $8,000 to $50,000. This is also a problem for family forest owners because they are not able to get the benefits of the certification because of the economic cost.
The way in which small family forest owners are able to circumvent this with a certification that is a combined certification with a group of land owners. This distributes the cost of certification among a number of different land owner. It significantly lowers the cost of certification. There is even a governmental super group in Wisconsin and Indiana that completely alleviates the cost of certification. These two governments each made a group of forest owners that included every landowner in its tax database.
Group certification has the potential to make FSC and ATFS certification an option for family forest owners. This is quite good news because it will expand the number of landowners enrolled in these ecological forest management programs. It means more people will have the option of being recognized for practicing ecological forestry and will also ensure they continue to practice forestry in this manner.