by Judy Gelman Myers
Rita Hite ’01
What kind of American owns a forest? Most likely not a timber baron, but a hardworking grandmother and her kids and grandkids. According to ESF graduate Rita Hite, incoming president and CEO of the American Forest Foundation (AFF), more than one-third of the country’s forests are owned by families and individuals who’ve kept their 60- to 70- acre woods in the family for generations. Totaling 22 million Americans, they’re officially known as family forest owners.
Writer Judy Gelman Myers recently spoke with Hite about her 13-year tenure at AFF and her goals for the organization as she succeeds retiring CEO and President Tom Martin; the intersection between public policy, common good, and private interests; the wide range of attitudes, objectives, and behaviors held by family forest owners; and how ESF prepared her for her career.
JGM: Before we turn to your work at AFF, tell me about family-owned forests. I’ve never heard of them before.
RH: Most people haven’t. When most people think about forest owners, they think about timber barons and big timber companies, but family forest owners are largely middle class. They can be teachers and firemen, with an average income of around $50,000. Or they’re people like my mom, who still has a 250-acre farm in Upstate New York. She grows hay and a few other things, and she’s got “the back 40”— the woods.
In fact, a lot of forest owners are farmers. Statistically, there are about 2 million farmers in America and 22 million people who own woods. Many of these woods have joint ownership, in some cases with 40 or 50 people owning one property.
In the South, a lot of properties go back to right after the Civil War, when African Americans began owning forests and passed the land on through multiple generations, so that today, some of these properties have 80 to 90 people owning one forest. At AFF, we have a partnership with the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network to help African American forest owners work out issues with respect to title and ownership and steward their land.
Family forest owners have all sorts of different objectives. Most families have had the land in their possession for multiple generations, and they care passionately about passing it on to their kids. For other landowners, managing for wildlife is a really, really important value, whether it’s for hunting and fishing or bird watching.
Most don’t have timber revenue as a primary objective. That doesn’t mean they don’t have to find ways to pay the taxes, but most don’t think about timber first and foremost. They think about how they accomplish their goals and how to pay for it with revenue from the woods.
JGM: What kind of revenue is available? Are there federal subsidies? Woods are such an obvious benefit to the country as a whole.
RH: In terms of revenue, some people harvest timber, but especially in states like New York, it’s not on a regular basis—maybe once a generation— especially if they’ve got a small tract of land. Some generate income from hunting licenses. A lot of folks try to work with their local communities and organizations like the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation or other agencies that provide some financial support for family landowners.
Forests aren’t subsidized like corn or cotton or traditional agricultural commodities, but there are incentive payments to help landowners achieve conservation or stewardship objectives, such as improving wildlife habitat or water quality, or increasing forest health. There isn’t a subsidy for growing or changing trees, however. This is why AFF is working to unlock carbon markets and other sources of revenue for family landowners, in addition to supporting traditional forest products markets.
JGM: Congratulations on your appointment
as president and CEO of the American Forest Foundation. What are your priorities in your new role?
RH: I’ve been at AFF for 13 years. Building on the organization’s history, I’ve set three priorities moving forward. My first is making a significant impact on climate change. The second is tackling and changing the trajectory of the wildfire crisis. The third is biodiversity protection and helping family forest owners contribute meaningfully.
In terms of climate change, forests capture and store carbon. We’ve built a program with the Nature Conservancy called the Family Forest Carbon Pro- gram to help forest owners convert the value of their carbon capture in voluntary carbon markets.
We’re also seeing a lot of emerging economic opportunity around biodiversity, as corporations and governments are much more aggressively financing and requiring biodiversity protection.
When it comes to wildfires, most people think it’s a Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management or maybe a state agency problem; when in fact, about a third of the high-fire-risk acres out West are family and individually owned, so families can have a very significant impact even though their individual tracts are very small. Our challenge
in this area is getting enough forest owners in different landscapes to take action.
JGM: How are you using the word landscape, because I think it probably means something different to you than it does to me.
RH: It depends on the outcome. In the context of carbon, we think about landscapes from an ecoregion, forest-type perspective. For example,
in the Family Forest Carbon Program, we’re working across the central Appalachian landscape in Western Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, because that’s a critical eco-region from a climate perspective. Especially when it comes to family lands, most of that region has been high- graded—the best trees are taken out and the worst are left, so we have major issues with respect to recovering those forests. We’re working with those landowners to regenerate healthy forests and grow timber for the long term, which is a carbon value.
In the fire context, it’s different. It’s really about firesheds (lands surrounding a community where wildfires could spread into the community).
In the biodiversity space, it depends on the wildlife. A lot of biodiversity in the South is in longleaf pine ecosystems. We’ve lost a lot of those landscapes, so they need to be protected. Another key critical forest type is the white oak landscape. We’re finding that we’re not really restoring that landscape at a pace that’s needed to keep up with biodiversity protections.
JGM: You’ve also inherited a number of pro- grams at the AFF.
RH: Yes. Many of these existing programs can help us achieve our climate, wildfire, and biodiversity goals because they help families care for the land. For example, the American Tree Farm System helps family woodland owners understand how
to practice sustainable forestry. It’s our oldest and largest program, with about 70,000 landowners and a little under 20 million acres. It was founded in 1941 when the industry came together to supply wood for a growing market. They understood
that family forest owners were going to be key to their supply, and they recognized how important this population was and why there was a need to help them care for their land and ensure they had healthy management. We set standards for forest management that landowners can meet; owners who meet them are certified and their wood can feed into sustainable supply chains for certified wood in some states.
We also have digital tools that help connect land- owners with important resources. WoodsCamp is a digital tool to reach family woods owners and help them understand existing opportunities and connect with resources, foresters, and wildlife biologists who can help them care for their land and figure out a plan. My Land Plan is an online platform that helps families develop and track their plan over time.
The Landscape Management Plan is a stream- lining tool for us to do management planning with landowners and a way for family landowners to contribute to landscape-scale objectives. For instance, we can protect gopher tortoise habitat
if one landowner takes action to restore their longleaf pine and five other landowners next to them take similar action. This program helps us develop a plan across that landscape and create mechanisms for landowners to opt into that work, as opposed to our going individual by individual.
JGM: How did ESF prepare you for your career?
RH: In two ways. One was opening my eyes to opportunity and helping build my confidence. As
a young woman in this space, it’s hard to think you can actually be a player and make a difference in policy. A lot of what Dr. Donald Floyd and Dr. Robert Malmsheimer (SRM) did for me was to say, “Rita, you’ve got something here, and you should have confidence in that.” The second thing is networks. Dr. Floyd and Dr. Malmsheimer introduced me to my first job in D.C. I still have the network I started out with at ESF; Dr. Malmsheimer and others
are still very much part of it. And obviously, the education is awesome.
JGM: What was the first job you had after leaving ESF?
RH: I was manager, then director, of forest policy at the Society of American Foresters (SAF). The SAF represents private lands, public lands, boots on the ground, foresters, researchers, so it was really good exposure to the entire profession. My role was to ensure that SAF had a voice in Congress, and I had the pleasure of helping shape legislation like the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
JGM: You later served as a professional staffer for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture.
RH: I worked for Republicans on the committee, but my work was really about helping committee members on both sides of the aisle achieve their goals with respect to their forests. We worked in a very bipartisan manner, on issues like wildfire and illegal logging. I wrote the forestry provisions for the 2008 Farm Bill, which set the stage for farm bills we’re still working on today.
JGM: In addition to everything else you’re doing, you volunteer for the Women’s Forest Congress.
RH: I love their work. It started right before COVID, when our sector was facing some really big challenges and really big opportunities, specifically in regard to the diversity of the forest industry. We thought it would be fabulous to get women leaders together to bring new voices and new thinking to how we’re going to move forward. We also wanted to create a network for women to support each other in our sector.
JGM: You’ve had a lot of experience working at the intersection of government, family-owned forests, and national interests. Can you give
us some insight into how AFF and the public at large can make that intersection more effective?
RH: When you peel back the layers, family forest owners have many of the same goals and objectives that we as a society do. They want healthy forests, they want forests that are around for the next generation, and they want to care for them and manage them well.
For example, some family forest owners are not focused on climate change, but when you ask if they’d like resources to help them manage their land for forest health and wildlife, they’d say, “Heck, yeah.” And by the way, these actions are often the same actions needed to tackle climate change. That’s where the public interest, government interests, and landowner interests really align, because we’re all wanting the same thing. At AFF, we’re providing resources to create more healthy, resilient forests that can capture carbon and fight climate change—a win for landowners and for society.
JGM: Is there anything you want to add?
RH: I’m excited about this opportunity to lead AFF, and I’m also just really humbled by it. I’m looking forward to relying on my ESF network to help me succeed in this role as ESF has done over the years. I’m very grateful for all the incredible support, mentorship, and friendship from my ESF network and beyond that has gotten me to this place.
Judy Gelman Myers is a freelance science writer based in New York City