Management Plans
A management plan is the guide book to the management of your forest property. This plan will provide the long term guidance necessary to properly manage your forest over the years. It is important that the plan be prepared properly and with the landowners objective in mind. Plans also need to be flexible. They can be ever changing to fit the landowners needs and changes in the status of the property, markets, and weather. Management plans should be refereed to often to keep up with recommended recommendations.
Management plans should contain:
Your plan should cover your desires for your property. Not everyone will share the same objectives. You may or may not want to manage your property like your neighbor. Usually landowners want to manage for timber production, wildlife habitat, recreation, watershed protection, soil protection, or eastics to mention a few. It is important to decide exactly what your objectives are. Write them down, study them, sleep on them but decide how you want to manage your property. With this information your professional landmanager can help you accomplish your desires.
A map of the property is important to identify special areas or locations of boundaries. a map only need to be detailed enough to clarify the plan. Your map could be a copy of an aerial photo, topography map, or a hand drawn map. All maps should be oriented to the north and marked, usually north is at the top of the map. Items that could be placed on a map include forest types, ponds, roads, food plots, topography, soils, wells, buildings, and property lines. Maps should have some indicator of scale.
An inventory of the forested acreage should be included in a detailed plan. This inventory can provide information on the number of trees/acre, board feet/ acre, basal area/acre, growth, and stand density. A description of the soils and their productivity is also important, this description is usually base on site index for forest management purposes. Any other resources that are important to your objectives should be adequately described.
Your resource professional, forester or wildlife biologist, will make recommendations as to how to meet your objectives. These recommendations should be written down so they can be refereed to over time. recommendations should be detailed enough that you can understand time or how and when they are to be implemented. Examples of recommendations include timber harvesting, timber stand improvement, tree planting, pond building, food plot planting, or controlled burning.
A time line visually displays the work that needs to be performed over time. This is usually a brief description of the recommendation arranged in chronological order. With this a landowner can quickly determine the status of the project.