Ecosystem Services - Forest Guild

Otter Brook Farm, Peterborough, NHPhoto by Charlie KochEcosystem Services: Where’s the Money?by Charlie KochLate last fall and early winter, I was workingfor a husband and wife who were planningto place a conservation easement on their land toprotect the land from future development. Theironly payback would be for the donation on theirfederal income taxes. My job was to count thetrees and come up with a timber liquidation value.The land appraiser was going to estimate howmany house lots the property could be dividedinto if it were to be developed. I might be oversimplifying, but it seemed that ecosystem valuesweren’t going to be incorporated into theappraisal. Bare land value plus timber value plusdevelopment value equals full market value, right?Prior to getting started with my cruise, thelandowner gave me a natural resource inventorythat had been compiled by an ecologist (one ofthe most comprehensive non-governmentaldocuments I have seen). Most of the ecosystemvalues that we commonly talk about were includedin the inventory: wildlife, wetlands, soil, aquiferrecharge, natural communities, etc. Nary was adollar sign seen throughout the entire document.As I was cruising through a spruce swamp on theproperty that had no timber value (couldn’t belogged) and no development value (couldn’t bebuilt on), my questions were and still are: whatkind of values do we have here, and is there anyway to attach a dollar value to them? Thespruce swamp had tremendous wildlifehabitat and wetland value, but I wasn’t sure ifwhat I considered a value had a dollar value.I kept coming back to these questions: Whyshouldn’t it? How come we couldn’t attacha monetary value to those things that wereaddressed in the natural resource inventory?Are they something that we just talk aboutand manage for because we feel they are veryimportant (one reason for being a ForestGuild member)? Are there specific and easyways of attaching dollar values to them? Myfeeling is there isn’t, or I wouldn’t be writingabout it. Hopefully, I just don’t have the toolsor knowledge yet.When I asked the land appraiser how sheidentified and valued ecosystem services,she replied, “it’s not an easy thing to do,given the variations in easement language,in markets, the newness of all of this, etc.”She did offer her opinion that values forecosystem services are currently not easilydefined unless they are specific to a buyer/seller relationship, with the buyer being thewildcard. Her appraisal of this particularland hasn’t been completed yet, but myfeeling is that the landowner’s donationvalue is going to be miniscule, making theirCharlie KochA founding memberof the Forest Guild,Charlie is a licensedconsulting foresterin New Hampshire.He works with a widerange of clients todevelop and implementsustainable forestmanagement plans.ckoch@cheshirepond.mv.comcontinued on page 13WISDOM summer 2010 / 3