Iowa woodland acres decline for first time since 1974

Blame it on $7-a-bushel corn.

Iowa's woodlands have shrunk by 40,000 acres, according to the latest Forest Inventory Analysis conducted by the USDA Forest Service, marking the first time since 1974 that Iowa has lost woodland acres.

“This report provides us with hard data that backs up our anecdotal evidence that it has a lot to do with commodity prices,” Paul Tauke, chief of the Forestry Bureau and State Forester for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, said Tuesday. “Landowners are making a different set of decisions than when corn was at $2-a-bushel.”

The inventory shows more tree clearing in the last three years than the previous 20 years, Tauke said.

The decrease is more than the 34,000 acres managed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources State Parks Bureau or the 36,000 acres in the Forestry Bureaus' state forests.

The loss of woodland also is a concern for Bob Livingston of Guttenberg, who started in the lumber business in 1946.

“You can't blame them,” he said about farmers who do the economic calculations that lead to clearing small timber plots. “We're going to see bulldozers working in the woodlands turning it into corn land.”

However, Ben Gleason, sustainable program manager at the Iowa Corn Growers, said there's more to the conversion of woodland to cropland than commodity prices. As Iowa cities expand, woodland and cropland are gobbled up by residential and commercial development.

“That puts pressure on farmers to find other acres to plant,” Gleason said. “That might be an abandoned farm or woodlands.”

It's not just small groves that are disappearing, Tauke said. DNR foresters have seen 10-, 20- and even 80-acre plots cleared for cultivation “if it's flat enough and not too rocky,” Tauke said. “With rental rates what they are, I can understand the pressures.”

As he looks at the data, Tauke wonders whether “this is a blip on the radar or a trend that will continue for the next few years?”

“I worry that next year we'll be doing a press release that it's 60,000 or 80,000 fewer acres of timber,” he said.

On the other hand, Tauke said, tree inventory can be somewhat cyclical based on economic factors, but that the trend line can be reversed in Iowa.

“Most Iowans like and value trees,” he said. “In a state where most of our landmass is devoted to annual crops, I think we have a special appreciation as well for the long-term value of trees that span the generations.”