by Jon Steigerwaldt – Western Great Lakes Forest Conservation Director and Jared Elm – Wisconsin Conservation Coordinator
This year marked eight years of our Forest Wildlife Specialist Private Lands Program in Wisconsin – a first of its kind partnership between RGS & AWS and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in the nation. With 58% of forestlands in Wisconsin in private ownership, private lands play an important role in landscape-scale habitat restoration, especially where they interface with public land ownership.
According to Forest Inventory Analysis data collected by U.S. Forest Service over the past 120 years, the largest decline in young aspen, oak and birch forests in Wisconsin has occurred on private land. These young forest types are incredibly important to the health and sustainability of Wisconsin’s forest products industry and wildlife habitat, being home to many game and non-game wildlife species. When polled, Wisconsin private landowners consistently list providing and improving wildlife habitat as their number one motivation for landownership with hunting and recreation close behind. Deer are usually the primary interest for landowners, but ruffed grouse are generally close behind as a focal species for landowners. Income from timber harvest is often the lowest ranking objective for private landowners.
Assisting landowners in achieving mutual objectives for wildlife remains our top priority. In Wisconsin, this is primarily done through our Forest Wildlife Specialist Private Lands Program where RGS & AWS staff help private landowners by providing technical assistance, management plan writing and access to forestry cost-share funding through the Farm Bill.
Current Status of the Program
In 2025, RGS & AWS continues to implement and expand our partnership with NRCS to strategically place forest wildlife specialists throughout the northern forest and northern Driftless Area in Wisconsin. These positions assist private landowners with active forest management and habitat assistance, and leverage Farm Bill programs available through NRCS. This partnership helps bridge the gap between aversion or misunderstanding of timber harvesting and wildlife habitat creation, providing landowners with the resources to implement successful timber harvesting and wildlife habitat management objectives.
In 2025, our forest wildlife specialist team expanded with the addition of a new forest wildlife specialist based in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. This area encompasses Rusk, Price, Taylor and Sawyer counties, which is core grouse country, and needed a new forest wildlife specialist due to the drastic increase in landowner demand and partner needs. We now have four staff members covering 28 counties in Wisconsin. They work closely with private consulting foresters, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources biologists and foresters, loggers, habitat contractors and everyone in between to ensure landowners have the resources to accomplish their habitat management objectives.
Deliverables
While program deliverable targets are open-ended for our NRCS agreement, they’re founded in a mutual interest in accelerating implementation of USDA-NRCS Farm Bill Conservation Programs. To date, the following have been completed:
| 2018-2024 Accomplishments | ||||
| Landowner Contacts | Outreach Events | Farm Bill Funds Allocated Towards Projects | Forest Management Plans | Completed Projects |
| 3,394 | 137 | $5,133,575 | 13,652 acres | 6,405 acres |
| 2024 Accomplishments | ||||
| Landowner Contacts | Outreach Events | Farm Bill Funds Allocated Towards Projects | Forest Management Plans | Completed projects |
| 364 | 11 | $1,892,928 | 1,822 acres | 825.30 acres |
Landowner Contacts
The most valuable aspect of the program is the direct, on-the-ground interactions with private landowners. Since the initiation of the program, staff have interacted with thousands of landowners with a wide range of ownership size. Forest wildlife specialists facilitate every project – Farm Bill or otherwise – from beginning to end and don’t “hand-off” landowners to other partners or agency staff. This one-stop-shop approach streamlines implementation and minimizes confusion for landowners.
Outreach
Forest wildlife specialists are expected to participate in outreach and educational events that promote sustainable and active forest management, including workshops, in-person events, writing articles and attending sport shows. Their primary audience is landowners, but also targets other federal and state agencies seeking ways to collaborate on working with landowners interested in federal financial assistance programs. Outreach focuses on the importance of maintaining disturbance driven landscapes and how landowners can put the complicated pieces of the land management puzzle together.
Funding Allocation
While planning and landowner interaction are the focus of the partnership, the amount of money leveraged with federal Farm Bill programs for on-the-ground habitat work can’t be understated. The $5,133,575 in funding is allocated for forest wildlife specialist planning since the initiation of the program through NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Stewardship Program. These funds are allocated to private landowners, but have overarching local community impacts as those funds are turned over to local contractors, private consulting foresters, loggers and private habitat managers. Additionally, these funds incentivize keeping forestland as forests (as opposed to parcelization and development) by making forest management more cost effective for landowners.
Forest Management Plans
Forest management is a long-term and often slow development; therefore, forest management plan writing is the backbone of forest wildlife habitat. Our staff has either directly written or worked closely with a private consulting forester to develop 13,652 acres of forest management plans. These plans generally outline the potential management options over a 10- to 25-year period for the landowner with specific implementation timelines in activities. These include timber harvesting guidance, invasive species control and monitoring and specific wildlife habitat improvements along with recommendations on how to manage non-forested areas like shrub wetlands and forest openings.
Completed Projects
Since the inception of the program, our staff has assisted private landowners in implementing 6,405 acres of on-the-ground installed forest wildlife habitat practices. This includes oak regeneration practices, young forest management, invasive species control, timber marking and tree plantings. Healthy forests are the primary objective and, while some activities may not be expressly focused on ruffed grouse or American woodcock, they are beneficial to a wide variety of forest wildlife species as well as our forest product industries and, most importantly, the landowners who actively manage the properties. Assisting landowners in successful implementation is a process and involves a great deal of trust with forest wildlife specialists and the contractors and NRCS Service Partners they work with.
Photo caption: RGS & AWS forest wildlife specialists conduct timber cruise training with a private forestry consultant.
