Supporting Montana DNRC in Growing Its Landowner Outreach
Angela Wells, the Stewardship Program Manager at the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC), spent her days working with private landowners in Montana to help them care for their land.
One fall, while at a tour of a U.S. Forest Service collaborative project to help reduce wildfire in Montana, a bearded man with an American Forest Foundation (AFF) vest approached her and introduced himself as Tom Fry, the director of western conservation, and asked if she’d be willing to chat about Montana’s family forest owner outreach.
Tom shared with Angela details of AFF’s growing conservation work across the West to reach unengaged family forest owners, landowners who had never managed their land before. AFF was reaching these landowners and helping them restore their forest and reduce the threat of wildfire.
Angela was intrigued. She ran a successful program in Montana, but for the most part, the landowners they worked with were ‘low-hanging fruit,’ individuals who had some knowledge of forestry and likely would have done good management on their land regardless. There were thousands of other landowners they had not reached yet, many of whom were ranchers, folks who owned land as a vacation property, or landowners who were new to owning trees. Getting them to manage was essential to reducing wildfire risk.
“I’m definitely interested, Tom. We have been talking about using targeted marketing to reach more landowners, but my program is only one or two people deep and we don’t have the capacity to develop anything new right now. We also aren’t really sure where to start.”
Tom was ready for her reply. “I think we can help. AFF conducted an analysis of all the watersheds of the West, and identified the forested areas that were most important for clean water, at a high risk of wildfire, and majority-owned by families and private individuals. I can help you prioritize so that any outreach would be focused on areas where we can have the biggest impact. I also have funding I can contribute to this. Getting folks to reduce wildfire risk is a goal of ours as well.”
Now Angela was hooked. She agreed to partner with Tom and AFF.
They decided to focus first on Montana’s southern Rocky Mountain Front, a forested area teeming with streams, rivers, and Missouri River tributaries that provides clean water to the farmers and ranchers of the Golden Triangle and the residents of Great Falls. It was an incredibly important area in terms of water, but these forests were owned by historically underserved landowners. More than 70% of those landowners were absentee landowners, and the DNRC didn’t have an office close by.
But Tom and other team members at AFF worked with Angela every step of the way. They used their experience to help identify messaging for direct mail materials and the services that would most interest these landowners. They tested different messages and different offers until they found these individuals responded best to opportunities to learn more about the general condition of their woods and meet with a forester. They also co-developed a database to organize addresses, track landowners’ responses to outreach campaigns, and record actions resulting from those responses.
AFF also helped create materials for landowners to learn more – a small website, ongoing educational emails, and wellness reports. AFF even came out and took photos for the campaign, something Angela had desperately needed.
But they soon realized that even if they got these landowners to respond, Angela didn’t have enough foresters to work with them. So, they worked through capacity issues together. AFF provided funding to hire consulting foresters to meet with these landowners, since the DNRC’s local service forester was already spread thin serving other landowners in a large region.
Not only was the partnership helping solve problems for Montana DNRC, it was also helping overcome obstacles for landowners. The landowners were meeting with foresters on their terms, and the foresters were assisting them with writing forest management plans at no cost. Together, AFF and Montana DNRC engaged twice the number of landowners in this critical area than they had in the past.
Angela was thrilled. “Tom, this partnership has really brought a different way of thinking to landowner outreach. And it’s working. I think we should expand.”
“I’m glad you say that,” replied Tom. “Because I have another priority area and it’s going to be a whole new ball game – Lincoln County.”