The perspective of resilience in the social-ecological literature implies three considerations: resilience of what, to what, and for whom. Within the ecological community, it is established that nonnative invasive plants threaten forest function and resilience. As such, forestry professionals tend to consider it important to improve the resilience of native forest ecosystems to nonnative plant invasion. However, little has been done to assess if such understanding is shared among forest owners. In the United States, over a third of forestlands are owned by family forest owners (FFOs). Their actions across the landscape and over time are critical for maintaining forest function and resilience in the face of nonnative plant invasion. Currently, there is limited knowledge regarding how these private landowners think about invasive plants, what they do to control them, how they perceive the connection between invasive plants and forest resilience, and what they see as their role in invasive plant management. To fill this gap, we conducted and analyzed 23 qualitative interviews with forestry professionals and FFOs and 1,422 surveys of FFOs across Indiana.
Results/Conclusions
On average, survey respondents reported little reliance on forest-related incomes. They own forestlands mostly for amenity reasons (e.g., scenery, wildlife habitat) rather than timber production. Less than half of FFOs reported some level of familiarity with, concern about, and interest in invasive plant management. Their concerns and interest, however, tend to focus on their own property, such as new tree growth, scenery, timber and property values of their land, and their enjoyment of land, which are disconnected from landscape-level invasion risk to forest ecosystems. Among the majority of FFOs who are not concerned about invasive plants, some actually value invasive plants for various reasons, and actively maintain and introduce them on their property. These results show, although forestry professionals may consider invasive plant management important for maintaining and enhancing forest function and resilience, such understanding is not shared among FFOs. Resilience is unlikely to become an effective framing for communicating and promoting invasive plant management across privately-owned forest landscapes. This is partly due to the missing link of “resilience for whom.” Currently, improving the resilience of native forest ecosystems to nonnative plant invasion is framed as beneficial to forest ecosystems and society-at-large. Effort is needed to make it explicit that it is also critical for the amenity values FFOs identify as landownership objectives and for addressing their concerns about invasive plants on their property.