Abstract:
Around the country, ranchers and family forest landowners face complex challenges that threaten their ability
to stay on the land and maintain their operations. These include high demand for competing land uses, an
aging population, pressure from environmental regulation, and shrinking profit margins. While landowners strive
to keep their operations intact, they are increasingly recognizing the natural benefits, or ecosystem services,
that their private working lands provide. At the same time, a growing number of mechanisms for compensating
landowners for these services and their conservation is emerging.
To keep working lands in operation and improve ecosystem health, many family forest and ranch owners are
diversifying their operations through stewardship-based opportunities. These programs provide financial and
other benefits to landowners in return for the ecosystem services they provide through sound land and water
management practices, and are called payment for ecosystem service, or PES, programs. This fact sheet series
tells stories of PES in action–real projects, real people, and innovative approaches.