Research and Innovation in the Private Forestry Sector: Past Successes and Future Opportunities

The private forestry sector faces enormous challenges from complex environmental issues concurrent with societal concerns about intensive forest management and application of silvicultural tools. At the same time, research and development spending and the scientific workforce in the forestry sector has declined. However, the forestry sector has a long history of strategic deployment of science and technology to manage timberlands for many uses, including ecological services. To address science and societal needs from future forests, we describe past successes and potential future innovations of the forestry sector across (1) genetics, (2) silviculture and productivity, (3) harvesting and logging technology, (4) environmental sustainability, and (5) remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicles. Developing technology is only one component, however; progressing towards sector goals of diversifying the workforce, explicitly valuing research collaborations, and integrating big data across ownerships to guide management decisions will hasten innovation. With the growing complexity of social-ecological-economic challenges, the private forestry sector must enact a tactical approach to addressing stressors with evolving research structures. We offer a vision of a vibrant private forestry sector poised to integrate technological innovation to continue meeting society’s needs through the intersecting effects of climate change and other challenges. Study Implications The complexity of challenges facing private forest managers is growing as stressors from climate change interact with social and economic pressures on forests. Further, spending on forestry research and development and student enrollment in forestry degree programs has declined. In this article, we describe significant technological improvements in regenerating, growing, and sustainably harvesting intensively managed forest through a changing research landscape. We review key past examples of production and sustainability improvements and describe future innovation space across the intensively managed conifer stands through the life cycle of seed-to-saw. We envision that technological improvements in forest genetics, remotely operated harvesting equipment, high-resolution information about vegetation and the earth’s surface, and analysis of big data will increase the private sector’s ability to make precise management decisions. A more developed and broader technological tool set will ensure the private forest sector is poised to supply ecosystem services and demand for wood products. To realize the gains from future innovation, the forest sector needs to support initiatives that explicitly value an inclusive and diverse workforce, cross-disciplinary problem-solving, and improved communication with external stakeholders.