Tomorrow's Woodland Owners
The research project: Methodology

More than 500 non-industrial private forestland owners in the state were contacted to ascertain whether they had children and, if so, to seek permission to interview their children and receive their children's contact information for interview purposes. Researcher Catherine Mater and her team conducted 260 offspring interviews.

The DNR supplied landowner listings under five ownership categories:

• lands enlisted in both the Wisconsin Managed Forest Law Property Tax Program (MFL) and American Tree Farm (ATF) programs
• lands listed in the WISCLAND database
• lands that opted out of the MFL program
• lands owned by "non-joiner" landowners (provided by extension foresters)
• lands with status unknown.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of offspring interviews conducted were affiliated with the MFL and ATF category; 28% with the WISCLAND category; 3% with the lands sans MFL category; 11% with the non-joiner category; and 2% with the unknown category.

• The interviews conducted represent forestland ownership in 33 counties (46% of all counties) throughout the state.

Interview protocol

The protocol used to gain access and permission to interview the Wisconsin offspring encompassed four key steps:

• Wisconsin forestland owners were first contacted to ascertain whether they had children and, if so, to seek permission to interview their offspring.
• If permission was secured, offspring contact information was supplied by the parent(s).  In many cases parents first contacted their children to make sure it was ok to release their contact information. 
• Offspring were contacted to set up interview date and time.
• Interviews were conducted by phone, with interviews lasting about 30-45 minutes. In a few instances interview responses were mailed instead.