Fifty years ago, what Alabama landowners called a forest often was land lined with rows of identical pines, planted for profit and clear-cut every three decades.
Today, many of those tree farms are being replaced by a variety of forest types. While most owners still consider the land an investment, they are more likely to build cabins or ponds, or plant for hunting or bird-watching. Some make a hobby of growing ecologically correct forests.
A 2007 U.S. Forest Service study showed that growing trees for timber is only the sixth-most popular use of nonindustrial forest land in the Southeast, ranking just above firewood.
Two trends have crossed paths in the Southern forest: The price of timber has dropped, and the price of land has risen.
"The tracts have gotten smaller. The urban growth has really expanded," said Walter Cartwright of the Alabama Forestry Commission. "People in the cities are really looking for ways to get away from the hustle and bustle and out in the woods."
The average wooded tract of land in Alabama is half the size it was a decade ago, said Cartwright: about 55 acres. Across the South, only 6 percent of forest land is now owned by farmers, according to the Forest Service. That's a precipitous drop - two-thirds of forest land was in the hands of farmers 50 years ago.
"They used to say, `Can I go buy 40 acres and plant it in trees and make money?'" said Jim Jeter, forester for northeastern Alabama. "Now they say, `Well, I bought this piece of property, and I want to grow deer on it, and I want to build a pond."
As paper mills in Asia and other far-off spots have begun to dominate the market, Alabama mills have closed or paid far less for pulpwood.
In the past decade, the price of pine has dropped to about one-fifth its previous price. In the past few years, trees felled by weather disasters have kept the price so low some of the wood could not even be sold before it rotted.
An Alabama landowner would not even make enough money from a clear-cut to replant it in seedlings, foresters say.
Cartwright said hunting is a popular use of land for companies or families seeking a profit. At $10 to $40 an acre for a season of hunting, the land is far more valuable than it would be to harvest and spend years bringing up seedlings, Cartwright said.
Most paper company timber land in Alabama has been sold to investment firms or other private landowners. Since 1996, more than 20 million acres of Southern forest has been sold by industry, according to the Forest Service.
Let quail, deer roam:
As a result, a lot of land is available for the weekender who wants a cabin in the woods with songbirds outside.
That's what Robert Loper has in his land on the Sipsey River in Greene County. He and his wife, Kathryn, bought their first tract almost 25 years ago as a long-term investment, when their oldest child wasn't even in school.
Loper began with 286 acres from an out-of-business farmer and began to plant it in trees that were native to the soil. He bought some adjacent land about 15 years ago and now has 522 acres.
"It started for me as a hobby, but very soon I realized it was a good investment," Loper said.
Over the years, when he has needed to get rid of trees that didn't belong on the land, he has been able to sell for timber. He has replanted in such trees as cherry bark oak, valuable trees that aren't any good for a quick sale. They won't mature for 65 years.
"It's not for me, but we wanted some diversity to the land," Loper said.
The Lopers' two children, now in their 20s, love the land so much that they asked their parents to consider building on it instead of maintaining their house in Tuscaloosa.
The Lopers built the house, although they have not moved there full-time yet.
The land is a continuing and unfinished project for them. Eventually, Robert Loper would like to hunt deer on it.
They would also like to attract quail and allow them to flourish as wild birds, rather than hunted animals. He and his wife also are working on a plan for the right trees and plants to attract songbirds so that they can identify birds or have groups out for field days.
Loper's father was a forester, so he remembers how that generation planted. The value of every acre was "maximized" by planting such crop pines as loblolly to the edge of the land - no openings to admit wildlife. He said that way of tending the land simply holds no interest for him, although he didn't begin as someone who wanted to save the land from harm.
"I wouldn't be averse to buying land for timber," Loper said. "It's just not a priority."
E-mail: kbouma@bhamnews.comThe Birmingham News
