Vermont Forestland Current-use Value Tax Program: Measures of Success
- Sendak, Paul E.
USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station - Dennis, Donald F.
USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station
In 1989 we published a study comparing timberland in Vermont’s Use Value Appraisal (UVA) Property Tax Program with timberland not enrolled in the program based on forest inventory data collected in 1983 by the USDA Forest Service (Sendak and Dennis 1989). We concluded that timberland enrolled in the program mirrored Vermont timberland in general. We hypothesized that future forest inventories should begin to show evidence of forest management on UVA enrolled timberland since the program requires active forest management but we assumed that a large proportion of non- UVA timberland would not be actively managed.
The first opportunity to test this hypothesis was the forest inventory conducted in 1997 (Frieswyk and Widmann 2000). Our objective was to compare plots enrolled in UVA to eligible plots not enrolled in the program using the 1997 survey data provided by the USDA Forest Service. We examined differences in key plot variables between the two enrollment categories that might constitute evidence of active forest management.
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