A Common-Pool Resource Approach to Forest Health: The Case of the Southern Pine Beetle

The southern pine beetle, Dendroctonus frontalis, is a major threat to pine forest health in the South, and is expected to play an increasingly important role in the future of the South’s pine forests (Ward and Mistretta 2002). Once a forest stand is infected with southern pine beetle (SPB), elimination and isolation of the infested and immediately surrounding trees is required to control the outbreak. If insect-infested trees are not swiftly removed, infestations can spread to healthy forests. The most effective approach to managing SPB is through preventive measures that maintain forests in vigorous, healthy conditions, including thinning and prescribed burning. At a landscape level, preventive measures reduce the overall incidence of SPB and thereby the spillover of SPB to adjacent landholdings. Yet many forest landowners do not undertake the management actions that can limit SPB outbreaks. The tragedy of the commons in forest health takes place when individual private owners do not acknowledge their communal responsibilities thus risking catastrophic losses due to poor management and/or absentee tenure. The South’s forests are largely in private ownership (89% of the South’s timberland, with nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) land ownerships representing about 95% of the private forest landowners and 63% of the private forest land region (Birch 1996, Wicker 2002). Population growth and suburban and exurban expansion in the South have divided many forest landholdings into increasingly smaller-sized parcels. Surveys of forest landowners in the South find that 90% of the NIPF owners hold less than 100 acres, and that owners are diverse in occupation, income, residence, forest land ownership objectives, use of professional forest management assistance, and forest management strategies (Birch 1996, 1997; Bliss and Martin 1989). The diversity of ownership objectives and management styles on NIPF lands results in widely different awareness and responses to forest pest problems (Ward and Mistretta 2002). Pine beetle outbreaks are cyclic, sporadic, and potentially highly devastating (Meeker