Real Estate

Our rural land sales efforts have focused on lands that we have identified as non-strategic or that have a higher and better use than timberland management. These higher uses can be the result of conservation objectives, demand for rural recreational real estate, adjacent landowner interest or other uses such as solar energy sites. Our on-going land stratification process identifies these higher-valued opportunities, which we can sell and redeploy the proceeds into more strategic timberland purchases. As a result of our recent merger with CatchMark, that increased our ownership in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama, our Stratified opportunities grew by nearly 70,000 acres.

We are proud to have a significant amount of conservation outcomes from our rural land sales, totaling 257,660 acres since 2004. More recently, since 2018, approximately 51% of our rural land sales acreage has been for conservation outcomes with nearly all the remaining 49% for recreational purposes. These conservation outcomes have been particularly prevalent in our prior ownership in Minnesota where our lands were scattered in areas with unique recreational values and wildlife habitats. In Idaho, early conservation transactions included a conservation easement on over 50,000 acres as part of Idaho’s Forest Legacy Program along the scenic St. Joe River. The St. Joe River is a blue-ribbon Westslope cutthroat trout fishery and the easement permanently secured public access and protected wildlife habitat and sustainable forest management in perpetuity. In Arkansas, we have partnered with and sold land to the Central Arkansas Water District (CAW), which had established a 4,500-acre land purchase program to acquire properties with the objective of safeguarding one of the largest sources of drinking water in the region – Lake Maumelle and the Maumelle River. Additional acreage was sold to CAW in 2024 to further protect the watershed. The purchases enabled specific restoration initiatives in the watershed by focusing on minimizing erosion and silting in the lake and preventing development. A notable Alabama conservation outcome this year was a land sale to the Maskoke (Muscogee) people to preserve a critical viewshed for their Ekvn-Yefolecv ecovillage, enabling the community to protect their cultural and environmental heritage. In addition, we completed a conservation transaction with Arkansas Game & Fish Commission that was adjacent to the Gulf Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

Rural recreational land transactions provide an opportunity for neighboring landowners to increase their ownership, and for buyers to find a place where they can get away to a rural home, go hunting, fishing, hiking, and enjoy the outdoors. Recreational land buyers often have a management plan for wildlife habitat on the property and may obtain a related income stream from active timber management. These transactions can provide the owner a legacy of land ownership and can introduce future generations to the benefits of the outdoors, timberlands, and wildlife.