Status of state forestry Best Management Practices for the South-eastern United States.
Abstract
Forestry Best Management Practices (BMPs) are important measures for protecting the waters of the U.S., but few studies have compared monitoring strategies and implementation success of forestry BMPs across states. In order to assess the status of state forestry BMPs, a survey was sent to the state forestry agency in each U.S. state regarding their forestry BMP program. The survey included questions pertaining to agency involvement in developing BMP guidelines, rates of BMP implementation, monitoring methods, and the nature of state BMP guidelines (whether non-regulatory, quasi-regulatory, or regulatory). Surveys were completed by all 50 states and results allowed evaluation of the status and implementation of forestry BMPs by state and region. This paper will focus on survey responses from the thirteen southern states represented by the Southern Group of State Foresters. All thirteen southeastern states have conducted BMP monitoring and have future monitoring of BMPs planned. Eleven states have conducted or are currently conducting BMP effectiveness studies. All the southeastern states have conducted BMP implementation studies and the mean implementation rate is 92 percent which is above the mean national implementation rate of 91 percent. Seven states have non-regulatory BMP guidelines, five states have quasi-regulatory guidelines, and one state has regulatory guidelines. This study indicated that some states reported BMP deficiencies for some individual BMP categories, yet these states' average BMP implementation levels appear to be satisfactory.