Beginning Forestry

About 70 percent of Mississippi's 18.5 million acres of forestland is owned by private, non-industrial owners. These are all types of people who through family or other circumstances happen to own tracts of forestland.

According to 1996 research, an estimated 175,000 private non-industrial forest landowners in Mississippi own 20 acres or more of forestland. Many of these forestland owners are unfamiliar with forestry and forest management. Often these owners contact Extension Forestry for information and call themselves "beginners". If you've come to this section, you are probably one of those owners.

Often, the first encounter a forest landowner has with forestry is when an offer is made to buy their timber, but some people just want to learn about their forest. This section is designed to provide basic information about Mississippi's forestry sector so people new to forestry can know enough to ask further questions and learn about the possibilities of managing their forestland.