What PEI Woodlot Owners Actually Want
In the winter of 2009, researcher Solange Nadeau mailed a survey to a sample of PEI woodlot owners. Over 900 responded. The result — published in 2011 by Natural Resources Canada as Prince Edward Island Woodlot Owners: Current Trends Regarding Their Forest Uses, Management, and Values — is the most thorough portrait we have of who owns PEI’s private forests, what they believe, and what’s actually keeping them from managing their land.
Who owns PEI’s private forests
The Nadeau survey aimed to represent PEI’s roughly 16,000 woodlot owners, who collectively own about 86% of PEI’s forested land. The average owner was male, in his late 50s, and had held the land for over 15 years — often because it came with a farm or home, or arrived through inheritance. Interestingly, about 42% acquired their woodlot circumstantially rather than by deliberate purchase.
Most weren’t managing for income. When asked why they own their woodlot, environmental stewardship and leaving the land to their children ranked well above financial return or timber production. This matters enormously for how you design any program or platform aimed at this group: appeals that lead with dollars are talking to the wrong motivation.
The ownership structure makes active management harder. By 2009, 42% of woodlots were under 10 acres — up from 36% in 2002 — as properties fragmented through inheritance and sale. Nearly half of all owners held more than one parcel, often non-contiguous. Managing scattered small parcels is genuinely difficult, and the economics of sending in a logging crew rarely pencil out on their own.
Why don’t PEI woodlot owners manage their land?
The survey’s most important finding isn’t about values — it’s about information and access. Across nearly every measure, the data shows that woodlot owners want to do more with their land than they currently do, and that specific, identifiable barriers are stopping them. The barriers are structural, not attitudinal.
Three quarters of woodlot owners had never heard of the government assistance programs designed for them. This isn’t a niche group — it’s almost everyone. The Forest Enhancement Program existed. Landowners were eligible. They simply didn’t know.
Among owners who wanted to harvest but hadn’t, 38% said they didn’t know what or how to sell their wood. Another 45% said they were too busy. These are not the responses of people who don’t care — they’re the responses of people who have hit a wall they don’t know how to get around.
Only 22% of small woodlot owners had ever received any professional advice about their property. More than three quarters had made every land use decision on their own, without technical input of any kind.
The management plan picture is similarly stark. Only 10% of all woodlot owners were actively using a written plan. More than half had no plan and didn’t want one — not because they opposed management in principle, but because no one had given them a compelling reason or a clear pathway to get started.
What owners actually believe
The survey measured attitudes in detail, and the results run against some common assumptions about private landowners.
PEI woodlot owners hold broadly conservationist values. Strong majorities agreed that old-growth trees should be protected, that habitat for rare species matters, and that future generations should have access to the forests they own today. Over 80% expressed concern about the impact of management on wildlife and habitat. Attitudes on clearcutting were sharply negative — most oppose it on private land, across all size classes.
At the same time, most owners also hold a clear sense of property rights. They see themselves as responsible stewards who want support, not regulation. These two things coexist without contradiction: they want to do right by the land, and they want to be treated as partners in that process rather than problems to be solved.
On the financial side, the strongest agreement across all groups was that there aren’t enough incentives for good forest management — not that government involvement is unwanted, but that the support currently on offer isn’t enough to change behavior. Owners were also clear that they’d respond to financial incentives if they existed. The appetite is there.
And there’s a latent organizational energy that current institutions haven’t captured. Despite only 1% of owners being formal members of a woodlot owners’ organization, 39% said they might join one if the right option existed.
What Forestate was built to address
The Nadeau survey describes a sector where the default is inaction — not because owners are indifferent, but because the system places the full weight of initiation on the least-informed party. A woodlot owner who wants to do something with their land has to figure out what their forest contains, which programs they’re eligible for, how to find a forester, how to evaluate a contractor, and how to navigate FEP paperwork — all before receiving any concrete guidance. Many don’t get past the first step.
Forestate was designed to invert that model.
The pre-generated woodlot overview
The single most common barrier to engagement is not knowing where to start. Forestate addresses this by doing the groundwork in advance: using the province’s Enhanced Forest Inventory and Corporate Land Use Inventory, the platform generates a property-specific overview of each woodlot’s forest composition, plausible treatments, and estimated FEP incentive values — before any landowner interaction. When an owner visits the platform, their woodlot has already been described for them. There’s no blank page.
One important note on where we are today: we’re currently adding woodlots to the platform one at a time as we work through the licensing agreement for commercial use of the full provincial property dataset. We’re not yet able to offer instant overviews for every PEI woodlot simultaneously. That changes as the licensing is finalized — but for now, reach out directly and we’ll get your woodlot set up.
Answering “what is my woodlot worth?”
The 38% of non-harvesting owners who don’t know what or how to sell their wood face a straightforward information problem. The Forestate overview directly answers the question most owners have never had answered: what’s the timber value on my property, what’s harvest-ready, and what FEP treatments are plausible? Giving landowners a concrete, property-specific number changes the conversation from abstract possibility to real decision.
Goal-agnostic matching
The survey found that 24% of non-harvesting owners won’t harvest at all unless they can find a contractor they deeply trust, and that 82% are highly concerned about impacts on wildlife and habitat. These aren’t unreasonable positions — they reflect values that any credible forestry program has to take seriously. Forestate’s forester matching is explicitly values-aligned: landowners state their goals — conservation, recreation, timber, any combination — and are connected with consultants who share that approach. No existing platform on PEI offers this.
Streamlined FEP enrollment
The 45% of owners who are too busy to engage face a transaction cost problem. Forestate handles the administrative work of FEP enrollment in-platform, with foresters able to compile and submit management plans directly through the app and signatures managed in-app rather than chased by paper. The goal is to make the easy path and the right path the same path.
Making small lots viable
The survey documents what anyone in PEI forestry already knows: woodlots under 10 acres are extremely hard to harvest economically on their own. The mobilization cost of bringing in equipment to a small isolated parcel routinely wipes out the margin. Forestate’s geographic job-clustering feature — coming in Stage 2 — aggregates nearby woodlot projects into coordinated operations, turning a collection of individually unviable small jobs into a scheduled, economical batch. The survey documented the problem in 2009. We’re building the mechanism to solve it.
Community building through The Landcast
The 39% of owners who expressed latent interest in joining a woodlot organization represent a significant opportunity that formal institutions haven’t captured. The Landcast — Forestate’s podcast and YouTube channel focused on PEI woodlot management — is our way of building that community in a format that landowners, foresters, and contractors can engage with on their own terms. Credible, non-promotional content about real PEI forestry issues, from voices the community recognizes.
The Nadeau survey is more than fifteen years old. The structural conditions it described — aging ownership, parcelization, market contraction, the information gap — have not meaningfully improved in the intervening years. What has changed is what’s technically possible. The data exists. The tools exist. The gap between what PEI’s private forests could produce and what they currently produce is not a resource problem — it’s a coordination and information problem.
That’s the problem we’re here to work on.
Frequently asked questions
How do I sell wood from my PEI woodlot?
Start by understanding what your property contains — species, volume, and what’s harvest-ready — then connect with a forester or contractor who can guide a sale. The 38% of PEI owners who’ve never harvested most often cite not knowing what or how to sell as the blocker. Forestate’s woodlot overview is designed to answer that first question so you’re not starting from a blank page. Reach out to get your woodlot set up.
What is the Forest Enhancement Program (FEP)?
The Forest Enhancement Program is PEI’s government assistance program offering incentives to private woodlot owners for management treatments. Three quarters of owners in the Nadeau survey had never heard of it despite being eligible. Forestate estimates plausible FEP incentive values for your property and handles enrollment paperwork in-platform.
How much is my woodlot worth?
Value depends on species composition, volume, what’s harvest-ready, and applicable FEP treatments. We’ll cover this in detail in a dedicated post soon.
Do I need a management plan to do anything with my woodlot?
No, but a written plan unlocks programs and makes harvesting and treatments far easier to coordinate. Only 10% of PEI owners actively use one — usually because no one offered a clear path to getting started, not because they oppose the idea.
Nadeau, S. (2011). Prince Edward Island Woodlot Owners: Current Trends Regarding Their Forest Uses, Management, and Values. Information Report M-X-225E. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service – Atlantic Forestry Centre, Fredericton, NB.