IOWA—The Forest Service Eastern Region is working with the USDA’s Farm Services Agency and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to help private forest landowners and communities recover from a rare derecho storm in August 2020.

One important tool is an FSA program that provides relief when forests are struck by natural disasters. By increasing awareness of this program, Forest Stewardship staff helped the Iowa DNR connect with local landowners—many for the first time—to restore forests damaged by the derecho.

Derechos are sometimes called “inland hurricanes” because their sustained, intense winds and massive size can rival those storms. The August 2020 derecho swept across more than 700 miles, touching eight Midwest states. Iowa was the hardest hit, with damage to buildings, roads and roughly 4.4 million acres of forestland, much of which is privately owned.

Following the major storm emergency, stewardship forester Dennis McDougall knew the agency did not have its own program to aid DNR or landowners, but he knew one existed—it had been used in southern states following hurricanes and other major storms. That program is the Emergency Forest Restoration Program, administered through the FSA.
McDougall pitched this little-known program to his counterparts at the Iowa DNR and FSA, and they agreed to try it out.

The forest restoration grant program helped Iowa DNR get reimbursed for providing technical assistance to landowners. The cost share agreement matches 75% funding from the EFRP through the FSA with a 25% landowner cost share.

In a typical scenario under the forest restoration program, a forester will come out to a landowner’s property and check out their woods. If there is so much downed timber the owner can’t access the property, the forester will help clear it, restoring the woodlands so landowners can gain access to their lands again.

FSA and Iowa DNR later advertised the program through the local news media to landowners, and the response from them was surprisingly positive.
Joe Herring, one of the Iowa DNR field foresters who covers the territory that was hit by the storm, said when word of the program got out, it drew people out of the woodwork for the first time.

“This moment of crisis generated opportunities,” Herring said. “We walked the woods with hundreds of landowners. We are looking at 250-300 applications through this program.”

Since the program is new for them, they are now meeting landowners they never knew before. “They are brand new clients,” he added.
Herring and other DNR foresters have been busy surveying lands and writing the restoration plans since then.

“It opened peoples’ eyes to the fact that our old oak forests won’t live forever, and there is a striking need to be planting new oak trees across our state,” Herring said. “The storm was sort of a wake-up call to many forest landowners, which turned their attention to the need to play a more active role in maintaining them.”

Iowa forest landowners can sign up for the EFRP program by contacting their county FSA office.