This study was conducted to provide estimates of the economic significance of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLR Program) to the three regions specified for the study. The regions include the three-county area adjacent to the Osceola National Forest (Baker, Union, and Columbia counties), the state of Florida, and lastly, the U.S. economy as a whole. This report is based on expenditure data provided by the U.S. Forest Service.
Three separate models were created to estimate the economic contributions: a model of the combined Baker, Columbia and Union county economies known as the Forest region, the Florida statewide economy and the U.S. national economy. Annual expenditures in each region were analyzed separately for 2010, 2011 and 2012. The combined results largely reflect the sum of the annual impacts.
Within the Osceola area, the total economic output for all three years is over $3 million including multiplier effects. Program expenditures also generated $1.8 million in salaries and wages over the course of the three years within the same region of Florida and contributed $459,000 in local, state and federal tax revenues.
For the state of Florida, the CFLR Program produced over $11 million in economic output from 2010 through 2012. It also produced over $1 million in federal tax revenue. Compared to only the Osceola area, the economic impact to the state economy was 3.5 times greater in terms of total economic activity, and had three times more jobs.
Economic contributions of Osceola National Forest operations on the U.S. economy generated over $16.6 million of economic output. The magnitude of change from the state of Florida’s economic contributions compared to the National level does not match the level of change from the Osceola area to the state of Florida; however, large increases were noted across all categories. The economic output produced from the CFLR Program on the National level exceeded the Florida level by a factor of 1.4, and jobs increased a further 16%. Contributions to Gross Domestic Product at the national level were 1.3 times larger. Economic impacts become larger as the region under study expands as a greater percentage of the economic activity stimulated by the CFLR Program are captured in the analysis.