The incentive program to promote reforestation in private and leased forestlands started in 1983 in Taiwan, and the government had increased the amount of subsidies gradually since then. Some earlier studies on reserved lands of indigenous people indicated that the transfer of land ownership was a major incentive for indigenous people to participate reforestation. The main purpose of this study is to examine empirically whether the transfer of land ownership plays an important role to encourage the participation in reforestation based on two censuses conducted in 1990 and 2005 respectively. The study result shows that the proportion of indigenous forestlands owned privately had a significant increase from 1990 to 2005; the change in property right was a major incentive for indigenous forest landowners to participate reforestation as well. In addition, there is a different spatial distribution of local participation in reforestation between indigenous and neighboring townships, but the spatial difference can be eliminated by regression analysis with some economic factors.