Editor's Column

Guest Columns

Forest Facts

By: James Sewell Co.

An eastern white pine Tree Farm near Old Forge, New York. This forest is growing inside Adirondacck State Park boundaries. Stateowned land inside the park is “forever wild” - meaning timber harvesting is forbidden—but harvesting is permitted on private land within the park.

The Northern Forest Land Area embraces 26 million acres – an area 13 times the size of Yellowstone National Park. It stretches from the Great Lakes east to the Atlantic Ocean, across the upper reaches of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Though broken by small timber and farming communities, it is one of the largest, most diverse forests in America. Individuals, private corporations and industrial landowners own 94% of this forest, but in keeping with New England tradition, virtually all of it is accessible to campers, hunters, hikers, anglers and others who enjoy the outdoors.

The Northern Forest Land boundary was arbitrarily drawn in 1988 when—at the request of the region’s governors— Congress ordered the U.S. Forest Service to study the area’s timberland resources. The impetus for the study was the sale of 186,000 acres of timberland— then owned by a French conglomerate— to two wealthy land speculators. The sales prompted outcries from citizens who feared that more timberland might be sold to developers, thereby limiting public access and forever altering the region’s rural timberland culture.

Although fears of widespread development and loss of public access have never materialized, the Northern Forest Lands Study—and a subsequent study by the Northern Forest Lands Council—have sparked a citizen debate that continues today. The issue: what role—if any—can special interest groups play in decisions involving the use or sale of private lands within the Northern Forest. Many believe the public has no legal right to involve itself in the affairs of private landowners, but others say citizens have a right to get involved when landowner decisions impact publicly owned resources on private land, namely air, water, fish and wildlife. Some believe the best way to protect these resources is through publicly funded land purchases. Others favor governmentimposed regulations that restrict what owners can do on their property.

Across the Northeast, it is widely believed that timberland owners can harvest timber whenever and wherever they want, without regard for fish and wildlife or air and water quality. This is not true. The map on Pages 2 and 3 depicts—by color—areas where harvesting is regulated or prohibited.

Across the region, there are several areas where no harvesting is permitted. Baxter State Park, the large green area in north central Maine is one such example. No harvesting is allowed inside this 200,000-acre park except in the Scientific Forest Management Area in the northern quarter. Otherwise, the park is dedicated to recreation with minimal road access and many backcountry campsites.

Harvesting is also tightly controlled in the Adirondack Park, the large green area in upstate New York. Six million acres lie inside the park’s famous blue line. Regulated harvesting is permitted on private land within the park, but no harvesting is allowed on 2.8 million acres of “forever wild” state land that lies within park boundaries.

Very strict regulations limit or prohibit harvesting and road building in the region’s two federally-owned forests: Vermont’s 180,000-acre Green Mountain National Forest, and the 774,000-acre White Mountain National Forest, which lies mainly in New Hampshire but spills eastward into Maine.

Regulations limiting harvesting and road building apply to every timberland acre on this map, including the white areas, which depict private land that is not regulated by Maine’s LURC (brown areas) or New York’s Adirondack Park Authority (light and dark green areas inside the park’s blue line). Some communities (shown in yellow blocks) also limit harvesting and regulate log hauling.

Regulations restricting harvesting vary somewhat from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally they bind landowners to a notification process that requires them to advise regulating agencies of planned harvests. Regulations also limit the size of clearcuts, protect visually sensitive areas and restrict or prohibit harvesting in stream corridors and around lakes. Harvesting and road building are also restricted when such activities might disturb birthing wildlife or their offspring.

Some regulatory authorities are attempting to streamline overlapping permitting processes, but there are still many instances where landowners must apply to multiple agencies to obtain permission to harvest timber or construct roads.

"We must always consider the environment and people together, as though they are one, because the
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."