Editor's Column

Guest Columns

Forest Facts

By: Jim Petersen

Jim Petersen

In this issue, we write about forests and forestry in the Northeast. To grasp the magnitude of this story, turn to the back page. There you will find a list of 183 contributors who helped fund this project. In the nearly 13 years we’ve been publishing Evergreen we’ve never seen such an outpouring from so diverse a group. While we’ve never met most of these people, we are humbled by their willingness to entrust us with their story. And what a story it is.

Forestry in America began here—in upstate New York—in 1891. The conservation movement got its start that same year in the same mountain range: the fabled Adirondacks. Most of the nation’s early industrial history is also rooted here, amid a flowing hardwood and pine landscape that— in the fall—is a sight to behold.

But there is much more to this story than forests or conservation. It is also a story about states’ rights and private property rights. In the Northeast, these four forces—forestry, conservation, states’ rights and property rights—converge on a single question: how to keep forests forested in an increasingly urban world? The object of this question is the Northern Forest, a 26 million acre expanse that 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 working forests  in America. It is also a playground for 70-some million people who live within a day’s drive.

Inside the arbitrarily drawn boundaries of the Northern Forest about 94 percent of the timberland base is privately owned. Timberland sales are big news here, not just because the forest products industry is the region’s economic mainstay, but also because there is a widespread fear these vast forests will be sold to land speculators and developers. There is a huge summer home market here, fueled by affluent city dwellers anxious to own a piece of the North Country. Such developments are usually well done, but public access—a New England tradition—is sometimes lost, along with the wildness that characterizes the region.

The Northeast’s development fears came to a head in January 1988 when French-owned Generale Occidentale announced its intent to sell 986,000 acres of timberland it had purchased from Diamond International. The parcels—800,000 acres in Maine, 96,000 inside New York’s Adirondack State Park and 90,000 acres in Vermont and New Hampshire—were offered at prices thought to be well beyond what any forest products company would pay, opening the door to deep-pocketed land speculators. Two walked in: Henry Lassiter, a hard-charging Georgia land speculator, plunked down $16 million (sight unseen) for the Adirondack lands and Claude Rancourt, a construction laborer turned millionaire developer, paid $19 million for the Vermont and New Hampshire tracts. The transactions sparked a firestorm of protest from just about every corner of the New England countryside.

Although most of the old Diamond lands—including the Lassiter and Rancourt tracts—are to this day managed for timber and wildlife, the sales became so politically charged that Congress ordered the U.S. Forest Service—by far the smallest of the Northeast’s landowners—to study the region’s timberland resources. The Northern Forest Lands Study, completed in 1990, led to formation of the Northern Forest Lands Council, a diverse group of citizens appointed by the governors of the four states. The council was given the job of deciding how best to protect the North Country from further speculation. Their 1994 report, Finding Common Ground: Conserving the Northern Forest, forms the backbone of the proposed Northern Forest Stewardship Act, a hotly contested piece of federal legislation that is the main reason why Evergreen was invited to conduct this investigation. Our back page sponsor list includes both supporters and opponents of the Act. Supporters see the Act as a way to shore up states’ rights in forestry matters. Opponents fear it will open the door to subsequent federal meddling in private landowner affairs. We examine the situation in this issue.

Vermont forester Robbo Holleran stands atop an old stone fence on Vermont Marble Company timberland near Chester. Before the Erie Canal put an end to unprofitable farming in the Northeast, fences like this marked the bounday lines between neighboring farms. After the farms were abandoned, forests overtook the pastures.

The Northern Forest debate has spawned the usual cast of doomsayers from the left and the right. But there is one very big difference between this forest debate and the debates that have divided the West. Except for a few diehard environmentalists, no one has suggested that the Northeast’s timber industry pack its bags and leave town. Remarkably, most people who live here, including conservationists, see a robust timber industry as the best defense against land development—as the key to keeping forests forested. Thus, timber remains a big part of the North Country culture, and few seem to be offended by the industry’s presence—though many wish the big paper companies would stop clearcutting in northern Maine. Twice, in as many years (1996 and 1997), environmentalists asked Maine voters to approve expansive regulatory reforms that would have restricted the size of clearcuts. Twice they refused. The 1997 referendum was defeated by an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, who thought the measure was not stringent enough, and by rural Maine voters who dislike “downstaters” (urban voters) telling them how to live their lives. Counting only contributions of $10,000 or more, big paper interests in Maine spent almost $2.6 million in support of the measure. Environmentalists got virtually all of their money from one source: S. Donald Sussman, a Connecticut financier who contributed more than $800,000 to help fund their advertising campaign. In this issue, we explain why voters turned back two clearcutting referendums.

We also write about conservation, a word that has a much different meaning here than it has in the West, where writers often use it interchangeably with the word “environmentalism.” But in the Northeast a clear distinction is made between environmentalists, who are usually viewed as disruptive outsiders not to be trusted, and conservationists, who are local and have a long history of constructive involvement in creation and management of publicly revered forest reserves. Conservation has taken some remarkable turns over the last hundred-plus years, but none more startling than the Nature Conservancy’s December 1997 announcement that it had purchased nearly 27,000 acres of forestland in Vermont’s Green Mountains, which it intends to continue managing as a working forest. In its conservative approach to harvesting, it hopes to set an example neighboring landowners will follow.

 

Throughout the Northeast, there is a powerful distrust for government, especially the federal government. This is (after all) where colonists fleeing the tyranny of English kings laid the cornerstone for America’s republican form of government. Hundreds of rural towns in the Northeast are still run by “Town Fathers” elected by townspeople to carry on the town’s affairs for a year. Their Town Meetings—the lifeblood of New England local government—were immortalized by Norman Rockwell in an illustration titled, “Freedom of Speech.” In this bedrock environment outside interference is deeply resented. At its core, this may be the main reason why so many living in the North Country oppose the Northern Forest Stewardship Act. Close behind is a fear the Act will somehow open the door to the kind of federallysponsored litigation that has wrecked so much of the West’s timber surprisingly well informed where western forestry issues are concerned).

Berlin, New Hampshire, has been a company mill town since 1852. The old Brown Company, once a world leader in pulp and paper production, got its start here. The mill has since changed ownership several times and is today owned by Crown Vantage. Company mill towns are still prominent features in the rural Northeast.

As early as 1631, the British were exporting crudely milled timbers from Maine forests. History records that an Englishman named William Chadbourne constructed the first water-powered sawmill in America in 1634 near Kittery, Maine. If we take this moment in time as the beginning of the nation’s timber industry, the Northeast is then on its third forest. White settlers in need of cropland hacked and burned the first forest into oblivion, but it grew back after the Erie Canal opened in 1825. The canal gave Midwest farmers easy access to eastern markets, creating crushing competition for less productive New England farmers who soon abandoned their fields in favor of other more lucrative pursuits. The white pine forests that grew back helped fuel the industrial revolution, including the emergence of Northeast’s still thriving lumber and paper industries. Now, a third forest is in the ground and growing, the modern day fruit of forestry principles laid out in the country’s first forest plan—written for the Andirondack League Club in 1891 by Bernard Fernow. In this issue, we write about Fernow and his contributions to forestry.

Here are the main points we make in this issue, summarized for those who do not have time to read the entire issue in one sitting:

• Forestry in America began in the Northeast. So, too, did the conservation movement and the industrial revolution.

• The Northeast is on its third forest. Their recovery from earlier abuses is a tribute to the resiliency of nature, the influence of the conservation movement, and a century of progress in Forestry.

• Forests in the four-state region contain a mix of shade tolerant hardwood species (maple and beech dominate), plus several softwoods, including spruce, eastern white pine and fir. Fiftyseven percent of the region’s 28.878 million acres of timberland is located in Maine. Another 32 percent is found in New York. There are tens of thousands of forest landowners in the four states —a fact that contributes significantly to the diversity of landscapes and habitats. Many landowners are in the timber business straightaway, while others manage for multiple resources, including timber, fish and wildlife. A few own forests for nothing more than the joy they bring.

• As we have already noted, the most contentious forest-related debate in the Northeast involves the Northern Forest Lands Study Area and the proposed Northern Forest Lands Stewardship Act. The 26 million-acre Northern Forest includes 23.4 million acres of timberland. Across the region there is a deeply felt desire to keep this working forest working and to protect the cultural heritage that resides in its hundreds of timber towns. The question so many are asking [and debating] is “Does the Act protect our timber heritage or open the door to federal meddling and environmentalist radicals?” There are no easy answers, and thus, no easy solutions.

• The nation’s pulp and paper industry got its start in the Northeast. The big paper companies—all multinationals now—own more than nine million acres of forestland in the four states, including more than seven million acres in Maine. In the four states, more than 57,000 are employed in primary and secondary paper-related jobs; another 58,000 work in lumber and furniture manufacturing. Within the Northern Forest Study area, more than 43,000 people are employed by the lumber and paper industries, including 24,000 that have jobs in papermaking.

Winter trucking near the old Katahdin Iron Works in central Maine. A century ago, forests in this area fueled the iron furnaces that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Today, they provide a steady supply of softwood and hardwood for the region’s sawmills and papermakers.

• The industry is reinventing itself in the Northeast, just as it has in the West.

New, more efficient, environmentally friendly technologies have cost jobs and created jobs, often under the same roof. For some, the process is painful, but for others, the door to opportunity is opened.

• Clearcutting is also a contentious issue in the Northeast, especially in Maine, where voters have twice rejected referendums that would have banned the practice. Most of the clearcutting done over the last 20 years has been in response to a terrible 15-year-long spruce budworm outbreak. The Maine Forest Service reports clearcutting now accounts for about 11 percent of some 500,000 acres harvested annually, down from 45 percent in 1989.

• In response to public concern about harvesting impacts, logging associations across the four states are teaching loggers how to do a better job in the woods. Most loggers are faithful participants in voluntary Best Management Practices designed to protect watersheds and other environmentally sensitive areas. Still, the fact remains that loggers must do what landowners want, or look elsewhere for work.

• Landowner interest in forest conservation easements is growing, but they remain controversial. Some say they pose an added burden for financially strapped local governments. Others fear such transactions (which often involve the expenditure of public monies) create a contractual linkage that may make it possible for activist lawyers to use federal environmental laws to stop harvesting on private lands outside easement boundaries.

• Many living in the Northeast believe landowners can do whatever they want in their forests without regard to environmental impacts. But the James Sewall Company map on Pages 2 and 3 suggests otherwise. As is explained on Page 19 (“Forest Regulation in the Northeast”) many regulatory watchdogs roam the regions’ forests.

In the course of researching this issue we made three trips to the Northeast. More than 50 interviews were conducted, and more than 100 reports were reviewed before the writing began. We again invite you to turn to the back cover for a complete list of those who helped fund this most memorable issue. We hope you learn as much from reading it as we learned in preparing it for you.

Onward we go,
Jim Petersen, Editor
Evergreen Magazine

"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."