Region Archives: US East

OAKFIELD, Maine — On the heels of a banner sales year in 2022, Katahdin Forest Products has closed one mill and laid off 20 employees because its cedar stock is nearly depleted.  The combination of warmer weather and a 30 percent reduction in the number of Maine firms harvesting timber means the company cannot keep pace with the demands of cedar log home and fencing sales, owner David Gordon said.  “While there have been shortened seasons in the past, there has never been a year where supply was this limited,” Gordon said.  Founded in 1973, Katahdin Forest Products, parent company of Katahdin Cedar Log Homes, owns three mills in Ashland, Oakfield and Chester. …The Ashland mill closed in January when cedar stocks ran out, and while the other two remain open with a skeleton staff to fulfill existing orders, they face closure by June, Gordon said. 

A state project to create new wildlife habitat ended with 21 acres of a mature upland forest cleared, thousands of trees cut down and valuable wetlands damaged at a wildlife preserve, according to conservationists. The Division of Fish and Wildlife in the Department of Environmental Protection took the action last month in the Glassboro Wildlife Management Area with virtually no public notice and input, conservationists said. In a letter to DEP, four conservation groups urged an immediate halt to any further activity at the site, part of a 2,341-acre wildlife management area. The protest was signed by representatives of South Jersey Land and Water Trust, Citizens United to Protect Maurice River and its Tributaries, Pinelands Preservation Alliance, and the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. “It is not forestry; it’s land clearing,’’ said Emil DeVito, manager of science and conservation at the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. 

Taylor County, Wisconsin — With additional bat species expected to gain endangered status, Taylor County is working with the state and other forest agencies to be proactive about having guidelines in place to continue forest activities near protected habitat areas. This doesn’t necessarily make members of the county’s forestry committee any happier when needing to deal with additional regulations. “It is another regulation,” said committee member Jim Gebauer. County forest administrator Jake Walcisak presented the Lake States Forest Management Bat Habitat Conservation Plan. He said the heavy lifting in developing the plan was done at the state level in cooperation with the other Great Lakes States in preparation for the potential listing of additional bat species due to the sharp decline in bat populations due to the white-nose syndrome. The plan includes additional protection to reduce logging around caves where bats could nest as well as trees that are home to maternity colonies and day roosts.

FARMINGTON, Maine —Maine’s timber industry is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Industry leaders say a trend of warmer winters is making for a shorter harvest season. …Dana Doran, executive director of Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, says frozen soil is critical for loggers to use heavy machinery without harming the environment. “We’re having this undulation of evolving temperatures, evolving conditions. We’re getting more rain. The ground is freezing,” Doran said. For contractors to keep up, costs are up. New equipment which reduces damage to the ground is expensive. …“Contractors need to be paid more for the work they’re doing so that they can offset that cost,” Doran said. Advocates for Maine’s logging industry are also calling for increased pay from mills to offset costs for new equipment.

Maine forests already absorb about 70% of the state’s annual fossil fuel emissions. A new study shows that Maine’s commercial forest landowners could increase annual carbon storage by at least 20% over the next 60 years while maintaining timber harvest levels. …The forest modeling study across 7.6 million acres of mostly privately-owned commercial forest lands in northern Maine was conducted by researchers from the University of Maine, the New England Forestry Foundation and the USFS. Under current management practices, the forestlands are expected to remove 36 million metric tons of CO2 per year. But, if climate smart strategies such as increased planting, thinning and selective harvesting were widely adopted, the study suggests even more carbon could be stored without decreasing harvest levels. “Unless you maintain harvest there’s the potential for there to really be no benefits to the atmosphere,” said Tom Walker, a natural resources economist and project coordinator.

WILLIAMSBURG, Kentucky — Brandon Bowlin learned of the U.S. government’s plan for clear-cutting in the southernmost mountains of Daniel Boone National Forest only a few weeks after the hard summer rains of 2022, when the earth slid off a mountain beneath a slope he had once logged. …The U.S. Forest Service’s plan, unveiled in October, is for logging, much of it clear-cutting, and the use of herbicides in nearly 10,000 acres over the next 40 years—a project that would spread over roughly half of Jellico Mountain and surrounding peaks on the Tennessee border. Bowlin is now one of hundreds of residents of Kentucky’s Whitley and McCreary counties begging the Forest Service to abandon the idea. …The Forest Service says it will study landslide risk along with other impacts in the environmental assessment of its so-called “Jellico Vegetation Management” proposal that’s due in June.

When David Falkenham heard the state’s forester license is on the chopping block as part of budget talks in Concord, two words came to mind: “complete disaster.” …Licensing reforms proposed by Gov. Chris Sununu this budget session include axing 34 state licenses and eight boards that oversee them, including the Board of Foresters, as a means of streamlining processes, removing workforce barriers, and getting rid of redundancies. Joining foresters on the list of state licenses proposed to be repealed are medical technicians, licensed nursing assistants, radiation therapists, cosmetology booths in already licensed facilities, and wetland and soil scientists. …Hundreds of changes to state statutes would be associated with the license dissolutions, Sununu has said. There’s currently a licensed forester state law in place that makes it unlawful for anyone to offer forestry services in New Hampshire “unless such person has been duly licensed.” 

Wildfires are a real and present threat nationally, but also in Minnesota’s northern tree-dense landscapes, like the Superior National Forest. …Young fir trees are  called “ladder fuel” by the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service crew that manage wildfire danger. …“The best way to mitigate wildfires that threaten people and property is by selectively removing that species,” said Patrick Johnson, Superior National Forest fire management officer. …With funding from the U.S. Forest Service Wood Innovation Grant Program, NRRI researchers are developing the hidden value in that piled-up wood resource. Carbon offset credits are generated when the downed fir is converted into an engineered biocarbon product – broadly referred to as biochar – and that value can be reinvested in improved wildfire management. Carbon credits are generated from net-negative carbon projects and purchased by industries that cannot meet carbon emission goals. 

WOODBURY, Vermont — Inside 30 million acres of the largest forested region in the eastern U.S., in a heavily wooded stretch of northeastern Vermont and on more than 6,000 acres of freshly protected land in Woodbury, ecologist Shelby Perry sat cross-legged atop a mossy knoll. …Perry works for the Northeast Wilderness Trust, which bought this land last year and named it the Woodbury Mountain Wilderness Preserve. …Across Vermont, where 74% of the state is covered in forest, only around 3.7% of the forests are permanently protected in what are called wildland reserves, according to a forthcoming report by forest research and conservation groups including Harvard Forest, Highstead and Northeast Wilderness Trust. In recent years, environmentalists have made a push to increase those numbers, and in some areas, it appears they’re gaining ground. …Across the country, environmentalists have long fought to protect old growth forests and allow logged woodlands to fully regenerate. 

Peter Reich

It’s as integral a part of Michigan’s fabric as its lakes and rivers: more than 20 million acres of forest land − the hickory and oak trees of southern Michigan giving way to forests of sugar maple, birch and evergreens that surround northbound travelers. But a warming climate is harming and transforming the woods, with further, even more dramatic impacts projected by near the end of the century. Michigan has perhaps the most exceptional forest makeup in North America, as boundaries of multiple forest types converge here. …”The prognosis for the forest is not great,” said forest ecologist Peter Reich, director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Global Change Biology. “It may be we are at a tipping point beyond which these northern species just can’t hack it. Nature is really resilient, but we are pushing it really far, maybe up to its boundaries.”

Chris Lituma

In the forests of Greenbrier, Fayette and Nicholas counties, three species of concern have West Virginia University researchers’ attention. The golden-winged warbler, the cerulean warbler and the wood thrush — all native to West Virginia — are experiencing significant population declines. Chris Lituma, at Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, is leading a study to learn about the birds’ habitat, which overlaps with 250,000 acres of forestland belonging to Weyerhaeuser Company. …In the project’s early stages, Lituma hypothesized that Weyerhaeuser’s large acreage could support the golden-winged warbler and other species that need young forests. Though timber harvests are not the same as a natural disturbance, they can provide the heavily disturbed patches in the eastern deciduous forest that the species requires. The same may be true for cerulean warblers. … Lituma hopes the research will provide a blueprint for how landowners can maintain their investments while also supporting bird populations.

The seed of Jerseyan Peter McHale’s forestry data startup was planted when he overheard a colleague, Matthew Carpenter, discussing his chess-playing robot. Today, they’ve got a novel business model: The use of artificial intelligence tools similar to those used in self-driving vehicles to capture and process the data hidden in forest canopies. In their view, the idea could boost the timber industry’s bottom lines while also addressing climate change. Their company, Gaia AI, which was spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey. They’re bringing the backing of investors with them, after recently concluding a $3 million pre-seed funding round. McHale was in Sweden visiting with some of the largest timber companies in the world, and said the industries rooted in the forestry sector are excited about what the now Newark-based startup has to offer.

ASHEVILLE – The long-awaited approved final version of a plan that will define the future for a huge swath of Western North Carolina forests is not good news for conservation advocates, but it’s also not a surprise.  The U.S. Forest Service Feb. 17 announced the revised version of a management plan for the Nantahala and Pisgah forests has been finalized and is live on its website.  The 361-page plan “is a framework to address incredibly complex challenges like climate change and inv  asive species, impacts from development on adjacent private lands, and high levels of visitor use,” according to James Melonas, forest supervisor of the National Forests in North Carolina.  …But many organizations advocating for a plan more oriented toward conservation, especially of old-growth forests, are condemning the plan and say they offered what they saw as opportunities for consensus but were ignored by the Forest Service.

ASHEVILLE, N.C.— The U.S. Forest Service released the Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest Plan today, quadrupling logging and reducing protections for the most visited national forest in the country. The Forest Service disregarded a record-setting 36,000 public comments supporting more and stronger protections for the 1.1-million-acre national forest and ignored the will of a crowd of more than 400 people who rallied outside the Forest Service headquarters last fall urging the agency to safeguard more of the forest. “The Forest Service flat-out refused to listen to the public and consider easy, win-win solutions that were widely supported,” said Will Harlan, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Instead it’s pursuing its own hyper-aggressive logging agenda that sentences the forest to decades of conflict, litigation, and community resistance.” The newly released Pisgah-Nantahala Forest Plan is… a map that determines which parts of the forest will be logged and which will be protected.

GEORGIA — In a low-lying tract of southern Georgia’s pine belt, a half-dozen workers planted row upon row of twig-like poplar trees. These weren’t just any trees, though: Some of the seedlings being nestled into the soggy soil had been genetically engineered to grow wood at turbocharged rates while slurping up carbon dioxide from the air. The poplars may be the first genetically modified trees planted in the United States outside of a research trial or a commercial fruit orchard. Just as the introduction of the Flavr Savr tomato in 1994 introduced a new industry of genetically modified food crops, the tree planters on Monday hope to transform forestry. …Maddie Hall, the company’s co-founder said of her dream to deploy genetic engineering on behalf of the climate. But she and her colleagues have also found believers — enough to invest $36 million in the four-year-old company. The company has also attracted critics. [to access the full story a NY Times subscription is required]

MISSISSIPPI – Forestry has a large impact on the lives of Mississippians. It supplies the stimulus for over 64,000 jobs that contribute close to $3.3 billion in annual employee income in our state. Forestry employment possibilities for the youth of Mississippi will continue well into the future. Recent forest product mill expansion and construction throughout Mississippi indicates strong long-term demand. There will be opportunities for those who are looking to work in a high-tech environment either outdoors or in an industrial setting. Employment within the timber industry can relate to forestry operations and management, government agencies, and industrial wood processing mills. This column will discuss forestry careers and how youth can prepare themselves to join this exciting and fulfilling field.