One beautiful late season afternoon in 2020, in the heart of the pandemic, Jeff and I hiked up to an open ridge overlooking the vast forests on the north side of Baxter State Park. We’d been in Maine a bit less than two years, and this was our first trip into the famed North Woods. We’d come off season; no one else was around. Seated on a rock with an abundance of time to relax and gaze, I could scarcely believe what I was seeing:
Nothing but forests stretching into Canada. There were a couple of distant antennas, one to the north, one west, but otherwise we could see only nature. Spiky firs and spruces, round-topped oaks and maples, ashes and birches and scattered others, all spread across the undulating hills and mountains.
What was it like deep within them, these forests so eloquently described by Thoreau? I wanted to explore them, to come to know them well, to learn about their histories and the plants and animals they sheltered, and maybe the people they helped support.
As I would soon discover, it is not a pretty story.
Fifty years ago the view from that ridge would have been quite different: nothing but hillsides of dead and dying trees, all attacked by a voracious insect, and of stripped land that had been hastily clearcut as the scourge moved south from Canada. Known as the spruce budworm, this pest feeds more eagerly on balsam fir than on red spruce. Its outbreaks are cyclical, coming every few decades—and another is on the way this summer.
Maine’s North Woods have long lived in my imagination as a landscape of—not quite wilderness; I wasn’t that naïve—but as a haven where moose and bear and lynx roam and streams run fresh and clear. By long tradition they are completely open for hunting, fishing and hiking. In that sense they serve as a vast public reserve. They are mostly owned by timbering companies, some of which treat them kindly and some of which do not, and by several nonprofit conservation groups. Very few acres within them are developed. Indeed, the whole northern section of the state is known as the Unorganized Territories because of the absence within it of proper towns.
And yet forty years ago the North Woods were in such poor condition that Lloyd Irland, a historian who specializes in studying Maine forests, described them as “an immense junk woods.” The respected journalist Phyllis Austin added that most stands held only trees that were “diseased, dying, or of poor quality—though still generating profits.”
I know this because recently I wrote three articles about Maine’s forests for the digital newspaper The Maine Monitor. It was fascinating to delve into that history—and it certainly disabused me of any notion of Maine as a pristine paradise. (Links to the articles are attached below, in case you’d like to delve into the subject more deeply.) Suffice it to say that there was an epidemic of not just budworms but of clearcutting, followed by--nothing. No coherent management. Unfortunately, on cleared ground in Maine, as one forester told me, “trees grow back thick as hair on a dog’s back.”
And so we are living with that legacy: millions of acres of forests stuffed with gangly trees, all the same size and age. Pole trees, they’re called. Moving through them is nearly impossible, whether you’re human or animal. Also, they’ve developed neither solid root masses nor healthy crowns. When heavy winds hit, they tend to tumble over en masse.
A few decades ago those crowded stands might have been cut for pulp or paper making. But the advent of computers, coupled with the relocation of paper and pulp factories to the U.S. South and abroad (thanks to cheaper labor and faster tree growth rates), greatly diminished those markets in Maine.
Fortunately, as with all good stories, some heroes have stepped in. Over time conservation organizations like the Appalachian Mountain Club and The Nature Conservancy have purchased large tracts of timberland and now manage it with ecological principles to increase its value as wild habitat. In addition, the Forest Society of Maine has negotiated deals with quite a few landowners to place forest conservation easements on thousands of acres. These will never be developed—a major fear as increasing numbers of people move into the state.
Only about 20 percent of the North Woods is permanently protected from intensive commercial cutting, maybe a bit less. But that’s still millions of acres of timberland that will forever be managed using what’s known as ecological forestry. (See article #2 for a description of how that works!)
There’s hope that incentives will become available to encourage land owners to manage their forests for carbon storage. Forests with older trees tend to have superior wildlife habitat, and they also pull and store the most carbon from the atmosphere. There are excellent reasons to leave them standing. The only question is whether our society will have the wisdom to do so. The New England Forestry Foundation was awarded a grant through the federal government that would pay a group of Maine’s commercial land owners to manage their forests for carbon storage instead of cutting them down. There's hope all of that money will be released, but these are strange times.
And so the dance continues: Humans do what they do, and Nature—well, Nature is going to have the last laugh. That’s inevitable. Meanwhile, there will be legions of us working to make our relationship with her a partnership and not a competition. That’s just plain “smaht,” as a Main-ah would say.
A case in point: Spruce budworms will almost certainly attack the North Woods in large numbers this summer. But since the last surge, many forest owners have thinned out balsam firs, on which the insects feed most voraciously. The leading edge of the attack is being closely monitored, and owners are prepared to spray to control budworm numbers. The damage this time, we hope, will be much more limited. We’ll see.
Thanks for reading! Below are links to my Monitor articles, if you’d like more detailed info about Maine’s forests and the push-pull over their cutting and care. One last thing: Digital newspapers and magazines are doing some of the best reporting right now in the U.S. If one of these is operating in your region, please consider subscribing.
See you again soon! Jan
Facing New Spruce Budworm Outbreak, Maine Foresters Look to History as a Guide
https://themainemonitor.org/spruce-budworm-outbreak/
Maine Landowners See A Future in Managing Forests with Ecological Principles
https://themainemonitor.org/ecological-forest-management-future/
Landowners Shape Forests for Maximum Carbon Storage
https://themainemonitor.org/forestry-carbon-storage/
Posted