Forestry debate

Jonathan Carter said all along that his organization could defeat the Compact for Maine’s Forests if it had adequate funding. On Tuesday, after spending serious advertising dollars and with the crucial support of property-rights advocates, he proved it.

The environmental “No” side of Tuesday’s vote was led by the Forest Ecology Network (FEN) and endowed by financial angel Donald Sussman of Connecticut. Mr. Sussman’s $1 million contribution changed the balance of the debate, allowing FEN and others to get their messages out through aggressive advertising. Equally important in the campaign though without the same resources was the group Common Sense for Maine’s Forests, which opposed the Compact for reasons related to property rights, government interference and the Compact’s loose language on how it would be carried out. Both “No” sides urged voters to reject the Compact if they felt they could not understand it.

The two ends beating up on the middle doomed the Compact, leaving it with approximately the same percentage of supporters it had last year. Even with the advantage of millions of advertising dollars from the forestry industry, Compact supporters were unable to make a case to some environmentalists that the forestry proposal was useful or to property-rights advocates that the Compact wasn’t just another pile of regulations. It will be up to legislators to divine which opposition group was the more influential as they consider a dozen forestry bills in their next session.

If Mainers rejected the Compact because they think the forests are already regulated enough, lawmakers are unlikely to support additional legislation. If voters said no because the Compact was not tough (or clear) enough, there are several bills that should catch their attention. One of these is LD 1200, which reforms the Tree Growth Tax Law to use the law as a financial incentive for landowners to practice sustainable forestry.

That’s an issue for another day, however. For now, it is fair to conclude that Mr. Carter’s prediction was correct: all Compact opponents needed was a relatively small amount of funding to persuade voters that Maine could do better than this proposal. That, and the fact that the battle over the future of Maine’s forests is going to be in the forefront of the news for some time to come.