Referendum support

Though it cannot definitively conclude what will happen in next November’s vote on a $50 million bond question to purchase public land, a study from the University of Maine says a lot about how the Maine public views the forest.

Kevin Boyle, a professor of environmental economics, and Mario Teisl, an assistant professor of resource economics and policy, wanted to find out how Maine residents felt about cutting practices in the forest, particularly on publicly owned land. With their work sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service, they began two years ago, when feelings about forestry were especially intense, to survey residents about a hypothetical purchase of a 23,000-acre parcel — the equivalent of one township — of forest land in Northern Maine.

The survey found that, first, there is considerable interest in having the state make such a purchase — the average household is willing to make a one-time contribution of $444 for the land. But that comes with a couple of conditions. The first is that half the land be set aside from timber harvesting and, on the half that is cut, “harvesting practices would be employed that are more benign than those believed to commonly occur in commercial forest lands in Maine,” according to the authors. This level of harvesting, by the way, was more desirable to the respondents than harvesting at either 90 percent or 10 percent of the total area purchased.

The researchers then used a conservative estimate of $100 per household, spread over the entire state, to come up with a figure of $21 million. If this hypothetical land buy were put to referendum, it would be approved by nearly 70 percent of the voters, according to the study.

These conclusions tell Maine that the public looks upon public land purchases positively, under certain conditions. And by prefering some timber harvesting on a portion of the land, it also shows that people value the woods-products industry, especially when it demonstrates good cutting practices.

With so much of the land in Maine changing hands in the last couple of years, the public’s desire for buying land probably has increased since the survey was begun. This is good news for supporters of the fall referendum.