Logging planned on Newcastle public land

Last Wednesday morning, I was invited by Steve Spencer of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands to tour the 506-acre Dodge Point Management Unit in Newcastle. The tour was organized to provide an opportunity to see where selection harvesting on the property will yield about 1,000 cords of wood.

Forester Tom Charles, western regional manager for the Bureau of Parks and Lands, pointed out areas where mixed growth would be thinned and one of three red pine stands would be cut.

Logging contractor Maine-ly Trees of Avon will do the work using a tracked mechanical harvester with a 25-foot reach. Tree limbs will be cut manually and left on the forest floor. Only the trunks will be yarded. Maine-ly Trees cut in the Bigelow Preserve last winter, Charles said.

The fact that logging takes place on public lands is not news. As Bangor Daily News environmental writer Susan Young pointed out in our series on public land last spring, much of Maine’s Public Reserve Lands are logged regularly. Harvesting takes place on 356,000 of the 473,000 acres in public reserves.

About 12,000 acres of public land a year are logged. It’s done to generate about $1.7 million a year to maintain trails and campsites, and to pay other expenses to administer public lands that otherwise would have to come out of the state’s General Fund.

This tour was more an opportunity for members of the Damariscotta River Association and others to learn how and where the cutting would be done, and what impact it might have on the land.

The Dodge Point property was purchased in 1989 by the Land for Maine’s Future Board from the Edward W. Freeman Trust. Additional funds for the purchase were provided by the Damariscotta River Association and the Maine Coastal Program.

The DRA was established in 1973 as a community-based conservation organization, and in 1987 it also became a land trust. It is dedicated to “preserving and promoting the natural, cultural and historic heritage of the Damariscotta River, its watershed and adjacent areas for the benefit of all.”

The Dodge Point property, which has 8,000 feet of shoreline on the Damariscotta River, was the Maine Tree Farm of the Year in 1978. The property was planted extensively with red pine between 1928 and 1940, Charles said, and it has been about 25 years since any thinning has been done there.

The parcel has a network of trails, designed by the Bureau of Parks and Lands, which provide good hiking and cross-country skiing. Peter Noyes, stewardship director for DRA, said the trails are used regularly by local folks, and people from far and wide have signed the guest book.

Because of the property’s popularity, there was some concern that logging operations might curtail recreational use. Charles assured the group of about a dozen on the tour that, at most, any trail might be closed for three days. Harvesting will be done only during the week, and every effort has been made to limit the number of times that logging roads cross trails and to reduce visual impact in these areas. Vernal pools on the property will be protected as well. The yard where most of the harvested logs will be brought is in a field.

As much as a third of the red pine harvested will be used for 40-foot utility poles, with the remaining going for saw logs and other uses. In some cases, Charles said, trees were selected for harvest because they had been damaged by the European pine shoot borer, which feeds on new growth. Stumps will be treated with a urea fertilizer, which inhibits the spread of fungus. In the mixed forest, mature to overmature hardwoods, mostly white birch, and spruce-fir will be cut to release the dense softwood understory.

Charles said a work-in-progress sign will be posted at the gated entrance to the property to let people know what areas are being harvested on any day. If the ground is hard enough, logging may begin within the next week.

After the timber tour wrapped up, Spencer and Noyes took me on a tour of the rest of the property. We scouted the dock area and walked back up the river along the shore trail, stopping at Sand Beach and Brickyard Beach to take in the scenery and talk about the rich history of the area. The walk is an easy one of just about three miles (if you do the perimeter) and there’s a 29-station self-guided nature tour you can do with the help of “The Discovery Trail at Dodge Point,” a field guide by Maggie Macy-Peterson.

As we walked the property I tried to imagine the fully forested land as open farm fields, which existed there 100 years or more ago, and wondered aloud what it must have been like when the American Indians lived here, harvesting shellfish.

The DRA’s brochure says, “Native Americans used the Damariscotta as part of a system of canoe trails to avoid the dangerous ocean passage around Pemaquid Point, as well as to reach the sea from inland. The river’s name derives from an Indian word indicating `a place of many small fish.’ This refers to the annual May alewife spawning run that continues to this day at the freshwater falls in Damariscotta Mills.”

Damariscove Island, which lies seaward of the river’s mouth, was “one of the first European settlements in the New World. Its protected harbor became a rendezvous for fishermen from England and the Continent as early as the late 1500s. Capt. John Smith visited Darmiscove when exploring the coast in 1614,” the brochure says.

Bricks, shipbuilding and fishing played large roles in the history of the area. Brickyard Beach, which is on the northern end of the Dodge Point property, is littered today with remnants of one of the 30 brickyards of yesteryear that flourished along the river. At the kiosk at the trail head parking area, you can read a newspaper report from 1890. It says it was “estimated that the brick business on the Damariscotta River for the present season indicates that 11 million bricks will be manufactured, giving employment to 200 men and markets for 5,000 cords of wood and that 180 vessels will be required for transportation.”

Bricks from the Damariscotta area were shipped to Boston and Halifax, and many of the buildings in Damariscotta were built with local bricks.

As I walked the shoreline and looked out across the river, I couldn’t help but think of the paddling adventure that presented itself. Dodge Point is about three miles south of Damariscotta, and about nine miles north of Fort Island, one of the public islands in the Maine Island Trail. Farther south lies East Boothbay and South Bristol. From South Bristol it’s only a few miles by water to Pemaquid Beach (about five miles from Fort Island).

If it were not for near-gale force winds and chilly temperatures, it would have been real easy to get lost in reverie. But I saved that for the next day, when I could sit down with a map of the area and make plans for a return trip.

To get to Dodge Point, I drove south on Interstate 95 to Augusta, then crossed the river to go south on Route 27, which takes you to Wiscasset. Pick up Route 1 east and drive about 6.8 miles to the right turn for the River Road on the west side of Damariscotta River (you’ll have seen numerous blue and white informational signs for businesses). Dodge Point is about three miles south and is marked clearly with a sign.

Jeff Strout’s column is published Thursdays. He can be reached at 990-8202 or by e-mail at jstrout@bangornews.infi.net.