Forest planning considers threats

Reading the story of the economic promise of a Maine Woods National Park in Monday’s edition reminded me of the old story about the logger who was going broke. After tallying up the week’s work and what it cost to produce his 100 cords, he compared that to what he was paid for the products delivered.

It turns out he lost $2 per cord. When his wife asked what he was going to do about that, he replied that next week he would just have to produce 200 cords.

To promise that Piscataquis County can have the economic fortune of Hancock County if only we make a bigger park is much like the loggers answer to his wife. We could talk about the what if’s … what if there was the building boom around the proposed park that occurred around Mount Desert, what if we could get that much traffic on Route 11, and so on, but it misses the point. We now see that efforts to develop a park will be justified based on the promise of economic good times if we set aside a large enough parcel of land.

The discussion started because a threat to the forest was sensed, accompanied by feeling there is an unmet need for undisturbed land. Most threats to the forest are seen as coming from its overuse – whether it’s being over cut, over built, sprawled upon, locked up or ridden over. Depending on how someone uses the forest, the perception of threat varies.

The real threat doesn’t come from expecting more from the forest though. The threat comes from the way we see the forests and what that leads us to do. Some would like to take and divvy up this piece of forest for trails, this hunk for growing fiber, another part for doing nothing but letting nature take its course. In our mind’s eye we do

not see that the forest as a whole, and it is only in that view that the forest will be able to do the most for us – and we for it.

In the process we have often turned control of the forests into a win-lose game. We need to change it back to a win-win game. A lot of folks will say someone has to lose because there isn’t enough resource to go around. After 70 years of serious conservation and management, we have more resources than in the past, and with brighter future prospects. The limits we run into now are the ones we’ve imposed on ourselves.

Until we can see the forest as something more than the factory for our particular product, be it pulpwood, maple sugar, moose, or breathtaking beauty, we will limit and place at risk its benefit to ourselves, and society in general. Our history has not been so bad that we are left with a desolate wasteland forest with no near prospects, and not been so great as to have exhausted all possibility. The threat, though, is that we will continue squabbling over history, and painting caricatures of those who favor one course of action over another.

We need to quit trying to find an ultimate solution to one piece of the puzzle and develop a workable system that allows the forest to produce the full range of rich products it can. It will be a system that focuses on defining goals instead prescribing methods. It will also be a living changing system that recognizes change and provides the leadership for it.

The forests of Maine have proven their worth, their vitality, their diversity, their productivity. We the community of people charged with the forest’s stewardship, those who have an interest in it’s future have yet to prove they are as vital and productive.

Richard A. Sirken is a fellow in

the Society of American Foresters. He was formerly responsible for managing Georgia-Pacific’s land holdings in Maine and New Brunswick. He is the former chair of the Michigan Society of American Foresters, and currently does Forest Policy Consulting from his office in Calais.