Firm to sell off Maine forestland

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BOSTON – Hancock Timber Resources Group, a subsidiary of John Hancock Financial Services Inc., is selling 14 large parcels of forestland in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New York, Hancock officials said. Bids are being accepted on the total of 212,000 acres worth an estimated…
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BOSTON – Hancock Timber Resources Group, a subsidiary of John Hancock Financial Services Inc., is selling 14 large parcels of forestland in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and New York, Hancock officials said.

Bids are being accepted on the total of 212,000 acres worth an estimated $100 million. One parcel consists of 32,180 acres about 25 miles southwest of Millinocket.

Hancock officials said the sale was prompted by the slumping stock market that left the company overinvested in forestland.

“Timberland had been bought and sold for 150 years up here,” said Henry Whittemore, the New England regional manager for the timber investment firm. “Basically, we are selling the same parcels we bought back in 1993. Nothing’s changed.”

Whittemore added, “We are still pretty sure the new owners will stay in timbering.”

Hancock was the first of more than 15 investment firms to enter the speculative forest market that has purchased millions of acres from ailing paper companies since the early 1990s. Until now, most of the investors have been managing the land for timber production.

“This is the beginning of a trend toward more and more segmenting of the North Woods, not only destabilizing land ownership patterns, but the very culture of openness itself,” said Kent Wommack, executive director of The Nature Conservancy, Maine chapter. “Locked gates [at private housing] can’t be far behind.”

The bid deadline is May 21, and closings are scheduled for Aug. 1. Whittemore said Hancock may refuse offers, and might not sell if the bids come in low.

Parcels for sale range in size from 916 acres straddling the New Hampshire towns of Jefferson and Lancaster to 71,483 acres in the Adirondacks.

Nearly 6 million acres of the northern forest have changed hands in recent years, many of them in Maine, the nation’s most forested state, The Boston Globe reported on Monday.

The sale of timberland to private investors was prompted by the decline of the local pulp and timber market.

As paper and timber management companies found they could get their raw material more cheaply from overseas, they started selling off land they had held for generations.


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