N.H. timber cutting a concern for officials

BERLIN, N.H. – State officials are concerned about a growing group of landowners who are buying large tracts of land in the North Woods and subjecting them to heavy timber cutting.

The landowners are providing jobs, generating tax money for Coos County and producing pulp and wood to run local mills. But officials are concerned about the environmental effects harvesting will have on wetlands and wildlife habitats.

Steve Weber, chief of wildlife for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, said he is very concerned about the scale of logging.

“What has happened is you have gone from a relative stable pattern of ownership where folks owned lands to feed mills and all of that was pretty local. Decisions were made by those who lived surrounding the woodlands and were much more in tune with the desires and issues of land management and as a result tended to be more sensitive,” he said.

Now decisions are being made by out-of-state boards of directors, he said.

Unlike Vermont and Maine, which have stringent regulations and penalties, Weber said New Hampshire has little regulation to prevent the types of cuts that can change the landscape for many wildlife types.

Instead, it relies on good will and memos of agreement with landowners.

“We go with hat in hand to the landowner,” he said.

In Maine, a major timber overharvest law went into effect on Jan. 2. Those who buy land, cut more than half the timber and sell the land within five years are in violation, said Cathy Johnson, North Woods project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

A company she describes as a chief violator in Maine recently expanded to New Hampshire, raising more concerns about so-called “timber liquidators.”

Lloyd Irland, president of a small forestry consulting firm in Wayne, Maine, calls T.R. Dillon a “notorious liquidator” who turns land into cash by buying at favorable prices, taking all salable timber off the land and eyeing parcels with subdivision potential.

“They leave behind broomsticks, cut the property up, sell it fast to people who want to own a piece of Maine, and [the buyers] don’t care if it is clumps and skidder ruts,” he said. “The idea is minimize risk, make money and move on to the next.”

Thomas Dillon, who built a $20 million business in Maine, purchased 22,500 acres outside Berlin in 2003. He plans to cut 150,000 cords of wood in three years but says he has no plans to sell the property. One of his best customers is the Berlin mill where 600 people have been put back to work by Fraser Papers after the industry idled and the mill shut.

Dillon is facing six counts of overharvesting next month in Lancaster District Court, according to state officials in charge of enforcing overcutting and wetlands regulations. Of the 31 cases on industrial land investigated by the Department of Resources since 2003, 19 were on Dillon property. Most were related to overcutting and ended with a warning.