SUCCESS, N.H. – The smell of fresh-cut balsam, spruce and fir trees is sweet on a hot summer day, the views of Mount Success and North Bald Cap spectacular. The quiet in the forest is broken only by the trickle of a brook and an occasional truck on Success Pond Road.

But a storm is brewing here over landowners’ right to cut lumber versus the state’s interest in protecting wildlife.

It centers on 22,555 acres of timberland owned by Thomas and Scott Dillon of Anson, Maine, in this unincorporated township, but muffled thunder can be heard across the North Country and all the way to the state capital in Concord.

For now, the dispute involves the size of “protected districts” for wildlife, where no logging is allowed. But the bigger issue is whether state wildlife regulations need to be strengthened because of the heavier pace of logging by some new landowners such as the Dillons.

On one side, Ted Tichy, the Dillons’ forester in Success, says the protected districts on Coos County zoning maps include both core wildlife habitat areas and buffer zones around them where some logging is allowed.

On the other side, state Fish and Game Department wildlife director Steven Weber says the maps show only core habitat to which the 400-foot buffer zones must be added. Landowners must consult with the agency’s wildlife biologists before logging in buffer zones.

In a letter to the Coos County planning board dated Tuesday, Weber recommended that the zoning maps be updated, based on a two-year study by his division, “to more effectively protect the full range of critical wildlife habitat.”

In the middle is the board, which sets zoning rules in the county’s 23 unincorporated areas based on recommendations by Fish and Game staff and comments from landowners and the public.

“The whole thing is a game of balance,” said Mary Sloat, board chairwoman.

Tichy argues previous landowners have cut inside areas identified on maps as critical wildlife habitat, making it clear those areas include the buffer zones.

But Weber says the maps show only 200-foot-wide protected areas along some streams, so it should be obvious the boundaries don’t include the buffer zones.

The issue has come to a head because Fish and Game is putting the zoning maps into digital form so they can be downloaded into GPS locators and other computer systems.

“If their decision is the [buffer] zones are in addition to what is on the maps, then those zones should be added to the maps so everybody knows,” Weber said.

Meanwhile, while the Dillons let the public hike, fish and hunt on their land, they have told Fish and Game that Will Staats, the department’s biologist for Coos County, that he may come only with advance notice and accompanied by a Dillon employee. Staats and other Fish and Game biologists help the board decide when to allow logging in buffer zones and high elevation areas. They also advise on setting boundaries for those areas.

Those duties put Staats in an awkward position with respect to Tichy, who happens to be chairman of the state Fish and Game Commission. The commission is a volunteer board that sets policy for the Fish and Game Department.

Charles Niebling, policy director of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, worries that Tichy’s dual roles are stifling debate about Dillon’s logging practices and how they could affect wildlife. That presents the appearance of a conflict of interest for Tichy, he said.

“I am not implying in any way, shape or form that Ted has done anything unethical,” Niebling said. “But if you’re a Fish and Game employee, you can imagine how difficult it is to feel like you can speak freely.”

Tichy says there is no conflict and his dual roles benefit everyone, because he has long experience working cooperatively with Fish and Game as a forester on private lands. Dillon agrees.

“Ted is on that wildlife board, and he understands wildlife and he understands what I’m doing, and that was one of the reasons I hired him – to not have issues,” Dillon said.

Planning board member Steve Barba said Tichy might have to disqualify himself from any commission votes on policies directly affecting Dillon’s land, but until then, his insight as a commercial forester is valuable.

In the past, big paper companies owned most of the timberland in the North Country. They generally gave Fish and Game biologists unfettered access to their lands. They also made concessions including not logging in areas identified as deer wintering areas or other important wildlife habitat.

Because of that cooperative relationship, the state imposed few restrictions on logging.

But the paper companies derived their profits from paper. The landowners who have replaced them need to make money on timber sales and cannot afford voluntary cooperation if it means losing mature trees to windfall and rot, Thomas Dillon said.

If the board wants to expand the protected zones, landowners should be compensated, Tichy says.

“That is in my mind a taking of a resource … like eminent domain,” Tichy said.