WYTOPITLOCK – The sky is the limit, says forest policy expert Mitch Lansky.

If our descendants wish to continue current harvesting trends in the Maine forest, they will need to fell a 26,000-square-mile forest stretching 137 miles high in the year 2995 – a billion times more than the harvest a millennium earlier.

The American frontier is gone, and forests worldwide are rapidly meeting the same fate. If forestry is to continue, we need to learn to live within our means, to practice harvesting that it truly sustainable in the long-term, Lansky said.

The forest policy expert outlines one vision for sustainable forestry in a new book titled “Low-Impact Forestry: Forestry as if the Future Mattered.”

Lansky has been a vocal critic of industrial forest practices, particularly in his 1992 book “Beyond the Beauty Strip,” which revealed the impacts of clear-cutting and helped to spark a passionate statewide debate about forest practices.

In the new book, Lansky uses his knowledge not as a critic, but as a teacher.

“I felt that it was important to not just criticize, but to come up with an alternative,” he said during a recent interview.

Lansky lives in the North Woods, in a timber-frame home built with his own labor and logs from his own small woodlot. Occasionally, he has harvested trees from his 50 acres of field and forest.

As the forest-practices debate raged in the early 1990s, Lansky joined with a small group of woodlot owners, foresters, loggers and scientists to discuss how they harvest their land and to draft a definition of good forestry.

“A sustainable forest is something that doesn’t require human intervention,” Lansky said. “The degree that you veer from the natural forest processes, that is the degree that you’ll lose something.”

Low-impact forestry is “more a direction than a destination,” he said, but general principles developed by the group include:

. Selectively cutting individual trees, on the advice of a professional forester, rather than imposing some artificial system on the forest or cutting in a random manner.

? Never harvesting in such a way that it drastically changes the landscape or the forest’s natural composition.

? Cutting lower-quality trees first to encourage the growth of more valuable high-quality lumber.

? Developing a long-term goal and a plan for the property.

? Considering the health of the entire ecosystem, and harvesting in such a way as to minimize the impact on the forest’s soils and wildlife.

? Ensuring that all types of habitat – including old-growth forests – are represented on the landscape.

Lansky calls the low-impact forestry principles common sense.

“No human being could possibly understand all of the workings of the ecosystem, but you can have good common sense,” he said. “The general idea doesn’t require a rocket scientist.”

But even the most responsible forestry should not be practiced on every acre of the Maine woods. A certain portion of the forest needs to remain in a natural, wild state. All forestry is so young compared to the life of the forest that it’s impossible to say that we know all the long-term effects of our actions, Lansky said.

“We’re doing an experiment. We need a control,” he said.

Many Maine woodlot owners are practicing low-impact forestry, harvesting with horses or small machinery to minimize their impact. A typical harvest using large machinery such as skidders and feller-bunchers requires the cutting of 25 percent of the trees just for machinery trails. One advocate of low-impact forestry estimates he sacrifices only 8 percent of his woodlot to trails.

“Just to run these big machines takes a huge footprint out of the woods,” Lansky said. “When you have to make these wide trails, you’re doing heavy cutting whether you want to or not.”

Additionally, these low-impact methods tend be more labor intensive, and can greatly benefit the local economy, Lansky said.

“If the human culture isn’t sustainable, then nothing is,” he said.

An ideal forest is undisturbed, but low-impact forestry is about the real world, not theory.

Hundreds of Maine families make their livings from woodlots or invest in forest land as a hedge against hard times.

“When people do woodlot management, they’re not doing it just for ecological reasons, they’re doing it because they need the wood,” Lansky said.

Economically, low-impact forestry makes sense in the same way blue chip stocks do – considering long-term value, and the principle applies regardless of a forest’s size.

While liquidation harvesting – buying forest land, intensively harvesting it, then moving on – turns a quick profit, much of the forest’s value is sacrificed to convenience.

“Well-stocked land is worth more than flattened land,” Lansky said. “You think you’re getting a lot of money, but what you’re really doing is cutting into your capital – you’re losing money in the long-term.”

Lansky advocates calculating the future selling price of standing trees in addition to the value of any particular harvest. For example, a slow-growing species, such as rock maple, could someday have twice the market value of a faster-growing species, such as red maple.

“You’re coming out way ahead if you do low-impact forestry,” he said. “You’ll have less money in your pocket, but more will be sitting on the stump.”

But depending on the initial quality of the forest, it could take as many as 40 or 50 years before low-impact forestry practices start to turn a substantial profit for the landowner.

In Vermont, New York, Massachusetts and Wisconsin, small woodlot owners have formed cooperative associations, reducing their initial investment by sharing some of the costs of hiring foresters and buying harvesting equipment. Such associations have even banded together to purchase a sawmill or a drying kiln to increase the market value of their wood.

In Vermont, the cooperative even gets involved in sales and has shifted the workings of the lumber market. Rather than foresters growing specific types of wood to meet market demands, customers receive a list of available woods and make their selections from these native trees.

Lansky’s book serves as a guide for small woodlot owners, with detailed advice from successful practitioners of low-impact forestry, including sample contracts, formulas for calculating the value of a woodlot and technical information about different harvesting systems.

In recent years, the Hancock County Planning Commission worked with the Low-Impact Forestry Project to obtain grant funding and demonstrate the methods at the Common Ground Fair and other gatherings. The group considered forming a woodlot cooperative and seeking certification from the Forest Stewardship Council for its membership, but a series of blows including the loss of grant money and recent criticism of other FSC certifications have slowed progress.

Lansky said he hopes the new book will inspire those involved with forest management to consider their impact. If a majority of Maine’s small woodlot owners practiced low-impact forestry, the face of Maine’s forest could be drastically changed.

“The most important thing to do at this point is to get examples going on the ground,” he said.

Unless landowners alter their methods, Maine forestry cannot survive in the long-term, he said.

Lansky likes to paraphrase an ancient Chinese saying when he discusses the future of forestry: “Unless we change direction, we’ll end up where we’re headed.”

Low-Impact Forestry is not yet available in stores. To buy a copy, contact the book’s distributor Chelsea Green at (800) 639-4099 or send an e-mail to www.chelseagreen.com.