BAILEYVILLE — “This is basic, fundamental, Dr. Kevorkian … economic suicide for this state,” said John Cashwell III, president of the Seven Islands Land Co. of Bangor, as he described the impact he believes the Green Party’s proposed forest regulation initiative would have on Maine’s wood harvesting and paper industry.

If it is approved in November, the referendum “will create complex new regulations that will radically limit wood harvesting operations on more than 10 million acres of Maine forest land; force drastic reductions in wood and paper production in Maine; devastate Maine’s forest products industry, which accounts for 35 percent of total payrolls in Maine; threaten thousands of Maine jobs; and prevent sound forest management practices and undermine cooperative efforts to assure the health and sustainability of our forest,” according to a handout from Citizens for a Healthy Forest and Economy, which opposes the referendum.

Cashwell is stumping the state trying to defeat the Green Party’s proposed forest regulation initiative. He said clear-cutting was only a small part of the wood harvesting business in Maine, but the emotional “hot button” could motivate people to vote in favor of the referendum.

“This thing is not about clear-cutting, it is about control,” he said. “… It is about a small political party that is trying to grow at the expense of everybody else.”

Cashwell also criticized Green Party candidate Jonathan Carter, who has been pushing for passage of the referendum, saying, “Carter has run for every office but dog catcher in the last five years.”

The Green Party’s initiative, Cashwell said, proposes a complicated set of standards that would affect all aspects of wood harvesting. The impact, he said, would be devastating, not only to the wood harvesting industry, but to communities that have mills or wood harvesting businesses in their area.

He told the Calais and Baileyville municipal officials, and the more than 30 wood harvesters in the audience, that if the referendum passed, it would mean major changes for communities that depend on the wood industry as part of their tax base. While the referendum could prove a financial hardship for communities, it will not cut down the cost of city or town services, he said.

Georgia-Pacific Corp. last year clear-cut fewer than 35 acres of its 430,000 acres in Maine to establish a poplar plantation. “We want to see if we can grow them successfully,” said James Hileman, group manager for G-P’s Northeast Forest Resources.

Hileman said if the referendum passed, the company would not be able to harvest about 50 percent of its land. He said that corporate officials in Atlanta, Ga., would not look favorably at any referendum that would cut their wood harvesting activities by 50 percent.