Concern: Pelican River easement puts future of ‘working forest’ in doubt

News analysis

The lack of a specific definition for a “working forest” in the Pelican River Forest easement could put the future of the forest in doubt and helped fuel opposition to the recently finalized easement, a timber producers professional has said.

Henry Schienebeck, the executive director of the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association (GLTPA), said the GLTPA did not support the Pelican easement, and, for that matter, doesn’t support any other easement where the definition of a “working forest” is not clearly outlined as to what it means under the easement.

That lack of a definition was not the only problem with the easement agreement, Schienebeck told The Times.

“In addition, no one could produce a management plan as to what the forest industry could expect in ‘perpetuity’ for volume of wood coming from the Pelican property,” Schienebeck said. “All they said is that forest management is to be part of the easement as defined in the guidelines under the Forest Legacy Program.”

But that is vague and subject to interpretation and clouds the future of timber production in the forest, Schienebeck said.

“Exactly what does that mean, one tree or a hundred?” he asked. “If memory serves, this entire property was once part of Consolidated timberland and was well managed and open for multiple use with timber production as a top priority.”

Schienebeck said the GLTPA also has concerns regarding invasive species. 

“It is GLTPA’s understanding that the property is currently free of invasive species,” he said. “Once the property is opened for recreational vehicles, it will likely be invaded, which drives the cost for forest management significantly higher. In many situations harvesting equipment must be washed from job to job, operators have to be trained in stump treatment and the biggest item is, there are harvesting restrictions placed on timber sales because of oak wilt and a variety of other invasives.”

Finally, Schienebeck said, the GLTPA has stated that, if the state puts money into a conservation easement where the land is in the Managed Forest Law (MFL) program, the property should be managed according to small landowner management guidelines to better reflect the taxpayers paying the bill.  

“Seems only fair, doesn’t it?” he said. “Small landowners do a much better, more predictable job of management, in our opinion.”

The fact is, Schienebeck said, the guidelines for the Forest Legacy program, which funded the vast majority of the Pelican River Forest easement, are putting forest management objectives further and further down the list of priorities, in some instances resulting in the lack of any timber production whatsoever. 

Taking the legacy out of legacy

As a Forest Legacy Program overview recounts, in the late 1980s, New Englanders realized that so-called “paper company” lands — lands that had traditionally been open for public access and had provided timber products to regional mills — were in danger of being converted to non-forest uses.

That galvanized a movement that ultimately led Congress to direct the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service to study the timber resources of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, after which a task force identified strategies to protect those resources’ long-term integrity and traditional uses. 

One of the strategies identified was to acquire lands and conservation easements to permanently protect key parcels from conversion to nonforest uses, the program overview recounts.

Out of that came the national Forest Legacy Program in 1990 through an amendment to the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act (CFAA) of 1978 to promote the long-term integrity of forestlands. 

That amendment contained several core truths, Schienebeck said: The majority of the nation’s forestlands are in private ownership; and private landowners faced increasing pressure to convert their forestlands to other uses.

In addition, there was the recognition that private lands provided a “wide variety of products and services from working forests, including timber and other forest commodities, fish and wildlife habitat, watershed function, water supply and quality, aesthetic qualities, historical and cultural resources, and recreational opportunities.”

Originally, as that statement above testifies, the top priority of the program was the provision of “products and services from working forests, including timber and other forest commodities …,” Schienebeck pointed out.

But over time, Schienebeck says, forest management and timber production became a much lower priority.

In the latest program implementation guidelines, for instance, the purpose of the Forest Legacy program is “to identify and protect environmentally important forest areas that are threatened by conversion to nonforest uses and to promote forestland protection and other conservation opportunities. Desired outcomes include the protection of important scenic, cultural, fish, wildlife, and recreational resources, riparian areas, and other ecological values. Traditional forest uses, including timber management, as well as hunting, fishing, hiking, and similar recreational uses are consistent with purposes of the FLP.”

Whereas forest management and timber production were originally listed before such things as aesthetic qualities, historical and cultural resources, and recreational opportunities, the guidelines now promote aesthetics, cultural, recreational, and other ecological values over timber production.

Indeed, timber management is actually not listed as a priority at all but simply as an activity that “is consistent” with the purposes of the FLP.

That mission statement is only two pages of a 169-page document, but Schienebeck says the downgrade of working forests is evident throughout: “You can see forest management moves further down the list and this trend continues throughout the document.”

An example of inverted priorities

Schienebeck points to a forest in New Hampshire as an example of a conservation easement gone wrong based on land ownership.

The land in question is a 146,000-acre slice of the state — known as Connecticut Lakes Headwaters, it encompasses 3 percent of the state’s forestland — that has logging contracts that are close to concluding. 

In 2003, The Trust for Public Land closed on a conservation easement for the property that allowed only one economic use — or so it seemed at the time — a working forest model of timber harvesting and forest management. The land and project became known as the Connecticut Lakes Headwaters. 

Now, a new corporate owner of the land has said it is considering new logging contracts but has yet to announce any, according to an investigative report in InDepthNH.org by reporter Paula Tracy.

Actually, Tracy reports, that landowner, Bluesource Sustainable Forest Company, is in the business of selling carbon credits to keep trees growing rather than logging them. She quotes the company’s principal mission statement to be “managing former timberland to maximize carbon and ecological benefits.”

In other words, the company sells contracts not to cut the wood, standing the working forest model on its head.

Here’s how Charles Levesque, the president of the northeast-based consulting firm Innovative Natural Resource Solutions, LLC, put it in a recent issue of Northern Logger, the publication of the Northeastern Loggers’ Association: “With new ownership, there came a new mission for the property. The Forestland Group (TFG), the former owner of Connecticut Lakes Headwaters, was primarily in the business of ‘managing natural forests to deliver financial returns.’ Bluesource has a different mission than TFG, which is to be ‘the largest private forestland owner focused entirely on climate mitigation.’”

However, if the company decides not to log, it could devastating to the New Hampshire economy.

“Ramifications of this decision are huge for the local economy in and around Pittsburg, NH, where most of the property resides,” Levesque wrote. “For many years, three to five logging contractors have been harvesting on the property nearly full-time. At least for the time being, they will not be harvesting on this property. Can they find other harvesting work or will some of them go out of business?”

Levesque pointed out that two local mills have procured a significant amount of logs from the property, with both saying the new mission will hurt their operations and one being in a shutdown because they do not have enough logs to saw.

There’s also the loss of timber tax to the tax base to consider, as well as the loss of habitat for species, such as moose, that depend on recently cut areas.

Tracy reported that battle lines have been drawn, with Republican New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu saying the land is privately held and the owners can do what they want, but others arguing otherwise, pointing out that the state has “rights to the easement it paid for more than two decades ago.”

Even Democrats are saying that there is a significant state investment in a working forest model, Tracy wrote:  “The state and federal government and private fundraising paid more than $45 million two decades ago to protect the timberland from development and created plans for logging and recreation.”

The thing is, the easement contained restrictions to develop structures but nowhere did it specify maintenance of a working forest and did not require logging, though Levesque has said it was one of the purposes of the original easement because of logging’s central importance to the region’s economy.

The easement never envisioned a carbon credit market because it didn’t exist, Tracy and Levesque both report.

 And while Bluesource could engage in both logging and carbon sequestration, and did so for a while, the company has changed course, Levesque wrote.

“In 2022 and up until July of 2023, Bluesource continued harvesting timber and selling carbon,” he wrote. “In July of 2023, they announced that they would be curtailing all logging on the property in lieu of selling carbon for the rest of the year due to the decrease in timber prices we’ve recently seen in most of the US this year. Bluesource would make more money selling carbon than selling timber.”

Meanwhile, the attorney general of New Hampshire is looking into the legal requirements of the easement and a slew of proposed bill are being debated in the legislature. Schienebeck says none of it had to happen.

“This can be avoided when clear expectations are discussed and put in place prior to any money exchanging hands,” he said.

Many states emphasize the importance of explicit language in an easement and that, as the state of South Carolina cautions, “all reserved rights to implement forestry practices need to be clearly defined to avoid misinterpretation and practice restrictions. Reserved rights for forestry practices may include timber harvests, reforestation, road construction, intermediate stand operations, and sources of generated income other than timber harvests such as pine straw raking, hunt leases, and recreation.”

That has become even more important in an era when, as Schienebeck points out, federal priorities have shifted — and perhaps bureaucratic interpretation has subverted the language of the statute. In any event, in the Forest Legacy Program, ill-defined “ecological values,” aesthetic qualities, and historical and cultural resources clearly trump forest management and timber production as priorities.

Given the lack of any real definition of a working forest in the Pelican River documents, and of the volume of timber to extract, critics fear the same thing could happen in northern Wisconsin as happened in New Hampshire, namely, the easement could one day transform the working Pelican River forest into a carbon bank or other format — perhaps one not now known — that precludes timber harvesting and management in the name of protecting “ecological values” and promoting climate mitigation.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.