So, this is the talk about how we're trying
to practically implement a lot of the stuff
that's been talked about today.
So, as we said, I'm a Senior Staff Scientist
with the Appalachian Mountain Club,
based out of Pinkham Notch in New Hampshire.
So we're talking about Maine.
If you don't know, the AMC is the nation's
oldest conservation and recreation organization
founded in 1876.
Headquartered in Boston.
Our focus area is primarily the Northern Appalachian region.
What became our Maine Woods Initiative
began over 20 years ago with the primary focus
of creating a new backcountry recreational destination.
We're probably most widely known for our trail work
and our series of White Mountain huts.
We have not been a large landowner in the past,
and we did not go into this intending
to be a large landowner, but that's the way it's worked out
and it's been a lot of fun.
So we had, again, our goals were
to have a backcountry recreational destination,
establish large ecologic reserves,
practice sustainable forestry,
and strong community partnerships
with the surrounding towns,
most notably Greenville and that area.
So over the last 20 years,
our ownership in the 100-Mile Wilderness region
east of Moosehead Lake and south of Baxter,
has grown to 114,000 acres in seven different parcels.
It was 20 years ago this month that we acquired...
Whoops, whoops, back here.
Acquired our first parcel out of Iron Works.
Our most recent parcel, Barnard North,
was just a couple of months ago.
So we have continued to add lands
and we have another 15,000 acres under agreement
while we raise the money.
So, and again, the regional context
we're the southern anchor of a 60 mile long corridor
of a fee owned land extending up to Baxter State Park
and Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.
Over half of this land is managed as reserve wilderness.
Okay, now this was heavily harvested industrial land,
but we did acquire some nice places.
We acquired a lot more that looked like this.
We acquired a lot of baby forest, a lot of degraded,
hydrated, heavily cut over forest.
Some of it had been treated well, a lot of it had not.
So we are involved in a long-term restoration project
on these, again, these lands.
And our goal is aimed at the long-term restoration
of this landscape to a more natural, mature, high carbon
and resilient forest through a combination of reserves
and conservative management.
And this is our, essentially our management zoning map.
But we don't have,
we're just starting planning on the Barnard forest,
but about 28% is in reserve.
About 54% is open for timber management.
And we have been doing harvesting every year
since we first acquired the property in 2003.
Most of the harvesting has been concentrated
on the KIW property, the Roach Ponds,
which was very heavily harvested by
previous owners on creek.
I'll say no names.
So we've just really started there about six years ago
and we're just getting started on
the Pleasant Rivers Forest.
So, there's been a lot of materials have come out recently.
We've heard talk about this.
Some of the people at this conference have been involved in
writing some of this guidelines
for how you practice climate friendly
or climate resilient forestry.
And lot of these recommendations,
to me, are really just the latest iteration
of ecological forestry of tradition that goes back,
behold and beyond,
older trees, big trees, dead wood, structural complexity,
species diversity, and the like.
So, you know, what we're doing is nothing new.
We are following the footsteps
of a long tradition of ecological forestry.
And I like to say it's amazing
what you can do when you take profit motive out of it.
Okay, so in our early years, our priority,
we had a lot of degraded stands heavy to beech
heavy to beech bark disease.
Typical, so a lot of these were salvage harvests
and the typical commercial regime
would be a complete overstory removal.
We did not wanna create more young, even age stands,
so we put a high priority on restoration.
And again, higher value or long-live species.
We generally do not harvest white pine.
It's a limited component that we wanna increase.
You know what limited good growing stock was there,
barge trees and you know, the typical
snags and wildlife trees.
Okay, this is an early harvest
where we pretty much did a complete overstory removal,
but left all the yellow birch,
which was about 10% of the overstory.
Again, to start to create some vertical diversity
and a long-term source of future large trees and density.
Again, another harvest where yellow birch
and red spruce were retained.
Again, some of these will be harvested in future harvests.
Some of 'em will be, you know, left to live out a long
and hopefully happy life.
Okay, because of our focus on improving quality
and restoring these degraded stands.
In our early years about 90% of what we harvested
was hardwood pulp.
And we're very fortunate that still having access
to pulpwood markets.
I know a lot of places in New England
don't have that luxury
and doing this type of forestry
becomes economically much more challenging
'cause you have no way to get rid of,
you know, the dead wood,
I mean the low grade wood
in any kind of economically reasonable way.
Okay, we have a smaller component of good quality stands.
And when we get in these, our goal is to maintain them
as mature stands through primarily a deferred
or continuous cover shelterwood approach.
We never want to do complete overstory removals.
This is an initial shelterwood entry or thinning,
whatever you wanna call it.
And that's a high quality hardwood stand.
And again, the goal is to, you know,
promote and release regeneration
while maintaining a more mature forest condition.
Again, another stand that had a good component of white pine
and it had good multiple age class structure,
was thinned out, promote some regeneration and openings,
promote the development of larger trees.
And again, but when we have these,
these stands that are closer to where we want them to be,
we wanna maintain them in that condition.
But again, even when we're operating
in these high quality stands,
still probably 2/3 of what we harvested
was low grade material.
Very much a leave the best
and take the rest kind of strategy.
Nothing new, I learned that
in forestry school 40 years ago.
Also doing some different kinds of restoration.
On one of our properties,
the Roach Ponds property, the highest value species,
I mean the highest volume species with red pine,
which was all in plantations,
35, 40 years old, low quality.
So we're working to remove these
in like either two or three stage harvests
and allow natural regeneration
to restore a more natural species
composition in these areas.
[Student] What do you get for regen?
[Instructor] These are mostly hardwood sites,
so typical northern hardwoods, probably all are beech.
[Student] What's your strategy
for getting rid of the beech?
[Instructor] Well, we talked a little bit about that.
We don't have a strategy for getting rid of it.
We're not gonna get rid of it.
The question is, can we minimize it
and promote other species?
And that's what we're trying to do a lot
of now is this early intervention silviculture.
Again, we have lots of even age sapling
and small pole stands
and we're trying to get in and treat these stands
as quickly, you know, as early as we can
both to start to create some more vertical diversity,
but also to start concentrating growth
on the best trees as early as we can.
You know, these are the trees that will, you know,
more likely to form saw logs,
which are more likely to have long-term carbon storage
and harvested wood products.
So, and again, minimizing, you know,
mortality and carbon loss from self thinning.
You know, if you've got a three inch tree
that's gonna die when it's six inches and fall over
and we release pretty quickly, might as well get it out
of there now and get that additional growth
that would've died onto better trees.
Okay, so pre-commercial
and early commercial thinning of spruce-fir stands.
We have a lot of even-age, post budworm stands
that we're getting into.
This is nothing atypical about this.
A lot of the commercial landowners
do this similar type of management.
But we're also doing a lot of early,
starting to get into early intervention
in a lot of hardwood stands.
Again, these are stands that are heavy to beech
but may have a component of sugar maple, yellow birch.
So we're doing crop tree releases in these.
We're not trying to thin, you know,
we don't want to thin out,
you know, areas that are mostly beech,
but try to identify those scattered crop trees
and get the growth going on those.
We've been very fortunate to be able to get a lot
of natural resources, conservation service funding
to do this type of improvement work.
Oh, and actually before I get there,
one other thing I don't have a slide for,
we're also starting to get into some restoration planting,
degraded, sustained understock stands
where regeneration has been inhibited by,
you know, grass understories.
So we're starting to do some scarification
and enrichment planting and those stands.
That's kind of a new initiative.
So we do have some results
for our two earliest properties, KIW and Roach Ponds.
We have timber inventories from both 2010 and 2020.
And they're showing some pretty good progress
in things like 27% increase in basal area,
30% increase in timber volume.
These are misleading
'cause a lot of this is due in growth into the pole
from saplings into poles,
so it's not pure growth.
This is the interesting one, larger diameter trees.
Again, even on the KIW tract
where we've been harvesting every year,
pretty good increase in large diameter trees
because those are the ones we're leaving alone.
Overall, again, just in 10 years,
we've had a 25% increase in large diameter trees
in our timber management area.
The carbon stocking we estimate
in our timber management area in just 10 years
has increased 17%.
The carbon stocking in one of our reserves
based on two inventories across the same place,
has increased 19% in just 10 years.
These are stands that are,
for the most part, in the really rapid growth phase.
So they will continue this level of growth
for quite some time.
In terms of the future, you know, we have modeling,
we work with Huber Resources, okay.
-Thank you. -Huber Resources
is our consulting manager.
They do our our timber modeling,
Right now, we're harvesting about 40%
of growth within our timber management area.
And that's gonna,
we're gonna continue harvesting less than growth
for probably the next 40 years.
Again, we are sort of in the first decade
of a 50 year transition
from a low carbon, low volume forest
to a high carbon, high volume forest.
So again, we'll begin harvesting continual,
much less than growth for the next half century,
resulting in an expected
or projected increase in stocking
from about the current 17 quarts an acre to about 25, 27,
which is the level we'd like to maintain it at.
That's a level that's more consistent
with a lot of public lands,
Maine state and it's national forest,
maybe even more than that.
The interesting thing is, over this half century,
our allowable harvest also doubles, you know,
in terms of deferred gratification.
Higher volume forest
be able to support a higher level of harvest.
Whether we'll actually harvest at that level in the future,
you know, is unclear.
But again, I think this shows some of the benefits
of a conservative management approach that creates
a more ecologic, I would say more natural forest,
a more resilient forest, a higher carbon forest,
but also a forest that can continue
to support the production of higher quality wood products
that lead to long-term carbon storage
and manufactured projects.
To get close, we also have four carbon projects,
four forest carbon projects on our land.
Two of them we initiated, two of em were in progress
or finished on lands we acquired.
These provide an important source of revenue.
Given our conservative approach,
harvesting much less in growth,
omit, that's okay,
you know, this is of significant financial sacrifice
in terms of the revenue, timber revenue
that could have potentially been obtained off these lands.
The carbon revenues help to subsidize that transition.
They make up for some of our lost revenue
from this conservative harvesting regime.
That's exactly what they were supposed to do.
Some of our revenues have been put into
additional land acquisitions,
you know, have help support some of these land acquisitions.
But in the future we'll be putting the revenue
from our carbon projects into a dedicated fund
to support both land acquisition
and organizational emissions reductions activities
at our facilities.
If anyone's ever been to the Highland Center
in Crawford Notch,
that is our biggest carbon emitting facility.
So trying to make some improvements there
to reduce those emissions.
And you get by there, we just put in a new solar,
our new solar array out on the (indistinct).
So, and again, we will also be retiring
some of these credits as internal offsets
to offset our own organizational carbon footprint.
So, you know, it's almost like a full circle type of thing
where conservative management, you know,
creates not only an ecologically more sustainable forest,
but provides revenue to improve, you know,
sort of the climate change impacts of our own organization.
So, and that's it.
I think I just about made my time.
Question?
[Student] Do you think the absence of those carbon credits
that you could use as revenue to offset the cost
of the activities, the stewardship activities
you're engaged in,
would you be able to do that financially?
We would.
In fact, the carbon carbon projects did not lead
to any change in management.
They are basically consistent with what we are doing.
So it would be, it would be feasible,
but it would diminish a lot of the other things we could do.
It might diminish our ability to acquire additional lands.
We obviously couldn't put revenues into some of these,
you know, organizational projects.
But I think our management would be the same.
[Student] So it would cover like
the big commercial treatments, the plantings.
Well those things are being funded primarily by NRCS.
-As a cost share or? -Well, yeah, as a cost share.
You know, it might be that some of those things,
some of those less economically feasible things
we might have to scale back on, so.
[Student] May I just ask a follow up question on that?
-Sure. -Do you know,
do you sense that there's a workforce shortage
for some of those pre-commercial treatments, the plantings?
Or, I don't know if Hubbert does, you know,
has contractors that they work with.
So far we've, you know, we haven't run into that.
I'm actually not on the operations side,
so I'm not hiring the contractors
or dealing with those issues.
Steve Tatko, normally the manager up, would be the one.
I haven't heard anything that
that's been an issue for us yet.
[Student 2] In your management plans,
do you have contingency plans
for mass die off of each due to beech leaf disease?
We're aware of it.
I don't know if it's hit us yet or that we've noticed it.
Do we have contingency plans?
I mean our basic approach is, you know,
if for whatever reason beech dies out,
I mean we're gonna lose ash.
We don't have emerald ash borer yet.
You know, it's a minor, but you know,
few percent of our stocking.
We're gonna lose that at some point in the not too,
we don't have any contingency plans
necessarily to release that.
We're basically going to deal with the forest
that nature gives us and manage it as best we can.
So again, some enhancement activities,
some enhancement planting of degraded stands.
But I don't know, I'm not sure what we have
for contingency plans in terms
of like planting some other species
to replace, you know, ash.
[Assistant] I do think we have some online,
-an online question for you. -Okay.
[Helper] This is coming from Kelsey McBlush.
This seems like a lot of management over a large area.
How do you prioritize your different activities,
plantation restoration, early intervention,
pre-commercial thinning?
Is it based on working in one particular parcel
or work that foresters, contractors are interested in?
Well, no, we work with Huber on our,
you know, the company to implement our managed plan.
And early on it was clear that salvaging beech mortality
was the priority.
So those were the first,
the first stands for the first decade,
we were pretty much in degraded hardwood stands.
We've worked through most of those.
You know, we're getting into some higher quality stands,
but now we have a large number of these young,
even age stands.
Budworm areas, spruce-fir stands
or some hardwood stands that were created
by previous clear cuts.
So we're shifting, you know,
the priority is shifting to, you know, to try to get in
and treat those as early as possible.
So our priorities have been set primarily by the condition
of the forest and what types of stands need treatment,
you know, without delay,
you know, and which stands could you know,
could we leave alone for another 10 or 15 years
before we began.
[Student] In the plots or areas that you're managing
more for regeneration,
are you seeing when you're opening up the canopy
any invasive species coming in and taking over?
Or are you having problems with deer browse?
We are lucky that neither
of those issues are major problems.
Invasive species have not become a major issue
in that part of, you know, northern New England.
Within the forest, you know, we keep an eye out
for knotweed, Japanese knotweed
and things like that.
But we don't have problems with like oriental bittersweet
or buckthorn or those kinds of things
that you have in southern New Hampshire.
And also the deer densities are not high enough
to create the kinds of problems
that you have in other places.
So we're very lucky in that capacity.
[Student 2] If the pulpwood market were to shrink
or disappear, how would that change
-your management approaches? -Well, they would,
it would limit it a lot
because obviously getting rid of this low grade wood
is critical to what we're trying to do.
That's one thing about the carbon projects
is that they're kind of a hedge,
you know, they're counter cyclic.
If the pulpwood markets go away,
we harvest less, but we accumulate and sell more carbon.
You know, carbon prices are still too low
to make totally make up the difference.
But yeah, if all the pulpwood market went away,
we'd have some serious issues, as you know many people do.
[Student] I guess if or if and how,
like have you taken into consideration
individual pre-species vulnerability
to climate change in your management approach?
Thinking like certain species are gonna do well,
others not so much.
Well we do certainly,
like white pine being the example.
That's one we project to be a climate change winner.
Where we have it, we wanna keep it.
I call it our climate adaptation seed source.
So we try to maintain that.
Red oak is very limited on our property.
It's a little more common on some of our new ones.
That's ones we'll probably treat the same way.
I asked a question of Cody D.
in the last one about planting red spruce
'cause that's supposed to be a climate change loser,
but he's more optimistic about that.
We're actually, when I talked about
that restoration planting,
it's primarily gonna be red spruce and pine.
Hardwood species, you know,
what will happen, what will happen,
and we will deal with the species we have.
We haven't been targeting, I mean we haven't been,
when we get into a stand with a lot of mature ash,
we probably will take that out,
rather than let it see a die in five or 10 years.
(multiple people speaking)