To understand the Northern Forest today, you need to know a bit about its past.
Northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York comprise one of the most densely forested regions in the country, and the region’s economy boomed on timber harvesting and paper making for nearly 200 years.
In the 1980s, though, the pressures of a global economy and rising land values brought two drastic changes. Major corporate landowners and manufacturers left the region, and the land became — for the first time — valued for development.
One famous land sale put the region on the map — literally. In 1988, Diamond International publicly offered almost a million acres of forestland for sale. This reversed the norm of one forest product company quietly selling its land to another and raised concerns about the forest being sold in smaller pieces, fragmenting ownership and management and undermining both its ecological health and economic productivity.
The governors of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York commissioned a joint study of the potential impact of these changes, and Congress swiftly followed by creating the Northern Forest Lands Council to research the issues and make recommendations to lawmakers.