Council recommends sustaining Northern Forest health, reinvigorating rural economies

Durham, NH—The Northern Forest Lands Council (NFLC) issued a report today recommending actions to conserve the Northern Forest and reinvigorate the surrounding rural communities’ economies in northern New England and New York.

The report, the Northern Forest Lands Council 10th Anniversary Forum, is an update of an original $5 million study in 1994 called Finding Common Ground: Conserving the Northern Forest. The 2005 update made four recommendations:

• invest public and private resources to reinvigorate the rural forest economies
• continue conservation an efforts
• support private forest landowners in practicing sustainable forest management and good stewardship while encouraging recreational public access
• collaborate with stakeholders and partners to realize these recommendations.

The NFLC Forum is a 24-member group sponsored by the North East State Foresters Association (NEFA) and includes representatives from a diverse group of interests, from conservation groups to recreational enthusiasts and timber managers. The USDA Forest Service State & Private Forestry, the Baskahegan Co., HuberResources Corp. and LandVest funded the forum.

In purely economic terms, the Northern Forest in Maine, New York, New Hampshire and Vermont represents industries with annual revenues totaling almost $20 billion. About $15 billion of the annual revenues come from the forest products industry. Another $4 billion is generated by the recreation and tourism industries based on the forests in the region. The forum acknowledged that increasingly stiff competition from other states and other countries across the globe is viewed as the most significant economic threat to the local forest products industry. Some countries have an economic advantage due to less stringent environmental regulations. “To remain competitive, these (domestic forest product) industries have consolidated production in the most efficient manufacturing facilities, invested in the most efficient production technology and sold their non-strategic assets,” said NFLC Executive Director Charles Levesque. Some mills closed their doors and others laid off workers in recent years. Levesque added, in order to make the local forest products industry more competitive “We must reduce energy and other costs further and distinguish our products in the global market place,” he said.