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Bright spots in Maine’s forest products industry

New mills, investments and products help offset losses in some sectors By JOE RANKIN Forests for Maine’s Future Writer When Verso Paper Co. executives announced in October that the Bucksport paper mill would be closing Dec. 1, it sparked a familiar round: how to cope with the loss of tax revenue and the loss of…

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Aliens in the Maine woods

Terrestrial invasive plants can wreak havoc with forests By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer Licensed forester Jeff Williams does the usual things foresters do:  writes management plans, runs boundary lines, oversees harvests, lays out logging roads, marks trees. But more and more these days he’s having to deal with invasive forest plants. Pulling…

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Educating educators about the Maine woods

Teachers’ Tours provide a close up view of the forest and the forest economy    By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer Wayne Hapgood’s “ah ha! moment” came during a tour of a Pleasant River Lumber Co. sawmill. He was captivated by the computers, the optimizers, the automation that turned  softwood logs into lumber.  …

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Emerald ash borer: a voracious pest nears Maine

By Joe Ranki, Forests for Maine’s Future writer  November 2013 When the emerald ash borer arrives in Maine everyone will lose, but the state’s Native American tribes have more to lose than most. The ash is a valuable hardwood: straight, tall, with a beautiful open grain; producer of prime firewood. The three ash species that…

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Carbon offsets: A new forest ‘product’?

By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer Over the centuries the only way to make money if you owned a woodland was cut down the trees so they could be sold and turned into framing timbers, barrel staves, chariots, ship masts, charcoal, furniture, plywood or any of a gazillion and one other things. Now…