By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer With not quite 14,000 acres, the University Forests aren’t in the big leagues of Maine forestland owners. No Irving Woodlands or Plum Creek Timber Co, certainly. But with dozens of parcels scattered the length and breadth of Maine, it’s not exactly small time either. Some of the…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer Stand on almost any hill in Maine, any mountaintop, and you’ll see forest, a blanket of trees. There are rivers, yes. Roads, villages, signs of civilization. But overall it seems to be a world of trees. It is forest that created the Maine mystique. And forest…
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…
Educating lawmakers and public about one of Maine’s biggest industries When the Maine Legislature is in session Patrick J. Strauch spends a lot of his time at the state Capitol. The executive director of the Maine Forest Products Council, Strauch talks to legislators and testifies before committees. Not just the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry…
New composites, nanocellulose coatings, liquid fuels are on the horizon By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer Dwane Hutto is obviously enjoying himself. He has just described a fairly complicated chemical process that started with ground up trees and produced a dark liquid in a vial that he holds high so everyone can see…
A venerable paper mill is the world leader in release papers By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer The names paper manufacturers give to the printing and writing papers that most people come across in their regular workday can be, well, a little boring. They’re heavy on words like premium, or gold, gloss…
These parcels aren’t as well known as the state’s parks, but that’s changing By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer When most people think about public lands in Maine, they think state parks like Mt. Blue or Two Lights. Or maybe Baxter State Park and Katahdin. Acadia National Park, maybe. But there is a…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer You’re driving down a Maine highway, following a logging truck that’s teetering and swaying with a load of logs, belching diesel fumes, and, because your cell phone fell down between the seats, you have time to speculate about where those logs might be going. …
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer Watching the edger-optimizer at Robbins Lumber Co.’s pine mill in Searsmont induces, first, a gee whiz reaction at the sheer, well, efficiency of it, followed by a sort of hypnotic state. Whoosh . . . a board or boards shoots out of the center, the guides shifting…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer As a young boy in the 1940s Richard Nadeau frequently spent time in the remote lumber camps of northwestern Maine with his dad, who worked as a crew boss. While the men cut and limbed trees, Nadeau saw the deep woods, the towering spruce and fir, the…
