By JOE RANKIN Forests for Maine’s Future Writer What’s not to like about the eastern white pine? A majestic tree. Long-lived. Producer of clear, easily-worked, durable lumber that takes stain well, glues up nicely, is moderately priced, readily available. And, it is one of those trees that responds predictably and readily to a handful of…
Factors at play today will help create the woods of the 22nd century By JOE RANKIN Forests for Maine’s Future Writer When Verso Paper Co. announced the impending closure of its faltering Bucksport paper mill and the loss of 500 jobs, workers were stunned and a collective groan of dismay rippled through Maine’s forest products…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer In a spruce-fir forest north of Bangor tall towers rise above the treetops, studded with instruments measuring everything from wind to carbon dioxide and methane. Another forest to the southeast gets regular doses of fertilizer while a patch nearby does not. In another chunk of forest on…
The effort to restore the American chestnut tree to Maine’s forest By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer The crew moves across the field, setting fiberglass poles, threading on plastic insulators, and stringing thick Fencing the Winthrop seed orchard (Photo: The Rankin File)black and white polywire around an orchard of tiny trees growing…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer Everyone who walks in the Maine woods has a story about wildlife — the deer that bounded through the clearing; the moose high-stepping onto the trail; the mother turkey leading a batch of poults through shafts of sunlight; pileated woodpeckers dancing on a downed log. But they’ve…
The Nature Conservancy blends conservation, logging in northern Maine The Nature Conservancy owns a lot of land in Maine: some 75 preserves covering about 300,000 acres. They range from isolated suburban preserves to large wetland complexes, small coastal islands to fire-adapted Paddling the Upper St. John River (Photo: TNC)shrublands, and the largest area of old growth…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer It was a hot July day in the 1970s. Dave Struble was back home in Island Falls, on a day off from his job as a regional entomologist for the Maine Forest Service. But it was too hot to do much, and he suggested to his…
There are many forest types in the Pine Tree State By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer The Maine Woods. Writers use the phrase all the time. As though the entire state was covered with a blanket of spruce and fir and pine, with some maples thrown in. But as anyone who has walked…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer For trees, the forest is truly a jungle. First there’s the Olympic-scale intense competition for food and sunlight. Everyone straining for those life-giving photons, a silent stems-and-branches brawl. And it can go on for decades, centuries. In fact, it’s never really over. The…
July 2011 By Joe RankinForests for Maine’s Future Writer On a recent summer day, while showing a visitor around the Penobscot Experimental Forest, the U.S. Forest Service’s Laura Kenefic and Robert Seymour, a University of Maine professor of silviculture, came across an old friend. Prone on the forest floor, it was slowly decaying into the…
