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 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…
Fresh from the Woods The Underground Forest April 2011 By Joe Rankin Walking in the forest you are bathed in sounds, sights, smells – chirping of birds, sighing of the wind in the branches, flashes of light off the leaves, warmth of sun on your skin, the skittering of tiny creatures in the underbrush. There’s peace…
