At quick glance, the aerial view of the Maine forest products industry looks pretty much the same now as it did 20 years ago. First and foremost are the 17.6 million acres of forest that comprise 89% of the state’s total acreage, making Maine the most heavily forested state in the country. The U.S. Forest Service’s 2012 tree census reported 24 billion trees of at least an inch diameter growing on all those acres — an increase of 6.3% since 2007 and the equivalent of 18,688 trees for each of the state’s 1.3 million residents. For the past 22 years, Maine has harvested an average of 6.7 million cords each year.
Then and now, no question about it, Maine’s forest products industry is a major sector in the state’s economy, with its current economic impact pegged at $8 billion. Although no one questions that Maine’s forest products industry is a major business sector, it would be a mistake to conclude from a quick aerial view that not much has changed over the past 20 years. “This is not your grandfather’s forest products industry anymore, or even your father’s,” says Patrick Strauch, executive director of the Maine Forest Products Council since 2004.
On every front — employment, land ownership, forest management practices and how all those harvested trees are being used — Maine’s forest product industry has undergone sweeping changes in the past 20 years. Fewer loggers harvest more wood. The number of paper mill workers is less than one third what it was in the 1980s, but the output per worker has more than doubled. New technology and greater mechanization have dramatically increased productivity. And despite significant land ownership changes during the last 20 years, conservation easements and third-party audits have helped to keep those 17.6 million acres a working forest that also can be used for recreation and provide habitat for moose, deer, bear, Canada lynx and hundreds of bird species and other wildlife.
Fresh out of the University of Maine’s forestry program, Strauch came into the industry in the early 1980s at the tail-end of the state’s last spruce budworm epidemic, which killed 20 million to 25 million cords of spruce-fir trees in Maine between the 1970s and late 1980s, resulting in a 31% decline in those inventories. The epidemic caused the major forestland owners to spray intensively in an effort to curb the infestation; when that didn’t work, they engaged in extensive rolling clearcuts to capture as much value out of hundreds of thousands of dead or dying trees as possible.
From MaineBiz: https://www.mainebiz.biz/article/20140908/CURRENTEDITION/309049989/1088