Exemplary Forestry for the Acadian Forest
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Exemplary Forestry is a forest management approach created by New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) that prioritizes forests’ long-term health and outlines the highest standards of sustainability currently available to the region’s forest owners for three key goals: enhancing the role forests can play to mitigate climate change, improving wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and growing and harvesting more sustainably produced wood.
Each set of Exemplary Forestry standards is tailored to the conditions of a particular forest region or forest type.
NEFF created its first set of standards for the Acadian Forest—a broad band of forestlands that sweeps across northern New England and then up into Canada—both because of the depth of experience NEFF staff has there and because it is home to some of the most extensive commercial forest harvesting in the northeastern U.S.
NEFF Senior Forest Science and Policy Fellow Alec Giffin and NEFF Executive Director Bob Perschel coauthored the project’s final 27-page report, “Exemplary Forestry for the 21st Century: Managing the Acadian Forest for Bird’s Feet and Board Feet at a Landscape Scale.” This was the culmination of a two-year process of research and analysis. The full report is available here.
NEFF has conserved 9,150 acres in Downeast Maine through ownership, which means NEFF can now put the Acadian standards to work on its own large-scale forest parcels in the Acadian Forest Region.
The Central and Transition Hardwoods standards call for managing the forested landscape for three groups of umbrella wildlife species, or wild animals whose habitat needs encompass the needs of many other species. The groups are associated with three kinds of habitat—mature interior forest, early successional forest, and edge and transition-stage forest—and include a delightful range of animals. The new standards branch out into bats, bees and birds in addition to four-footed mammals.
The standards account for the five most common and economically important forest types in the Central and Transition Hardwoods region: Oak-Hickory, White Pine, Oak-Pine, Hemlock and Lowland/Riparian Hardwood. Hardwood forest types play a bigger role in NEFF’s more southerly Exemplary Forestry standards because southern New England represents the transition area between the Acadian Spruce-Fir forests to the north and the deciduous (hardwood) forests to the south.
NEFF’s Acadian Exemplary Forestry habitat standards are based on the needs of two wide-ranging species of the Acadian Forest—the American Marten and Canada Lynx.
Snowshoe Hares’ preferred habitat is young and dense softwood forests, and where Snowshoe Hares go, Canada Lynx follow. In northern New England, this type of forest forms primarily as regeneration following harvests or large-scale natural disturbances. In contrast to lynx, marten need large tracts of forest including blocks of mature and closed canopy stands with travel corridors between them, and their preferred habitat combined with that of the lynx represents a wide range of forest ecosystems. Forests that are managed to protect the habitat of both species will collectively benefit more than 75 percent of other forest mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.
NEFF scientists assessed the habitat needs of the vertebrate wildlife native to the region, and then compared them with an analysis of the actual habitats that currently exist. This revealed that existing conditions do not match well with the recommendations of forest science. The Exemplary Forestry standards are intended to correct the imbalance between needed and existing habitats, and then to maintain the needed habitats into the future.
Exemplary Forestry takes a three-pronged approach to climate change.
Implementing Exemplary Forestry leads to older, more diverse forests with a mix of tree age classes, which research suggests makes the forests more resilient to climate change’s impacts and better able to adapt to them. This ensures that New England’s forests will continue to store carbon and provide other ecological benefits over the long term, even as the climate changes. On NEFF lands, tailored management plans also account for each forest’s climate-related needs.
Forests maintain a high volume of wood under Exemplary Forest management, which increases the amount of carbon the forest can store. For example, an Exemplary Forestry approach in northern Maine would maintain about 25 cords of wood per acre, while current levels in northwestern Maine average only about 15 cords per acre.
The following real-world examples from NEFF properties illustrate that it is possible, through more intensive forest management, to simultaneously increase stocking in the forest while continuing to accomplish harvest over several decades. In each case, stocking increased over a 30-year period. In some cases, this was in conjunction with substantial harvesting (at least an average of one-third of a cord per acre per year), while in a few cases the harvest volume was not as significant, but the increase in stocking could have accommodated a greater harvest volume if desired (while still continuing to increase stocking over time).
Exemplary Forestry keeps as much carbon in the forest as possible while producing wood for engineered timber products that can safely substitute for steel and concrete in building construction. The energy-intensive production processes for steel and concrete emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases, and each material is also reliant on mining for components.
Exemplary Forestry keeps as much carbon in the forest as possible while producing wood for engineered timber products that can safely substitute for steel and concrete in building construction. The energy-intensive production processes for steel and concrete emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases, and each material is also reliant on mining for components.
Increasing wood production and harvesting under Exemplary Forest management in turn benefits rural economies tied to the forest products industry, provides reliable and modest financial returns to landowners, and keeps private land forested thanks in part to those financial returns—landowners who make revenue from timber have less reason to sell their land for development.
NEFF’s forestry experts have crafted a one-page set of Acadian Forest Exemplary Forestry standards and metrics, and the standards and metrics specific to tree growth and wood production are included below. The one-page overview also describes how the standards should be implemented, and is complemented by NEFF’s full 27-page report, “Exemplary Forestry for the 21st Century: Managing the Acadian Forest for Bird’s Feet and Board Feet at a Landscape Scale.”
