20 years later: Few improvements in Maine forests since publication of landmark book

摘要

This year, 2012, is the 20th anniversary of the publication of "Beyond the Beauty Strip: Saving What's Left of Our Forests" (BTBS). Although the book was mostly about Maine, where I live, 1 got a lot of response from people in the Maritimes. We sharethe same Acadian forest type, we share the Spruce budworm, and we even shared some of the same industrial landowners. In the book I pointed out such trends as the sale of big land parcels, heavy cutting and short rotations on industry-owned lands, and increasing mechanization. These trends in the forest were leading to: increasing par-celizations; declining numbers of forest jobs; decreasing forest industry tax revenues to the state and towns; increasing dominance of forest land by seedlings and saplings; and decreasing representation of late-successional and old-growth habitat.