With new techniques, landowners shape forests for maximum carbon storage
By Jan DeBlieu
May 3, 2025
EXCERPTS
Steve Tatko squatted next to the cut end of a red spruce trunk lying in a stack with other felled trees. Eight inches in diameter, its bark was a deep red-brown. Its center held tiny rings of varying widths, pale yellow alternating with a rich sienna. Tatko pointed to some narrow rings only a half inch from the center.
“It’s possible this tree was seventy-five years old when these were formed,” he said. “And see this thinning?” He indicated an area where the rings squeezed tightly together. “That would have been the spruce budworm outbreak.”
Tatko oversees land management and forestry operations for the Appalachian Mountain Club in Maine, including its timber management project in the contiguous Piscataquis County forest it calls the 100-Mile Wilderness.
On a cloudy late January day, he was walking through a grove by the headwaters of the Pleasant River’s west branch, off the old site of the Katahdin Iron Works.
Over the course of several years AMC has systematically restored the river’s channels, which were badly scoured by log drives before the Clean Water Act barred them in the early 1970s. The work included stabilizing shorelines and replacing culverts, all to repair the health of waters that serve as the Atlantic salmon’s most inland spawning grounds.
The biological health of rivers and streams depends on the forests surrounding them, and much of AMC’s holdings were cut hard by previous owners. Those stands grew back so packed with small trees that few can thrive. “We’re cutting the junk now so long after I retire there will be good forests here,” Tatko said......................
...........................A map of New England’s woodlands on the AMC website shows deep green woodlands with rich carbon storage potential through much of the region. In Maine, though, the forest cover is noticeably younger and thinner.
The latest U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis project estimates that northern Maine’s average carbon stocking is only about 19 metric tons per acre, though the state’s eight southern counties hold stocks averaging 27 tons per acre. Other New England States have an average carbon stocking per acre of between 29 and 35 metric tons.
https://themainemonitor.org/forestry-carbon-storage/
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Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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