Northern NH (Pittsburg) is split into two watersheds, The former Brown Company along with Dartmouth owned the Magalloway watershed which drained the east side of NH and the Connecticut River Lumber company owned the Connecticut River watershed to the west. The CRL land went through a couple of owners before being "protected' by the state and conservation groups as a mix of high value conservation lands and lands that were to be sustainably logged. At the time, it was thought to be way of supporting the remains of the NH timber industry but turns a recent sale to of the timberlands to Bluesource Sustainable means the law of unintended consequences has come to roost. Effectively the entire area is going to turn into a carbon sequestration project for out of state interests. The towns and several sawmills depend on forestry so this pulls the rug from under their feet. The road system used by hikers and other recreationalists is maintained by forestry dollars so odd are access will be reduced.
https://indepthnh.org/2023/08/08/pa...orth-country-forestry-land-to-carbon-credits/
This is not new to region, large swaths of Vermont and blocks of Maine are also being sold into carbon sequestration projects. The tough part is that the definition and rules of carbon sequestration are not necessarily agreed upon at this point, so some programs target new growth while others target old growth. The problem is that much of the Northern NH is a spruce fir mix that goes through natural predation cycles. The trees tend to be large monocultures that mature at the relatively same time. A natural predator, the spruce budworm (that actually prefers firs) are always in the ecology but when the stands get over mature the budworm population explodes and wipes out the forest. Quebec has been in epidemic stage for a couple of years and to date it really has not hit the bordering states but the forest management approach since the last epidemic in the seventies, the goal has been to keep woods cut while the trees are still healthy to avoid them going into decline and bringing in another epidemic, which will inevitably cause a major carbon release.
https://indepthnh.org/2023/08/08/pa...orth-country-forestry-land-to-carbon-credits/
This is not new to region, large swaths of Vermont and blocks of Maine are also being sold into carbon sequestration projects. The tough part is that the definition and rules of carbon sequestration are not necessarily agreed upon at this point, so some programs target new growth while others target old growth. The problem is that much of the Northern NH is a spruce fir mix that goes through natural predation cycles. The trees tend to be large monocultures that mature at the relatively same time. A natural predator, the spruce budworm (that actually prefers firs) are always in the ecology but when the stands get over mature the budworm population explodes and wipes out the forest. Quebec has been in epidemic stage for a couple of years and to date it really has not hit the bordering states but the forest management approach since the last epidemic in the seventies, the goal has been to keep woods cut while the trees are still healthy to avoid them going into decline and bringing in another epidemic, which will inevitably cause a major carbon release.
