Ninety percent of Maine is forested, most of which is privately owned, and that forested landscape is integral to the Maine way of life.
Whether you live, own a camp, or vacation here, chances are the state’s rugged and natural beauty first attracted you to Maine. Maine’s woods and waters provide residents and visitors with opportunities to hike forested trails, canoe scenic waterways, and fish remote ponds. These same woods and waters sustain thousands of jobs in the logging and forest products industries while conserving important fish and wildlife habitat and open space.
The Forest Society of Maine is working to conserve the recreational, economic, ecological, and cultural values that define why we live, work, and play in Maine.
FSM recognizes the significant role that private ownership and management has played and will continue to play in Maine’s North Woods. The primary reason this great expanse of forestland remains intact is due to a long history of private ownership. The economic benefit of owning managed forests is an incentive for forestland to remain undeveloped, providing the array of values associated with the North Woods. After more than a century of remarkably stable ownership and management, global economic forces are affecting landowners and the forest products industry like never before. For example, more than 80% of Maine’s 12 million acres of North Woods have changed hands in the past 20 years, sometimes two or three times. While most of these lands remain as well managed forests, these unprecedented changes bring uncertainty about the future of this remarkable expanse of forest – the largest east of the Rocky Mountains.
FSM was created to provide conservation options to private landowners to help keep these forests as forests.
