Department of Biology and the Program in Environmental Studies, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont 05753
On 23 September 1994, the gavel came down for the last time on the deliberations of the Northern Forest Lands Council. The work of the Council, which began in 1990 and ended four years and $4.5 million later, had the potential to influence the maintenance and restoration of biological integrity in a 26 million acre region of forested land in northern Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and the Adirondack Park and Tug Hill regions of New York. Yet compared to other regional conservation issues, such as that of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest or the tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, little awareness of the Northern Forest or the policy debate associated with it existed outside of the region. Indeed, even within the Northern Forest there was little awareness or understanding of the issue.
The reasons for this are, I believe, illustrative of the challenges conservation biologists face in integrating science into the policy arena and of why the professional conservation community needs to alter its approach to addressing regional conservation issues. My purpose here is to describe briefly the history of the Northern Forest policy debate, identify why it is of importance with respect to the preservation and restoration of threatened and endangered species, and explore why the process was a complete and utter failure.
Perhaps the single-most important natural aspect of the Northern Forest is the forests themselves. Two basic types of forests dominate the region: the spruce-fir forests of northern Maine and the northern hardwood (or maple-beech-birch) forests of New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York (Trombulak, 1994). In many places, spruce, fir, and northern hardwood species grow alongside one another and change along elevational gradients, indicating that these forest types are not unvarying units but general categories that commonly intergrade with one another.
But the Northern Forest is, in essence, a political region with little ecological coherence. The boundaries of the Northern Forest were drawn to include townships in these four states where forest-products industries contribute a large fraction of the local economy and to exclude townships with substantial amounts of federal public land. The spruce-fir and northern hardwood forests extend southward through the Green and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire, and are part of the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province of the Bailey-Kuchler system that stretches from Maine to Minnesota, yet these areas were not included.
Ecological Conditions in the Northern Forest
The ecological health of this region is extremely poor. It would miss the point entirely to talk only about the threats to biological diversity here. Conditions are far worse than simply facing threats. A threat is what Pearl Harbor faced on 6 December 1941. Conditions in the Northern Forest are more like Pearl Harbor on 7 December: devastation, with tremendous challenges ahead. A brief summary of ecological conditions in the Northern Forest region (compiled from numerous sources in Trombulak[in press]) is sobering.
The percentage of the native species in each well-inventoried taxa that is listed as rare, threatened, or endangered by each state is staggering. Accurate data are not available for the Northern Forest townships alone, but statewide the percentages of taxa listed by each state's Natural Heritage Programs are high: ferns and allies (33%, 25%, and 31% for Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, respectively), conifers (6%, 19%, and 13%), flowering plants (25%, 28%, and 30%), reptiles and amphibians (23%, 3%, and 46%), birds (12%, 5%, and 10%), and mammals (25%, 5%, and 10%). The number of known or suspected extinctions is also quite high. In Vermont, 95 vascular plants (6.6% of the known native flora) are known only from historical records, with similar numbers for New Hampshire (53 of 1397 native species) and Maine (93 of 1449).
Over 27% of all the vascular plants in northern New England are exotics, introduced primarily from Europe and Asia. A smaller percentage of animals are introduced, but include such notable species as zebra mussel, gypsy moth, pear thrips, and sea lamprey.
With respect to forest cover, the amount of forest has almost returned to levels that existed prior to European settlement (about 95%). Yet the age and physical structure of these forests are far from natural. Only about 0.5% of the native forest remains, scattered in fewer than 100 stands throughout the 26 million acres. Of the 127,000 acres of native forest that remain, over 60% of it (79,000 acres) is found in Adirondack Park. In the Northern Forest portion of northern New England, only 0.003% of the forest is native. The ecological consequences of this loss will never be completely known because so little forest is left and no complete inventories of taxa were done prior to deforestation. But several species of beetles and lichens are known to be primarily associated with old-growth forests in this region, leading to the obvious conclusion that the massive loss of these forests must have resulted in numerous undocumented extinctions.
The remaining stands of old growth are also not representative of ecosystems across their natural range of variation. In Maine, 66% of old-growth forests (by area) are balsam fir, which comprised only 6.5% of forest land there in 1982. The age and physical structure of the regenerating forest is still much altered from that of the original forest. In the most recent forest surveys, the percentage of trees that were greater than 29 inches dbh was at most 1.5% (in 1983), which is still far smaller than the size of trees in the native forest.
It is easy to see then why a debate over the future of this region has such a profound influence on biological integrity. So little of the native forests remain and so many species are extinct or at risk.
The Northern Forest Policy Process
Yet, despite the poor and declining condition of ecological health in northern New England, the Northern Forest originally became a public policy issue due solely to events of economic relevance. The region has long depended economically on timber production. By the early 1980's, patterns of land ownership were quite diverse throughout the region. For example, 7.7 million acres in Maine (36% of the state's total area) is owned by large timber companies, and most of the townships in the northern part of the state have no permanent residents. The Adirondack Park region, on the other hand, is the largest single park in the continental U.S. (2.8 million acres), with over 20% of it designated as wilderness. Ownership in New Hampshire and Vermont tends more toward small, non-industrial private parcels. In all four states, however, the forest-products industry contributes a large portion of the regional economy.
The sale of land, sometimes extremely large parcels, is a normal part of the forest-products industry. Such sales usually occur between different forest-products industries, and therefore rarely garner attention. In 1982, a land sale occurred that permanently changed this (Reidel, 1994). Sir James Goldsmith, a British-French entrepreneur, purchased Diamond International Corporation in a leveraged buyout for about $700 million. This purchase included over 1.5 million acres of forest land across northern New England and New York. To generate a profit on investment, Goldsmith sold the paper mill assets to another timber company (at a price equivalent to his original purchase) and the land to a European telecommunications firm, which later sold it in parcels to various real estate development firms. In New Hampshire, concern spread that about 90,000 acres of the former Diamond International land would be developed (e.g., second-home development, waterfront recreation) and taken out of timber production. A coalition of the U.S. Forest Service, the state of New Hampshire, and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests developed a scheme to purchase over 46,000 acres in northern New Hampshire (the Nash Stream Tract north of the White Mountain National Forest plus some inholdings in the National Forest itself) for $12.75 million in order to prevent this from happening.
The Nash Stream Tract acquisition is simultaneously an example of the best and the worst of public conservation policy. It was exemplary in that a public-private partnership could be formed so quickly and effectively to keep a significant forested ecosystem intact. It was a shame that this partnership could only form to protect this ecosystem in the face of a crisis, and be forced to pay an amount far above what it had been acquired for only a short time before.
Much of the remaining land originally owned by Diamond International eventually transferred to other forest-product companies, state ownership, or The Nature Conservancy because the recession of the late 1980's drove many of the real estate development firms that were involved into bankruptcy. Yet, the potential for land conversion was obvious. Concern spread that the leveraged buy-out frenzy of the 1980's would spread and increase the amount of land taken out of timber production. Based on the belief that the existing timber industries had "served the region well" and should be reinforced, Congress funded a two-year study of conditions in this "Northern Forest" region, especially as they related to the maintenance of an economy based on timber production.
Because of regional concerns about the role of the federal government in the region and protection of private property rights, two parallel, independent, but inter-related bodies were formed. The first was the Governors' Task Force (GTF), a 12-person study commission. The governors of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York each appointed three people to the commission, with representation in each state's contingent from the timber industry, environmental community, and state government. The second body was the Northern Forest Lands Study (NFLS), a three-person research team from the U.S. Forest Service. The GTF acted as a board of directors for the NFLS to help guide the direction of the NFLS' research.
The first thing that the GTF/NFLS did was to define "The Northern Forest" as the northern portion of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and the Adirondack and Tug Hill portions of New York. As stated above, the specific boundary was based on political units, including those townships where timber production was an important part of the local economy and excluding regions with substantial federal ownership (all of the Green Mountain and most of the White Mountain National Forests).
The relationship between the two bodies was occasionally strained, but in April 1990 a combined report was issued (Harper et al., 1990) which identified the greatest threat to the future of the Northern Forest as changes in land ownership toward residential and recreational development driven by escalating land values and economic pressures on forest landowners, especially inequitable tax policies. They also noted the potential for long-term impacts on biodiversity and water quality. The GTF/NFLS ended by recommending that their work, representing a state and federal partnership, be continued to investigate in more detail strategies to solve these, and other, problems that threatened the Northern Forest.
It is important to note that up to this point I have said little about concern within the policy process over the ecological health of the region. Although during the GTF/NFLS process the regional environmental activist community and some members of the GTF worked to place conservation issues on the agenda, they were effectively blocked by the timber industry, which viewed attention to conservation at anything other than the most superficial level as a threat to timber production. No specific policy recommendations related to conservation were proposed by the GTF/NFLS. Under threat of veto by or withdrawal of the Maine contingent, all discussion of public land acquisition or green-lining was blocked. Sadly, the regional academic conservation community played no role in the GTF/NFLS process despite the ecological significance of the forested ecosystems in this region and the long history of stress placed on its biological integrity.
The Northern Forest Lands Council
Despite some questionable tactics associated with funding and authorization, and increasing hostility from the regional property right movement, the Northern Forest Lands Council (NFLC) was formed in 1990 directly from the GTF/NFLS with the goal of reinforcing the timber-products industry. The 17-member Council (now including one representative from each state representing local interests and one representative from the U.S. Forest Service) adopted the following as its mission statement:
(a) Enhancing the quality of life for local residents through the promotion of economic stability for the people and communities of the area and through the maintenance of large forest areas;
(b) Encouraging the production of a sustainable yield of forest products; and,
(c) Protecting recreational, wildlife, scenic, and wildland resources.
Thus began the most recent phase of investigations concerning the future of this region. The Council organized its work around a number of subcommittees, originally focusing solely on land conversion and tax policies, each charged with developing findings to be used in making final recommendations to Congress. The Council specifically restricted itself from making any administrative actions and gave itself a 48-month life span.
One aspect of the NFLC that was a great source of pride at its start was the idea that it would conduct its business as a model of consensus building and participatory democracy. In a region of the U.S. strongly characterized by independence and dislike of federal government, the Council wanted to signal that its work would not represent further intrusive bureaucracy, but rather an opportunity for local communities to play a significant role in shaping their own futures.
To further advance the cause of regional conservation and to provide a counter to the bias of the Council toward economic issues, a group of 24 non-governmental conservation organizations in the region formed a loose coalition as the Northern Forest Alliance. The Alliance spanned a wide range of political philosophies, ranging from the conservative (e.g., The Maine Audubon Society) to the progressive (e.g., RESTORE: The North Woods). Despite their own difficulties in setting priorities and common goals, the Alliance was successful in eventually getting the NFLC to consider the ecological dimension of the future of the region.
In 1992, the NFLC created an additional subcommittee--the Biological Resources Diversity (later renamed the Biological Diversity) Subcommittee--which eventually became a lightning rod for much of the Council's remaining work. With respect to the science of biological conservation, the only thing this subcommittee actually did was to host a forum in late 1992 to provide the Council with some specific information. Four scientists were invited to provide testimony: Malcolm L. Hunter, Jr. (University of Maine, Orono), Sharon Haines (International Paper Co., Georgia), Rainer Brocke (State University of New York at Syracuse), and me (Middlebury College, Vermont). We were asked to prepare in advance answers to four questions:
1. How would you assess the current status of the diversity of biological resources in the Northern Forest region?
2. If current land use patterns and trends continue in the Northern Forest, how will the diversity of biological resources be affected?
3. What is the single-most useful recommendation the NFLC could make to enhance biological resource diversity?
4. What is the single worst thing the NFLC could do, or fail to do?
Our answers were to be kept to a length that would allow us to present them orally in 15 minutes. The Council and the audience then asked us questions, but at no time were we invited to address each other, clarify points that may have seemed contradictory, or develop a broader perspective on the issues.
Despite the almost-complete uselessness of the format, three broad areas of agreement emerged from the four presentations: (a) the concept of biodiversity could be defined roughly as all levels of organization of life and its processes and included more than just high-profile indicator species, (b) the issue of biological conservation was vitally important to the Council's overall mission, and (c) the protection of biological diversity in the Northern Forest would require a system of ecological reserves designed to protect ecosystems as well as species.
In response to this final point, the Subcommittee asked two of the panel members, Mac Hunter and Sharon Haines, to prepare a white paper on the general subject of ecological reserves. Subsequently known as the Hunter/Haines paper (Hunter and Haines, 1993), their work explored in only the most general terms concepts discussed by conservation biologists for years with regard to course-grain conservation--size of reserves, representation, and connectivity. Yet, the reaction by some members of the public to the Hunter/Haines paper is illustrative of the challenges faced in placing conservation on the agenda:
"It sounds like a scheme by two mad scientists to force their radical ideas on the landowners of the Northern Forest Lands and eventually the whole world. ... [Wildlife biologists] had to displace the foresters from the land before they could have their own empire. Now, with such new words as biodiversity and ecosystems they have convinced the gullible public that they can lead us to salvation. They have become the cult leaders of the environmental movement" (Huntress, 1993).
"I can only express my tremendous displeasure with this report and consider it a reason to leave the Northern Forest Lands as they are now, with no outside intervention. Economics and technology will take care of the region. The lunacy that this report [the Hunter/Haines paper] indicates has no place in the Northern Forests" (Joslin, 1993).
The Biological Resources Diversity Subcommittee did little following the Hunter/Haines paper other than contract for an independent study on the role private landowners could play in conservation. Despite the focus of the Subcommittee, no contract was ever made for an assessment of biological diversity in the region or trajectories of ecological health for any parameter. Of the 19 "resource inventories" conducted or supported by the Council, only three (land habitat/cover, large blocks of forest land, and wetlands regulated by states) had any direct relevance to the status of biological diversity. Indeed, to my knowledge the Subcommittee never even looked at a list of the threatened or endangered species in any of the four states.
In October 1993, the Council released a report on the findings of each subcommittee and a list of options for recommendations that could be made in the final report. Although the findings of most subcommittees were detailed and exhaustive, the findings of the Biological Diversity Subcommittee were vague and completely devoid of detail. The tenor of its 16 findings are exemplified by the following samples: (a) biological diversity is an important issue, (b) any action to conserve biological resources is likely to have economic and social effects, (c) the impacts of forest management activities on biological diversity can either be positive or negative, (d) the forest-products industry can continue to be compatible with maintaining diversity of biological resources, and (e) information on forest management techniques to maintain diversity is difficult to obtain.
Following a period of public comment, the Council released in March 1994 the draft of its final report, which included 33 potential recommendations to Congress. Only one recommendation, #13, related directly to conservation. Briefly, the Council recommended that each state should (a) assess the status of biodiversity and its level of protection on public land and on private conservation lands by voluntary landowner agreement, (b) provide landowners with the information necessary to undertake voluntary conservation measures, (c) provide financial incentives to landowners for conservation, and (d) create ecological reserves only as a limited component of a public land acquisition program after rigorous scientific justification and external peer review (NFLC, 1994). The message was clear: conservation would occur only to the extent that it could fit into existing socioeconomic traditions. The need for new conservation strategies was dismissed outright.
During the spring of 1994 the Council scheduled a series of "listening sessions" around the region and in a few outlying areas (e.g., Boston, New York City). An analysis of the public comments made at these sessions is enlightening (Vermont Natural Resources Council, 1994). Over 2000 people attended one or more sessions, and of these 741 gave testimony. Despite the fact that the Council's report contained 33 separate recommendations, 86% of all comments related directly to Recommendation 13. Five-hundred-and-seventy people called for the Council to pay more attention to the ecological needs of the region and make stronger recommendations for ecological reserves. Only 63 people felt the language of the recommendation was too strong (Northern Forest Alliance, 1994).
Armed with the opinions of the citizens of the region, the Council then developed its final set of recommendations, released in late September 1994 simultaneous with its disbanding. Despite the overwhelming public support for a more progressive conservation agenda demonstrated during the public listening sessions, the final recommendation for the conservation of biological diversity was little changed from that of the draft.
Three weeks later, 900,000 acres in Maine were acquired from the S.D. Warren Paper Company in a junk-bond financed buy-out by a consortium of companies, primarily from South Africa (St. Pierre, 1994). The public policy process of the Northern Forest ended as it began. In between were years of willful ignorance of ecological conditions in the region, calls for more study, disregard for public participation, and the wholesale bartering of forest ecosystems.
What Went Right
A few things are worth noting as important positive signs for the future. First, by the time the Council disbanded, a considerable segment of the public that was involved in the process was demanding that the best available conservation science be used to help develop recommendations for the future of the Northern Forest. Rallied by a scientifically literate activist community, the Council heard from the general public of the importance of maintaining viable populations, reintroducing top-level carnivores, protecting representatives of all native ecosystem types in ecological reserves, and planning for connectivity. This represents a major transition for the environmental community, which in decades past was more animated by recreational rather than scientific concerns.
Second, the Council itself made an important contribution by making, despite tremendous obstacles, an effort towards regional cooperation.
What Went Wrong
But, by and large, I feel that the story of the Northern Forest policy process was not one of success. This is unfortunate; the ecological problems in the Northern Forest are real and will only get worse with continued denial. Indeed, our ability to ever resolve some of the conservation issues decreases with time. Furthermore, I think that such issues will increasingly be cast in a regional context. Efforts to define the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the Pacific Northwest are examples of how conservation has moved away from consideration solely of small populations of specific species at risk. What just concluded in the Northern Forest could have been a model of how such regional efforts could be implemented to meet the needs of all the people and provide for conservation as well, but that opportunity was lost.
Even if the failure to achieve significant conservation gains is ignored, the entire economic premise of the Council's work ("to maintain traditional patterns of land ownership that have served the region well") was questionable. But we can gain some insight by looking at its failures specifically with respect to conservation. First, the relevance of ecological health to the well-being of the region was acknowledged too late in the process, and when it was it was forced to fit into a predetermined socioeconomic plan, whether or not the plan was compatible with conservation.
Second, despite the money available to the Council and the almost unprecedented access to the resources of state and federal agencies, the Council made no request for any information on the status of any species or ecosystem in the region. All information placed into the public record concerning the ecological health of the region was done by people from outside the Council. This virtually guaranteed that any information presented to the Council by members of the public would be ignored in the interest of balancing different viewpoints and "achieving consensus."
Third, the regional academic community did not become involved in the process. Both the Council and the community itself are to blame for this. Why did the Council not contract for work on ecological assessments to regional conservation biologists the way it contracted out economic studies? Why did the Council not solicit a broader range of scientific opinion on the need for an ecological reserve system in the region? On the other hand, why did the academic community wait (in vain) to be invited to participate? Given the regional context and pressing conservation problems, the Northern Forest policy process was fertile ground for the application of conservation theory, the development of regional biodiversity inventories, and the assessment of impacts of different land use practices. But by and large this did not happen.
Fourth, the potential contributions of conservation biology to evaluating the future of the region was held to different standards than other disciplines. Unique to conservation issues were the criticisms that precise definitions and peer review were required before serious attention could be given, standardized ecosystem characterization protocols be enacted in all four states, and that "the present be considered the baseline against which all decisions are made" (Northern Forest Lands Council, 1994). Yet issues of tax reform and forest-based economy were not held to the same standards, and numerous recommendations were made without agreement on terms and supporting data.
Fifth, the process was marred by intimidation and threats from a radical fringe of property rights advocates. In 1991, a meeting of the NFLC in Ray Brook, New York had to be canceled because the safety of the Council members could not be guaranteed in the face of threats of violence. At the public listening session in May 1994 in Glens Falls, New York, a member of one of the Adirondack property rights groups flung her copy of the draft recommendations, a bound book, at one of the Council members. In response to an academic conference on the Northern Forest organized by students at the Vermont Law School, a property rights advocate in Vermont (and independent candidate for governor) published in the local newspaper the home telephone number of the conference organizer and encouraged people to call and demand that the conference be canceled. In short, a segment of the participating public that loudly lobbies for private property rights, and is loosely affiliated with the broader Wise Use movement, was very quick throughout the entire process to advance its views through aggressive intimidation and to attempt the suppression of others who sought to express their views and participate fully in the process.
Finally, the actually process carried out by the NFLC was, in fact, not characterized by consensus and democracy to the extent claimed by the Council. From the very beginning, some members of the GTF admitted that they were participating solely to make sure that the acquisition of public lands did not occur, regardless of its merits (Reidel, 1994). By insisting on consensus as unanimous agreement, the process was transformed into a tyranny of the minority, guaranteeing that nothing substantive was produced. In response to the draft recommendations, the public overwhelmingly called for increased protection of biological diversity, the development of ecological reserves, and greater attention to environmental health in the region. Rather than responding to the voiced will of the people, however, the only changes made in the final recommendations with respect to biological diversity was to delete a few lines of text.
Lessons For The Future
I believe that the protection of rare, threatened, and endangered species everywhere will in the future involve a greater degree of attention to landscape-scale or course-filter approaches to conservation that include unconstrained discussions and honest cooperation among all public and private sectors. The failure of such an approach in the northeastern U.S. does not speak well, however, of our ability to take such an approach effectively. What does this failure tell us of what we should do differently next time?
Clearly, the conservation biology community needs to become active at the start of any regional planning effort without waiting to be invited to take a seat at the table. For a number of reasons, state and federal employees in conservation-related agencies may be constrained against playing this role. This places the responsibility with the academic conservation community to insure that the ecological dimension of regional planning efforts are given due attention, that the best available science be applied to conservation issues, that the best available data be used and better data be sought, and that a scientific perspective is applied to all dimensions of the issue, including economic and social.
In some ways this runs counter to what many of us are taught about the proper behavior of scientists. On numerous occasions throughout the NFLC process it was pointed out to me that scientists ought to be objective and not become involved in the subjective "details" of application of information to policy. On one occasion it was even suggested that conservation biology was not a true science because the mission statement of the Society for Conservation Biology stated it was a "mission-oriented science" and therefore could not claim objectivity (Coffman, 1993).
This false criticism unnecessarily inhibits many conservation biologists from becoming involved in policy issues as active participants. We do not give up our humanity nor our citizenship when we adopt this profession. It is our responsibility to pursue science as objectively as possible. But at some point in the policy process, scientific information must be analyzed with respect to the issue at hand; who better to be involved in that analysis than the scientists involved in collecting the data who understand its strengths and limitations.
Another lesson is that increased attention must be given to conducting ecological assessments of specific regions. Conservation concerns were successfully ignored through most of the NFLC process because actual data on ecological conditions in the region were not readily available. The gap analysis and EMAP programs are important and needed, but their completion is years away. Much can be done that would make useful data available before the agendas of other regional planning efforts are set. By the time data sets were developed for the northeast, it was already too late to change the direction of the NFLC's work. As a research community we need to pay closer attention to opportunities for regional monitoring and inventory efforts and the establishment of long-term baseline studies. The work of the Long-Term Ecological Research network is critical, but must expand to include numerous replicate monitoring sites within ecosystems and geographical regions.
Finally, as citizens who are well-informed about the importance of conservation for our country's future, we must be aware of the danger to regional planning initiatives of legitimizing "business as usual" under a veneer of "consensus building" and "participatory democracy." We must insist as participants of the process that those who practice violence or intimidation be sanctioned. We must insist that the participatory process be conducted in such a way as to allow the expression of all views and, importantly, those views be given weight commensurate with the data provided to support the position. And we must hold policy makers, whether they are elected or not, responsible for following a democratic process.
We all know that the protection of rare, threatened, and endangered species will not happen on its own. We need to become increasingly aware that such protection will require our attention to the policy process as well as to the science itself.
Literature Cited
Coffman, M. 1993. Managing for diversity in a working forest. Natural Areas Association annual meeting, 22-26 June 1993, Orono, Maine.
Harper, S.C., L.L. Falk, and E.W. Rankin. 1990. The Northern Forest Lands Study of New England and New York: a report to the Congress of the United States on the recent changes in landownership and land use in the Northern Forest of Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. Rutland, Vermont.
Hunter, M.L. Jr. and S. Haines. 1993. An ecological reserve system for the Northern Forest lands of New England and New York: a briefing paper for the Northern Forest Lands Council. NFLC, 54 Portsmouth Street, Concord, NH 03301.
Huntress, F. A. Jr. 1993. Letter to the NFLC Biological Resources Subcommittee, dated 18 March 1993. NFLC, 54 Portsmouth Street, Concord, NH 03301.
Joslin, R. E. 1993. Letter to Charles Lesvesque, Executive Director of the NFLC, dated 31 March 1993. NFLC, 54 Portsmouth Street, Concord, NH 03301.
Northern Forest Alliance. 1994. A Forest At Risk: the citizen's agenda for saving the Northern Forest. NFA
Northern Forest Lands Council. 1994. Finding Common Ground: the draft recommendations of the Northern Forest Lands Council. NFLC, 54 Portsmouth Street, Concord, NH 03301.
Reidel, C. 1994. The Political Process of the Northern Forest Lands Study. In: The Future of the Northern Forest, pp. x-x. C. McGrory Klyza and S.C. Trombulak (eds.). University Press of New England, Hanover, NH.
St. Pierre, J. 1994. South African paper company buys 900,000 acres of Maine. Northern Forest Forum 3(1): 4-6.
Trombulak, S.C. 1994. A natural history of the Northern Forest. In: The Future of the Northern Forest, pp. x-x. C. McGrory Klyza and S.C. Trombulak (eds.). University Press of New England, Hanover, NH.
Trombulak, S.C. 1995. Ecological health and the Northern Forest. Vermont Law Review: in press.