This is not a preemptive judgment against bringing in rangers, visitor centers, the brown road signs, and entry fees. Should Be, it can be thoughtful about the way the future ought to be. New debate over the future of the forests and wilderness of Maine was sparked this summer when South African Pulp and Paper Industries Ltd. put 911,000 acres of land up for sale. Another company, Bowater, is considering selling about 2 million acres. Thus the state could be seeing the sale of 5 to 15 percent of its land in the near future.
Timber companies own almost all of the northern half of Maine.
Of the 17.7 million acres of forest charted by the federal government in Maine, between 7.3 million and 10.4 million acres are owned by forest industry interests. For decades this was not much of an issue. Outside of periodic concerns over clear-cutting, timber companies made far more friends than enemies by providing jobs and allowing free access to their lands for hunting, fishing, boating, snowmobiling, cycling, and trapping. But the number of forest industry jobs has fallen by half since 1960, from one in 11 Mainers to one in 23 today. Global timber companies have become more fickle.