With 90 percent of its land base covered in trees, Maine is home to 12 million contiguous acres of forestland—the greatest unbroken stretch of forest in the East—and a lot of folks in the Pine Tree State want to make sure that forest remains forest.

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For more information, visit www.keepingmainesforests.org

The forest products industry is the number one contributor to the state's economy, and with generations of families working in the woods, forestry is inextricably entwined in Maine culture. Use of forests for recreation is a huge part of the Maine experience as well, and another key driver in the economy of a state becoming ever more known as a premier destination for nature-based tourism.

But land use throughout the region has been changing over the past two decades, as paper companies have divested themselves of large land-holdings, and huge tracts of land once thought of as too remote to interest developers have been chopped into subdivisions where public access is no more.

Amid and, likely, because of all this, a new effort has emerged to help ensure that Maine's forests remain healthy, productive, accessible woodlands that can continue to provide fiber, timber, and recreational opportunities for generations to come. Over the past several months, an unusually diverse group of constituents whose lives and livelihoods are dependent upon the continued stewardship of Maine's woods have hammered out a conservation initiative known as Keeping Maine's Forests.

Large landowners; representatives of loggers, pulp and paper workers, and small woodlot owners; hunters and anglers; state officials; tribal representatives; and conservation and recreation organizations, including AMC, have identified the characteristics that make Maine's forests unique and the threats those one-of-a-kind attributes face, and they have offered a plan to help ensure the continued health of Maine's forests.

The future will depend on the continued stewardship of the forests and its resources, among which are timber, wildlife, a world-class brook trout fishery, recreational infrastructure, and continued public access.

Going forward, KMF proposes to seek $25 million in federal funding, to be augmented with state and private dollars, to test a pilot project aimed at implementing landscape-scale stewardship initiatives in two areas: Down East, and in the high peaks region of western Maine. One focal point is the Katahdin-Moosehead region, an area in which AMC is pursuing its Maine Woods Initiative.

The KMF proposal grew out of a challenge last year by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in which they asked the KMF Steering Committee to develop a pilot project, with broad public support, aimed at conserving Maine's forests for the future. As of September, the group had submitted its proposal and invited the secretaries to Maine for a discussion and a forest tour.

"The potential outcome of these unprecedented, collaborative efforts is very exciting, and holds great promise for the enhancement of nature-based tourism and recreational access in the Maine Woods, as well as for the future health of the state's forests and the economies that depend on them," said AMC Vice President Walter Graff, a member of the KMF Steering Committee.