North Country School Forest Management Plan
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NORTH COUNTRY SCHOOL FOREST MANAGEMENT PLAN 2016-2031 Prepared by 1324 West County Road 96 Durocher Road Calais, Vermont 05684 Saranac, New York 12981 802-229-9757 518-293-7297 Pekin Branch Forestry is a partnership between Neal F. Maker and John D. Foppert serving land owners in northern New York and Vermont. We provide professional services for all aspects of forest management planning and administration, and we bring technical expertise in stand dynamics, quantitative silviculture and long-term planning. We specialize in working with owners of family forests, commercial sugarbushes and conserved timberlands. ---------- Neal F. Maker lives with his wife and two daughters in Maple Corner, Vermont, on the property he grew up on. He earned a bachelor's degree in environmental science with a concentration in sustainable forestry from Warren Wilson College, near Asheville, North Carolina and the Master's of Forest Management from SUNY-ESF in Syracuse, New York. He has conducted research on the dynamics between stand conditions and individual tree growth patterns at the Duke University Forest in North Carolina, and more recently his work investigating relationships between Vermont's Current Use program, log markets, and sustainability was published in the Journal of Forestry. In addition to consulting forestry, he has worked professionally in land conservation and currently serves on the Calais Town Conservation Commission and as the town's Forest Warden. ---------- John D. Foppert owns and works a farm with his wife and two sons in Clayburg, New York. He studied forestry at Paul Smith's College and was later a field instructor for the silviculture course there. He was awarded the European Union's Erasmus Mundus scholarship and studied forestry throughout Europe. He earned the Master of Science degree in Forest Science from the University of Freiburg, in Germany and the Master of Science of European Forestry from the University of Eastern Finland. His thesis compared uneven-aged management systems in central Europe and the northeastern U.S. and expanded on a Swiss stand development model to better explain the dynamics of a research forest in Maine. He has worked as a forester in New York, Vermont, North Carolina and Germany, in addition to professional experience in logging, wildland fire suppression, woodworking and carpentry, and agriculture. 1 CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................. 1 II. LOCATION & DESCRIPTION.................................................................................... 1 III. PRINCIPLES, GOALS & STRATEGIES FOR FOREST MANAGEMENT...........................................2 Ecological integrity, wildlife habitat & biodiversity.................................................................................................2 Recreation & education..................................................................................................................................2 Wood production..........................................................................................................................................3 Maple sap production.....................................................................................................................................3 IV. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY & ENVIRONMENT....................................................................4 Geology & Terrain.........................................................................................................................................4 Soils..........................................................................................................................................................4 Hydrology..................................................................................................................................................5 Climate......................................................................................................................................................5 Landscape ecology........................................................................................................................................5 Soils Map....................................................................................................................................................7 V. MANAGEMENT HISTORY & CONTEXT.......................................................................... 8 Local land-use history....................................................................................................................................8 Property management history..........................................................................................................................9 Regulatory context......................................................................................................................................13 Operational considerations.............................................................................................................................13 VI. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS..................................................................................... 15 VII. STAND DESCRIPTIONS & MANAGEMENT RECOMMENDATIONS...........................................16 Schedule Of Recommended Management Activities...............................................................................................18 Land Cover Classification & Forest Stands Map.....................................................................................................19 Stand 1.....................................................................................................................................................20 Stand 2.....................................................................................................................................................24 Stand 3.....................................................................................................................................................27 I. INTRODUCTION North Country School & Camp Treetops (NCS) is a middle school and summer camp near Lake Placid, New York. Its campus includes over 150 acres of northern hardwood, mixedwood and conifer swamp forest. These woodlands are an exceptional resource for the NCS community, providing recreational and educational opportunities, attractive natural scenery, low-grade fuelwood for distributed biomass heating systems, maple sap for syrup production, high quality wood products for in-house use, and annual revenue from a sap lease to a neighboring sugar maker. The long tradition and deeply held commitment to stewardship at NCS is evident in the care and management that go into their farm, the foresight and thoughtfulness of design of the campus's buildings and infrastructure systems, and—perhaps most notably— the earnestness and passion with which members of the community carry their concerns into the larger world and the eagerness with which they seek to address those challenges that confront them. In that spirit, the community has taken decisive steps over the past decade to position itself as a leader in appropriately scaled renewable energy systems and sustainable forest management. This management plan seeks to articulate the goals of the community for its forest and its own relationship to that forest; to offer a vision for the future of the NCS forest that meets those goals; and to map out a path forward that works to realize that vision. The goals presented in this plan represent a snapshot of the community's evolving aspirations and expectations. They seek to strike a particular balance that is tailored to this particular moment. That balance of utilization and recreation—of work and of play— remains nested within a more lasting framework of stewardship and precaution which aims to preserve as many options as may be kept available for the next generations of stewards to find their own balance for their own moment. Taken together with the opportunities and limitations that the land and the forest's current conditions dictate, a vision for the future forest can be inferred from the community's goals: its look and feel to those who explore it, the ecological attributes that distinguish it, the processes and dynamics that emerge from it. Covering the fifteen year period from 2016-2030, this management plan is a blueprint for the near- and medium-term actions that should guide the development of the NCS forest toward that envisioned state. If well implemented, the work called for in this plan should allow the community to continue to enjoy the benefits that they hope for and expect from their woodlands, accomplished in a way that is consistent with both the overarching principles in which the community is grounded and the operational realities confronted on the ground. II. LOCATION & DESCRIPTION The NCS campus is located on the Cascade Road (State Route 73) in the town of North Elba, between the villages of Lake Placid and Keene, in the Adirondack Park, in northern New York State. The entire property is 210 acres, of which nearly 80% is forested, with the remainder dedicated to the farm, garden, campus buildings, open space, or the few acres that lie within the property's boundaries but under Round Lake. The property is bounded to the north and east by the State Forest Preserve's Sentinel Range Wilderness, to the south by the Cascade Road, and to the west by neighboring landowners with whom the school and camp enjoy good relations. 1 III.