With fall upon us, it's a good time to think about upcoming winter recreational opportunities like snowmobiling on forest trails, as well as to look back at summer wildlife conservation efforts in the region. Below is an update on those topics that we hope you find interesting.

Plum Creek also has good news to share about one of its own. Take a moment to read about Frank Cuff, who has had a long career in the woods, including ten years in Maine as a forester. He was just honored by the Maine Forest Products Council for his good work.

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Regards,
Mark Doty, Community Affairs Manager

Rev up your sleds, snowmobile fans. It won't be long before enough snow flies for one of Maine's favorite pastimes to resume, and Plum Creek again welcomes snowmobilers onto our land.

Plum Creek has more than 800 miles of trails that cross through our forests making for scenic views, interesting riding and great encounters with wildlife like nowhere else. These trails include about 80 miles of trails through the Moosehead region that, as part of our Concept Plan, will be permanently secured through an easement for public snowmobile trails. In fact, Bob Meyers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association has referred to those trails "as some of the best sledding in the New England region."

All snowmobile trails on Plum Creek land are maintained by volunteer clubs and, as the landowner, we work with those clubs to encourage safe and responsible use of the trails. It is important for riders to remember that there is no riding of snowmobiles on our plowed roads.

Winter recreation and working forests can and do work well together to provide economic opportunities and personal enjoyment. So this winter, we hope you get out there on your sled and may there be good snow!

Lexington, Maine, sits in the heart of Somerset County and tourists to the area and residents soon will have a new attraction to visit as they learn about the area’s rich history.

Through a grant from the Plum Creek Foundation as well as other supporters, local residents have begun a project to build a local history house. The structure will store artifacts and archives from the township’s history, which dates back to 1807, and will serve as a central location for those seeking historical information for education purposes, as well as ancestral and genealogical research.

“There has been little documentation or preservation of the rich history of this community,” said David Miller, fund raising committee chair for the Lexington Historical Association. “Our township will now have a resource to help educate our community and others about the history of the families that have lived here since the township was founded in 1807.”

The Plum Creek Foundation contributed $3,000 to the Association to help fund the project, which is expected to be completed by late 2012. The Plum Creek Foundation supports non-profit organizations that improve the quality of life in our operating communities.

A collaborative effort was just successfully completed across state lines to help protect the endangered spruce grouse and increase its numbers little by little in Vermont.

Since 2008, Vermont Fish & Wildlife (VFW) has been working to bring more spruce grouse from Maine and Canada to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, specifically the Victory Basin. In the late summer of 2010, the relocation project caught the attention of Henning Stabins, a wildlife biologist with Plum Creek, who was aware that many spruce grouse make their homes in Plum Creek's forests in Maine. The land is prime habitat for the birds, which favor spruce, fir and tamarack forests.

Together, Henning, Maine wildlife experts and the VFW devised a plan to find, capture, protect and transport the endangered bird from Maine to Vermont to an area selected by the state for the reintroduction of the species.

Henning offered to assemble a capture team and transport the birds from Maine to Vermont. He hired local outfitters Wayne and Barbara Plummer, lodge owners in Kokadjo, and enlisted the help of Maine state biologists. The team would capture the birds in early morning and late evening hours and then care for them until Henning could coordinate their travel from Maine.

After transporting the birds to Vermont, Henning then met up with VFW biologists and together they banded the birds before setting them free in Vermont forestland.

“This is a great effort to encourage the species to grow and multiply in new areas,” said Cedric Alexander, a certified wildlife biologist with VFW. “By banding the spruce grouse, we can track and monitor the birds and ideally document the effort’s success in the years to come.”

In the summer of 2010, 29 spruce grouse were captured from the Moosehead region of Maine and transported to Vermont through the collaborative public private effort.

Frank Cuff is a senior forester with Plum Creek who manages our lands closest to the Canadian boarder. He is known by locals and our company as an outstanding forester, so we weren’t surprised, but pleased, when he recently won the 2010 Outstanding Forester award from the Maine Forest Products Council.

Frank knows that being involved professionally and personally in the forestry community and the local Maine community is important. He serves as Plum Creek’s representative on Manomet’s Shifting Mosaic project, which is comprised of private landowners, conservation biologists, forest economists and others who work to address how logging can successfully coexist with environmental sustainability. Frank also serves as Plum Creek’s field operations representative on a project with the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences as it studies the effectiveness of different riparian management practices and how they affect water temperature, water quality, aquatic habitat and aquatic biodiversity.

Outside of work, Frank is involved in the community as a United Way volunteer, an American Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer and an Arbor Day Foundation member. He is also involved in Maine Project Learning Tree (PLT), an award-winning international environmental education program that uses the forest as a “window on the world” to increase students’ understanding of our complex environment.

Congratulations, Frank, and keep up the “outstanding” work.