About the Northern Forest

The Northern Forest of northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York is home to more than 2 million people who live in rural communities, larger towns and small cities surrounded by the largest intact forest in the eastern United States. Over a 10,000-year history, people here have continually adapted to the challenges and opportunities presented by the natural world. More recently, they have also adjusted to the national and global forces that have led to dramatic changes.

The Landscape
The People
The Communities
A Region in Transition
Download “A Brief History of the Northern Forest” in PDF format [108 KB].

The Landscape

The region’s 30 million acres of vast forest, local woodlands, lakes, rivers, wetlands, farms, hills and mountains are the source of its regional culture, quality of life, and economic opportunity now and into the future. It is nationally significant as a storage vault for carbon, as a filter for air and water, and as a place for recreation and renewal for millions of people.

The Northern Forest stretches nearly 400 miles from New York’s Tug Hill Plateau and Adirondack Mountains, across Lake Champlain and Vermont’s northern Green Mountains and Northeast Kingdom, New Hampshire’s North Country and White Mountains and Maine’s Western Mountains, Highlands, St. John Valley and Downeast Lakes to the border with Canada.

The forest grows spruce, fir, pine and hardwoods, including the sugar maple, beech, birch, and both white and black ash. In addition to innumerable lakes and wetlands, all of the major rivers in the Northeast—the Hudson, Mohawk, Connecticut, Merrimack, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot and the St. John—spring from headwaters in the Northern Forest.

The People

The Northern Forest is the native land of the Iroquois and Algonquin peoples; it was the birthplace of the modern paper industry and the cradle of American mountain exploration and skiing. The Northern Forest was the first great wilderness European settlers encountered in the New World. It has been called America's First Great Forest. The people of the Northern Forest are among its greatest assets. Human history, culture, arts and innovations have made the region what it is, and will play a key role in shaping its future.

The culture and heritage of the Northern Forest grow from the forest itself and from people's intimate connections to the land. Folksongs and storytelling, art forms in themselves, keep the region’s history alive, and skilled craftspeople pass on traditions such as woodworking, basketmaking, spinning and weaving.

The Communities

The Northern Forest's communities are rich with assets that make the region a great place to live. Based on population, the Northern Forest has higher voter participation, less violent crime, more historical societies, more arts organizations and more independent business than the more urban and suburban areas of the Northeast. Not surprisingly, the Northern Forest also has more “good air quality” days, more forestland and reserves, and more trails.

A Region in Transition

The past several decades have brought constant change for the people, communities, and landscape of the Northern Forest. While this period has seen a significant increase in land conservation, global economic pressure has caused forest-based industries to shed tens of thousands of jobs, altered markets for Northern Forest products and services, and spurred continuous land sales. These changes have brought significant challenges and new opportunities for the region.

Some regions would never recover from the immensity of change that has been heaped upon the Northern Forest. But the people and communities here are resilient. They have a deep connection to the land and are ready to build a new future for this great region using its greatest natural asset—the forest.

Urgent Challenges

The Northern Forest is at an important point of transition. The aging of the region’s industrial infrastructure and population, the opening of new areas of forest economy around the world, soaring energy costs, climate change and new demands on the region’s natural resources have all combined to create challenging new realities.

These new realities require new approaches. Unlike an earlier era, when large corporations provided financial capital to build wealth and employment in the region, the next generation of economic development in the Northern Forest will be led by smaller businesses and civic organizations. In an increasingly global marketplace, the region’s leaders must invest extra effort to inform and connect people and provide financial support and infrastructure to enable new ventures to thrive. This capacity building is the key to rebuilding the economic future of the Northern Forest. The Center is coordinating public policy, promoting new public and private investment and building and supporting collaborative networks to make sure the region builds a strong economic future.

New Opportunities

The Northern Forest region can turn these challenges around and create a strong economy that is compatible with conservation of the working landscape. The building blocks for this new economy include:

• Renewable energy that is created from the ­sustainable use of forest biomass including tree tops, thinnings and byproducts such as sawdust.
• Tourism that promotes this forested landscape and supports the region’s natural and cultural riches.
• Sustainable Forestry and a competitive wood manufacturing industry that capitalizes on the ­region’s wood supply to produce high-quality products.
• New market opportunities that reward landowners for the environmental services that their well-managed land provides, such as carbon storage, water and air filtering.