Northern Forest Map

The Northern Forest region of northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York is home to more than 2 million people who live in communities that have experienced immense economic change since the 1980s.

The region stretches nearly 400 miles from New York’s Tug Hill Plateau and Adirondack Mountains, across Lake Champlain and Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and northern Green Mountains, 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. Read more about the Northern Forest.

The past several decades have brought constant change for the people, communities, and landscape of the Northern Forest. 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.

The Northern Forest Center is helping communities benefit from forest-based economic and conservation initiatives through three approaches: generating income from sustainable use of natural resources; building regional capacity for success; and demonstrating success with these initiatives in local communities.

The Center is focusing on natural resources that have the potential to provide sustainable economic opportunities for the region: Biomass for Renewable Energy, Ecosystem Services, Sustainable Forestry & Wood Products, and Tourism.

Capacity building is essential 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.

The Center has always taken a network-based approach to creating lasting change across the region, through ground-breaking initiatives such as the Sustainable Economy Initiative that culminated in 2008 with the first, 4-state economic strategy for the region, and most recently through the Northern Forest Investment Zone initiative, a five-year coordinated effort to create a new generation of conservation tools that can provide economic incentives for good, long-term forest stewardship while reinvigorating the economy.

Working with partners in the Investment Zone initiative, The Center is focusing resources in the Androscoggin Valley-Mahoosuc region on the Maine-New Hampshire border to demonstrate how several natural-resource and capacity-building programs can come together to benefit a sub-region of the Northern Forest.

Since it was founded, The Center has rallied people around a vision for the region’s future that is built on three essential ingredients: thriving communities, healthy forests and innovative and resilient local economies that can support both. The Northern Forest can be a proving ground for a new ideal: a strong economy that is compatible with conservation of the working landscape. If you’d like to be part of making this vision a reality, please consider supporting The Northern Forest Center.