North Country School Forest Management Plan

NORTH COUNTRY SCHOOL FOREST MANAGEMENT PLAN 2016-2031

Prepared by

1324 West County Road Calais, Vermont 05684 802-229-9757

96 Durocher Road Saranac, New York 12981 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

C ONTENTS I. I NTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1 II. L OCATION & D ESCRIPTION .................................................................................... 1 III. P RINCIPLES , G OALS & S TRATEGIES F OR F OREST M ANAGEMENT ...........................................2 Ecological integrity, wildlife habitat & biodiversity.................................................................................................2 Recreation & education..................................................................................................................................2 Wood production..........................................................................................................................................3 Maple sap production.....................................................................................................................................3

IV. P HYSICAL G EOGRAPHY & E NVIRONMENT .................................................................... 4 Geology & Terrain.........................................................................................................................................4 Soils..........................................................................................................................................................4 Hydrology..................................................................................................................................................5 Climate......................................................................................................................................................5 Landscape ecology........................................................................................................................................5 Soils Map....................................................................................................................................................7

V. M ANAGEMENT H ISTORY & C ONTEXT.......................................................................... 8 Local land-use history....................................................................................................................................8 Property management history..........................................................................................................................9 Regulatory context......................................................................................................................................13 Operational considerations.............................................................................................................................13

VI. G ENERAL O BSERVATIONS ..................................................................................... 15 VII. S TAND D ESCRIPTIONS & M ANAGEMENT R ECOMMENDATIONS ...........................................16 Schedule Of Recommended Management Activities...............................................................................................18 Land Cover Classification & Forest Stands Map.....................................................................................................19 Stand 1.....................................................................................................................................................20 Stand 2.....................................................................................................................................................24 Stand 3.....................................................................................................................................................27

I.

I NTRODUCTION

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 nearand 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. L OCATION & D ESCRIPTION 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. P RINCIPLES , G OALS & S TRATEGIES F OR F OREST M ANAGEMENT The management goals for the NCS forest emerge from the values that are central to the mission of that community. Among those values is a commitment to simple and sustainable living, which recognizes the virtues of self-reliance and resourcefulness, while maintaining an ethic of social responsibility and global citizenship. So to stay true to these values, forest management shall first improve or maintain the ecological integrity of the forest, including careful tending of water resources, rare plant and wildlife communities, and all of the components and processes that keep complex ecosystems functioning, resilient, and beautiful.

In its complexity, the forest can at once be an object of wonder, a setting for adventure, and a subject of investigation. Accordingly, the recreational and educational opportunities the forest provides should be fully cultivated. Management should enhance, rather than interfere with, this character of the forest, which is especially important to the curious children (and adults) who make up a school and camp community. As befits an ethic of stewardship, the forest need not be isolated, frozen, or preserved, but can instead be engaged with, taken from, and given back to. The forest should continue to sustainably provide high quality wood products, maple sap for syrup production, and a reliable supply of fuelwood, either as sources of revenue or for consumption or utilization directly by the community.

Ecological integrity, wildlife habitat & biodiversity The needs of specific wildlife species and of healthy, diverse natural communities, generally, can be managed for at multiple scales: property-wide, stand and sub-stand. By considering the relationship between the property, its neighbors and the larger landscape they are nested within, management can improve landscape diversity, travel corridors and connectivity. The emphasis of management should be on identifying locally under-represented habitat types and promoting those communities or assemblages within the property. Stand scale and sub-stand scale management should focus on developing or maintaining species-specific habitat needs, such as nesting sites, cover, mast production, preferred browse or other unique structural and compositional requirements.

Recreation & education Conscientious management can create or maintain a landscape that is attractive, accessible and conducive to reflection, exploration and appreciation. Attractiveness can be managed for by fostering diversity within the landscape: accelerating the growth and development of the most receptive individual trees in some places; maintaining the look, feel and accompanying privacy provided by a dense forest in other places; and elsewhere creating occasional vistas out from the forest and improvements in depth of visual penetration within it. Attentive maintenance of existing roads and trails and thoughtful planning of any further trail network development should facilitate the satisfying use of the property, creating an appropriate balance between access and connectedness, on the one hand, and places of refuge and sanctuary, on the other. A system of roads and trails of various sizes, suited for various purposes, and interconnected with a broader trail network, provide for both enjoyable recreation and efficient operations. As it relates to forest stand management and silviculture, the unique needs of a learning community are best met at two levels: by working to create a forested landscape that is diverse, ecologically interesting and enticing to curious students; and by collecting informative data, keeping accurate records, and providing the background or explanatory information necessary to understand and interpret the woods and the work that goes on there.

2

Wood production Annual, in-house demand for 30-35 cords of fuelwood provides a steady outlet for the low-grade wood generated as a by-product of the broader forest management program. Long-term value growth is provided by maintaining full site occupancy with healthy stems capable of producing high quality sawtimber and veneer. Tree species which yield sought-after, high value wood (e.g. sugar maple, yellow birch, black cherry, red spruce, white pine) should be promoted within the stand or, when regenerating a new stand, attention should be paid to providing the conditions which favor the establishment of those species. At a property-wide scale, species diversity should be maintained or enhanced to provide opportunities to exploit future market opportunities and as a hedge against species-specific market depreciation. Though much of the forest is currently even-aged, the gradual transformation to more complex age-class structures will best serve the community's long-term goals. At the property scale, it is not necessary that a strictly balanced age-class distribution or an area-based regulation of growth and yield be imposed. Sustainability can be ensured among several irregular stands, in aggregate, provided that regeneration is sufficient for some degree of appropriate demographic structure and that future management demands remain flexible and responsive.

Maple sap production Sustainable sap production is achieved at the tree and the stand levels. Individual tree growth must be fast enough that tap holes and the associated stain column are fully healed over with “white wood� before another tap is located in the same area of the trunk. Conservative tapping guidelines have been designed to prevent unsustainable tapping, but they ultimately depend on healthy trees putting on vigorous growth. At the stand level, sustainability is realized through the continuous establishment and recruitment of regeneration and eventual development of a true, all-aged structure in the sugarbush. Transformation from the typical even-aged stand structure should be accomplished slowly, so as to maintain the highest number of productive taps over time, but it must be done in a committed and deliberate way. Tending within the main cohort to promote individual tree health and longevity should be paired with small canopy openings or low density patches that will facilitate the establishment and recruitment of sugar maple regeneration. The pace of transformation (i.e. the proportion of the stand regenerated at any one entry and the frequency of entries) should be established so that the most vigorous trees in the present cohort can be expected to remain healthy through the entire process. An older stand necessitates a more rapid or a less complete transformation, but the same principles nonetheless apply.

3

IV. P HYSICAL G EOGRAPHY & E NVIRONMENT

Geology & Terrain The NCS property lies in the High Peaks region, the tallest mountains in New York State and an area renowned for its exceptional scenery and rugged terrain. The High Peaks are geologically young mountains made of very old rocks: an actively rising dome where the ancient bedrock of anorthosite, granite and gneiss is being pushed up from below. The property is on the edge of the enormous Marcy Massif, close to the middle of a ten mile long geological fracture zone, running from near the Adironack Loj into Keene, along which the Cascade Lakes and the narrow Cascade Pass were carved. Southeast of the fault lies the anorthosite of Cascade Mountain and many other Adirondack peaks, while to the northwest, where the property sits, is the syenite rock of Pitchoff Mountain.

The property sits on the lower slope of Pitchoff Mountain, toward the bottom of the Sentinel Range. The northern portion of the property rises steadily toward Trouble Mountain (a shoulder of Pitchoff), while the southern portion both aspects of an east-west running ridge that begins there and leads to the south face of Pitchoff. Like much of the surrounding terrain, the topography of the NCS campus is generally steep, with the relatively flat lowlands in the center of the property being the only exception.

Elevation ranges from 2,083 feet on the shore of Round Lake to over 2,500 feet on top of Trouble Mountain in the northeast corner of the property. In places, the slope can be extreme; approximately 15% of the forest is in areas with slopes exceeding 30%.

Soils The mountains of the High Peaks give structure to a landscape that has, more recently, been strongly shaped by glacial advance and retreat and the ice sheet's interaction with those hard, acidic rocks beneath it. Today, it is in the soils that the lasting influence of the glacier can still be read across the landscape: the sands and gravels in the valleys, the stony tills on the mountains' slopes, and the slides, cliffs and bare summits above them. The NCS property highlights many of the major glacial soil building processes. Soils include the fine, deep, unsorted ablation tills dumped by the receding glacier as it stagnated and melted in place (Monadnock and Sunapee soils). Dense, lodgment tills were laid beneath the compacting weight of overriding ice; in the deep till soils (Mundalite and Adirondack soils) the lower layers of the soil remain compacted as a legacy of the thousands of tons of glacial pressure that bore on them.

Thinner, shallow tills on the mid- and upper-slopes (Rawsonville, Tunbridge and Hogback soils) consist of unsorted materials that at times only barely cover the bedrock beneath them. Finally, there are the deep sands laid down in the delta at the mouth of the relatively short-lived glacial South Meadow Lake (Burnt Vly and Searsport soils). The sandy bottom of this lake formed the flat plains along Adirondack Loj and Bear Cub Roads and the wave-cut bench at 2209' on Scott's Cobble marks the former lake shore. This was the highest meltwater lake in the Adirodacks and across the local landscape small sandy deltas interrupt otherwise tumbling mountain streams at this contour.

In many cases, the productivity of a soil today reflects the ongoing landscape dynamics that continue to shape its development: the present state of the Burnt Vly and Seasport soils owes more to the undecomposed organic material that has accumulated in their upper layers than to the mineral soil below; elsewhere, the Mundalite fine sandy loam is especially productive because a deep mineral soil has been built 4

up over time with additional colluvium deposited from above, enriched by a thick layer of humus made up, in part, of up-slope leaf litter and debris.

Hydrology Most of the NCS land is drained by a small stream that carries water off the south face of Pitchoff Mountain, which runs through a minor complex of wetlands in the center of the property. These wetlands are all categorized as palustrine habitats and include shallow shrub and emergent marshes and adjacent conifer swamps. A smaller portion of the property drains into Round Lake and another portion drains to the south, under Cascade Road and into little Mud Pond. All these waters join in North Meadow Brook, which enters the West Branch of the AuSable river just west of the Adirondack Loj Road. The West Branch follows a northeast course out of the mountains, through the Wilmington Notch, meeting the East Branch in AuSable Forks, passing through Keeseville, and entering Lake Champlain through the sandy delta at Ausable Point; eventually, the waters of Lake Champlain reach the sea by way of the St. Lawrence River.

Climate Average temperatures in Lake Placid (for the 30 year period ending in 1970) were 18Ëš F for winters and 74Ëš F for summers. Surely, a January morning at 30 below is less noteworthy than an August afternoon above 95. Average annual precipitation was 40 inches, of which about half fell during the growing season.

Annual snowfall averaged nearly ten feet over that period. Generally, the campus sits in a cold pocket within a cold region; it receives a typical amount of usable precipitation for the region, so that the soil is often moist and water is usually not a major constraint on productivity.

Landscape ecology The upland hardwoods and mixedwoods, lowland conifer swamps, and small wetland complex of the NCS woodlands are a small but representative component of the Northern Forest eco-region, which encompasses northern New England, eastern and maritime Canada, and New York's Adirondacks. The Northern Forest lies, broadly, between the temperate, central Appalachian uplands to its south and west, and the frigid, boreal environment to its north. It is thus a forest of transition, meeting the needs, to various degrees, of species like northern hardwoods, hemlock and pine, which are in the heart of their ranges; but also of the central hardwoods like oaks, white ash and black cherry, as well as boreal conifers like spruce, balsam and tamarack, all of which are near the limits of their ranges in the Northern Forest. Predictably, the distributions of these species closely follow the elevational and, to a lesser extent, latitudinal gradients that control climate within the region.

Hydrology also plays an important role in the ecology of the Northern Forest. From the large open bogs of the northern Maine, Quebec and the western Adirondacks, to the floodplain forests along many river corridors, to the small conifer swamps found throughout, a variety of wetlands add diversity and complexity to the region.

The Adirondacks in general, and the High Peaks in particular, tend more toward the boreal end of the Northern Forest continuum. Balsam fir and red spruce are widespread, while red oak is quite rare and, 5

in the High Peaks, is only found (in the woods) on the south-facing slopes of mountains such as Whiteface, Catamount and Baker where there was a history of fire. The steep terrain of the High Peaks generally precluded the development of large open bogs, but small conifer swamps, seepages, lake deltas, beaver meadows and other wetlands are prevalent. Northern hardwood associations predominate along mid-slope positions across the region, with composition controlled by nutrient availability, soil depth and drainage.

The New York Natural Heritage Program classifies large swathes of the High Peaks as significant ecological communities, including the well distributed mountain spruce-fir forest as well as the more restricted spruce-fir rocky summit community; neither community extends onto the NCS property, but the later has been mapped nearby on the summits of the Sentinel Range.

Along side the two disturbance factors already noted (fire and beavers; the latter an historically important agent again active in the contemporary landscape, the former more or less an early 20 th century anomaly) others should be added: infrequent, but high intensity storms, such as the hurricane of 1938, the so-called Big Blow of 1950, or the ice storm of 1998; region-wide “pest� outbreaks such as the spruce budworm irruption in the late 1970's; localized incidents such as microbursts, rock slides or flooding; and small-scale, individual-tree mortality from up-rooting, disease, lightning or just old age. The variation and discontinuity of disturbance, the diversity of landscape patterns and microsites, and the breadth and complexity of other factors, including timing, weather, predation, competition and sheer randomness, all contribute to the dynamic forest processes across the region that historically led to a rich mosaic of habitats and environments in the Northern Forest.

Like the woods of the Northern Forest, the wildlife populations they support reflect the transitional geography of the region. Northern species such as martens, loons, moose or blackpoll warblers share the region with the white-tailed deer, opossums, cardinals and turkeys that are more abundant to the south, any of whom might cross paths with the beavers, coyotes or bald eagles who are broadly distributed generalists.

Wildlife populations in the Northern Forest are dynamic and the past few centuries have seen fluxes and changes that were complex and are still not fully understood. Many species that were once rare are now thriving to point of nuisance, while others remain threatened. Novel and continually evolving interrelationships within and among populations and habitats will only weave additional threads of complexity and dynamism into the landscape. There are no State or Federally listed threatened or endangered species known to occur on the NCS property, but several State listed threatened species have been identified nearby. These include the peregrine falcon, round whitefish and white bluegrass, all of which are classified as secure and none of which require any special management consideration aside from normal best practices.

6

S OILS M AP

7

V. M ANAGEMENT H ISTORY & C ONTEXT

Local land-use history Historically, the High Peaks offered little to entice the various peoples who have looked up at them from the gentler foothills and the fertile Champlain Valley below. Substantial pre-European settlements in the valley may have served as points of departure for hunting or fishing excursions into the mountains, but there were apparently no settlements more permanent than seasonal camps in the higher terrain (local lore telling of an Iroquois village and the adventures of Roger's Rangers, not withstanding). Similarly, while the Champlain Valley was eagerly cleared and cultivated during the colonial period and in the early years of the American republic, much of the Adirondacks remained unsettled. Aside from a short-lived mining venture near the Cascade Lakes and the handful of farm families that scratched out a living until the 1816 “Year Without a Summer” drove them off, very little settlement took place prior to the 1840's.

Even by the Civil War, North Elba in many ways still resembled a frontier town, served by the stagecoach routes through the Wilmington Notch and Cascade Pass, and a sparse network of mountain roads and trails. In general, only the flatter, lake-bottom tablelands south of Lake Placid were cultivated (mostly for wheat and potatoes), with some sheep grazing on small hill farms nearby, and not much else devoted to agriculture. Turn of the century interest in Lake Placid as a haven for leisure and escape, and the market for produce and fresh milk the great clubs and resorts created, gave a short-lived boost to the small farms in the area. Ultimately, though, just as farming came late to the Adirondacks, it was given up on sooner than in many of the neighboring regions of the Northeast. Improved transportation and refrigeration technology eroded the only advantage local growers had in providing fresh goods and opened the door to competition from more productive producers outside the region. By the 1930's, agriculture was already well past its peak, with less than 4,000 acres of farmland in North Elba, a town of nearly 100,000 acres. Throughout the High Peaks, less the five percent of the landscape was ever cultivated, and at that, such activity was concentrated in just a few valley bottoms or former lake beds.

If agriculture failed to make a substantial impact on the landscape, other uses and industrial demands nevertheless had an effect. In the early 19th century forges were established as far up the East and West Branches of the AuSable River as Keene and Lake Placid, respectively, putting pressure even then on the surrounding hardwood forests to feed the kilns that produced the charcoal for the furnaces. Hardwoods of all sizes could be reduced to charcoal, and with temporary or only semi-permanent kilns easily moved or abandoned, there was no incentive but to clearcut. Occasionally “stump farmers” would follow the charcoal harvests, but often the land was simply walked away from. Charcoal production was slowly phased out only in the last few decades of the the 19th century, as rail transport made imported mineral coal a more economical alternative.

Through the 1840's and 1850's, the lumber industry was widespread in the Adirondack interior, including the High Peaks, but in many ways still cottage-scale. Some logs were sawn into lumber locally, but most were piled up in the winter and floated down the rivers to Lake Champlain and on to larger mills and bigger markets. The accessible valleys and hillsides were picked over for old-growth pine, hemlock and especially red spruce. The boom was in full swing through the 1870's and lumber production came to a peak around 1880. Throughout that period, felling was selective, as only the largest trees (and generally just spruce) were merchantable; clearcuts comparable to the colliers' simply did not make sense.

8

As the lumber boom came and went over a quarter century, the development of a market for pulpwood arrived in the 1870's, conveniently making use of what smaller diameter trees had been left behind. The J. & J. Rodgers pulp mill was opened in AuSable Forks in 1894 and was soon chewing through upwards of 50,000 cords a year, mostly sourced from upstream in the AuSable valleys. The mill would continue to process wood brought to it by river drives (through 1923), or over the road, for the following half century.

The heavy, opportunistic cutting of the late 1800's left behind a landscape that was, in places, denuded, stripped of all timber and prone to fire and erosion. In 1903, for example, 600,000 acres burned across the Adirondacks, including much of the cut-over land from Big Slide and Porter Mountains down to the Cascade Lakes and up the south side of Pitchoff Mountain. These fires typically burned through the logging slash that had been left behind, in places consuming all the debris and any trees that had been left standing, while elsewhere rolling across the lighter fuels but only partially burning the brush and live trees.

At times, the fires were intense enough to jump from cut-over land into uncut forests. Each of these different fire-landscape dynamics led to different responses from the forests that would reestablish there.

Elsewhere in the High Peaks, the big softwood had been taken, but the steep slopes, bony ground and availability of easy-to-get wood on other lots had discouraged the lumbermen from returning for a second cut. And even by the turn of the century, some portions of the landscape, particularly among the most rugged reaches of the High Peaks, remained so hard to get into or to get wood out of that they had never been commercially harvested. Across the landscape, many of the inaccessible lands were abandoned by their owners and bought up by the State in the large tax sale in 1877 or in smaller purchases in the years that followed. The State's intentions for these lands (beyond taking the burden of delinquent parcels off the small towns and boosting their tax rolls) was unclear at the time, but before long it was more or less accepted that they would remain unmanaged and, as per legislative decree in 1885 and a constitutional amendment in 1894, “forever wild.” At the start of the 20th century, the landscape was a patchwork—a few struggling small farms; even fewer struggling big farms; cut-over, burnt up and washed away hillsides; and blocks of intact or lightly picked over old woods, some already in the hands of the State's nascent Forest Preserve—all of which was woven among the familiar mountain peaks and rivers and lakes that orient us today.

Property management history While it is impossible to reconstruct every detail of a property's history, there is enough evidence available to tell a good story that gets the general details right. Given the facts that are known about the property, the current age and composition of the forest, and a general knowledge of farming, logging and industry in the area, and a reasonably clear picture emerges.

The NCS campus lies within Township 12 of the Old Military Tract of 1781, land originally granted by the State as payment to Revolutionary War veterans. Eventually, a road was built, running from Westport on Lake Champlain to Hopkinton, in St. Lawrence County, to provide access to the lands. Known as the North West Bay Road, though also (and in places, still) called the Old Military Road, it was more or less passable by the second decade of the 19th century. The road followed Nichols Brook up out of Keene, climbing along what is now Alstead Hill Road, passed between Pitchoff and Sentinel Mountains, and came out on today's Mountain Lane, just north and west of Round Lake, bypassing the property that would 9

become the NCS campus. A spur road to haul iron ore up from the Cascade Lakes to the forge near Lake Placid for the Elba Iron & Steel Company must have been built at the same time. Thus, the property was accessible by roads as early as 1810 or so. It is possible that North Elba's earliest settlers and entrepreneurs would have used this crude infrastructure to get to the foot of Pitchoff Mountain to cut hardwood and make charcoal, but more likely that they had enough wood closer at hand for their limited needs.

One source dates the first settlement in “Cascadeville” to 1843, though not with certainty. In any event, it was the opening of the stagecoach line from Westport to North Elba in 1858, running directly past the property, which opened the area up for development. It is unclear when what would become NCS land was first settled or if the old farm house that still stands was preceded by some cruder, short-lived home or cabin. It is unknown if the woods had already been cut for charcoal or if that first farmer himself did all the initial felling and clearing. At any rate, the farm house—built on wood pilings with a rubble foundation added later—apparently dates from the mid-1800's. The farm was presumably in production from that point on, through the remainder of the 19th century.

The farm may have been operational for several generations, but it is hard to know for how much of that period it produced beyond a subsistence level. The large, attractive dairy barn, however, attests to an eventual degree of prosperity, likely from supplying fresh milk to Melville Dewey's Lake Placid Club, which was founded in 1895. All of the property's best agricultural soils (the flatter portions of the deep and relatively productive Monadnock and Sunapee soils) were cleared and probably cultivated at one time.

Some of the steeper, wetter, stonier or otherwise more marginal ground around and above those better fields appears to have been cleared but was unlikely to have been further improved. Rocky, upland fields would have only been suitable for pasture and in places may have just been partially cleared to a wooded pasture state that was not uncommon at the time. The wet ground that is today mostly conifer swamp had likely been grazed or cut for hay back then.

Most of the slopes of Trouble Mountain appear to have been continuously forested. One source recalls an early map of the property, from around the time the camp acquired it, that may have noted the location near the lake of an old sugar house. A sugar house would have certainly needed sugar woods to supply it, and it would be natural for the sap to have been hauled down from the hill just above it. Other portions of the property, bordering the hill pastures but too steep or thin-soiled to be worth the effort to clear, were also probably never cleared.

Though never open fields, these forested portions of the property were almost certainly heavily logged. With strong demand for all grades of wood, declining demand for maple sugar, and improved transportation bringing competition and depressing local markets for farm products, a turn of the century farmer would have likely appreciated a little income from wherever he could get it. Or, perhaps, the sugar house was already a relic in the late 1800's. It is noted in a Forestry Commission report from 1891 that “beyond and west of Cascade Lake are some abandoned charcoal kilns, and here everything was cut but now the land is covered with extensive second growth.”

The historical record makes note of the fire that swept through this section of the High Peaks in 1903 (which consumed, among much else, the Adirondack Lodge van Hovenburg had built on Heart Lake a quarter century early). The State Conservation Commission's famous 1916 Fire Protection Map shows the land around the Cascade Lakes (including the eastern portion of the NCS campus) as “burned areas, with fuel remaining,” as opposed to completely burned “wastelands.” Other sources, however, make reference to the summit and “much of the southeast half” as being the only portion of Pitchoff to burn in that fire. Did 10

the fire burn any of what would become NCS land? Had the land already been cut-over when the fire passed through? Had it been partially cut then and any remaining timber salvaged after the fire? Was it not cut until after the fire?

What we do know is that, presently, much of that forest on Trouble Mountain (Stand 1) is nearly pure sugar maple and almost all between 100 and 120 years old. These trees put on very little growth until about 1920, at which point they began growing at a healthy rate. However these seedlings developed— whether after an initial harvest, preceding the fire, and then surviving or resprouting after the fire; or perhaps only after the fire, from seed-fall from mature survivors onto bare ground—they appear to have grown at first under partial shade. In fact, had there not been at least some residual overstory in the earliest years of that cohort, it is very unlikely that we would see so little popple, birch, cherry and ash today. Most likely, there were enough surviving overstory maples to both inhibit the establishment of light-demanding species and to convince that early 20th century farmer that there was still money to be made in cutting what was left (though they did miss a few stems, as today's scattered legacy trees attest). There was some sort of follow-up logging that took place after the fire, probably sometime in the early- to mid-teens, and within a few years of that the newly released maple seedlings had adjusted to their new environment and were growing strongly.

More diverse upland forests elsewhere on the property could have come about either as a different response to the same land-use history (e.g. if sugar maple seedlings were not as well established, or if poorer soil conditions made some other species more competitive relative to the maple) or as abandoned pastures reverting back to forest. Interpreting where the line between pasture and woodlot was drawn is made more difficult because the period of abandonment and burning/clearcutting coincided, potentially producing forests that are now the same age and share similar compositions but grew up from different histories.

In 1923, the land was acquired—first in a 160 acre, quarter-section purchase, with other parcels added later— and would thereafter be run by Camp Treetops. In 1938 North Country School was founded and still shares the property with the camp. It is unclear exactly what state the land and farm were in when the camp purchased the property. Some of the fields had already been abandoned when the property was acquired, some were allowed to revert back to woods or deliberately reforested soon after, and some were kept open or developed to suit the camp's design. Agriculture returned in the 1940's as the school developed its farm program. Sugaring resumed in some portions of the woods and horses, flower beds, vegetable gardens and some production livestock kept the agricultural lands open. The forest was largely unmanaged for the following half century, slowly growing and changing but largely unnoticed other than as an attractive backdrop in the lives of students, campers and staff.

In the late 1970's and through the 1980's, three major process or events began or accelerated. Acid deposition—air and cloud borne sulfur and nitrogen compounds from the industrial midwest and from regional tailpipe emissions—had a number of effects of ecosystem processes, some obvious, some subtle.

On the NCS campus, the most significant consequences were probably accelerated soil nutrient leaching, calcium immobilization and soil acidification. Turning the soils sour, striping them of their nutrients and tying up the calcium in the soil all would have stressed the widely established sugar maple component of the forest. Furthermore, those factors all would contribute to the significant narrowing of sugar maple's regeneration niche—that suite of conditions a species needs to successfully produce and disperse its seeds and for enough of those seeds to germinate and eventually thrive.

11

Around the same time, beech bark disease (BBD) swept across the Adirondacks. BBD is an insectfungus complex that kills the above-ground portion of most beech stems; the first wave of BBD effected around 90% of beeches. Once top-killed, the root system remains viable and sends up suckers. Prior to BBD, beech was a well-distributed upland species, perhaps larger than the average tree but also less abundant than it had been (both consequences of poor management: the former because of loggers' disinterest in the wood, the later because of the species inability to grow well from abandoned fields or in large clearcuts); in its aftermath, beech suckers grew in thickets, dense to the point of crowding out all other vegetation but destined to succumb to the disease again before long (root suckers being genetically identical to the parent tree).

While acid deposition and BBD were taking their toll on the maples and beeches on the NCS campus, and as the two seemed at times to work together to ensure that no sugar maple regeneration would persist, a third process was starting to attract attention: global climate change. It is unlikely that climate change has had any direct, measurable effect on the NCS campus, but undoubtedly through the complexities and interconnections of global climate systems, regional weather patterns, local disturbance regimes and site-specific environmental factors, it has woven itself into the dynamics of the forest.

In the early 1990's under the leadership of John Culpepper, current Director of Facilities and Sustainability, serious attention began to be paid to the forest resources. Eric Fahl, a local logger with small equipment and a background in forestry, was contracted to cut wood on the property, following the positive experience of a neighboring landowner and member of the community. Beginning in 2004 and continuing on and off through 2009, the pay-as-cut timber sale was predominately of firewood, with some high quality log material harvested from diseased, damaged or at-risk trees. Eric was also on hand to salvage blow-down from a small stand of red pine near the main campus. In total, Eric harvested 425 cords of wood. To provide the community with an outside endorsement of the forestry practices they were implementing, the property was certified in 2007 with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) through a group certification program.

Around the same time, portions of the forest were leased to Tony Corwin, of South Meadow Farm Lodge and Maple Sugarworks, for commercial sap production. A ten year contract was signed, covering 2004-2014. A modern collection system, including tubing, vacuum pumps and collection tanks, was installed and remains in use as of 2016. The lease was renewed in 2014 for a five year period and will be up for renewal again in 2019. A clause of the lease contract restricts cutting in the lease area but has not impaired management to date. Tony is supportive of good forestry and, should the lease continue, eager to coordinate his woods work with other components of the forest management program at NCS. Beginning in 2010, a network of distributed biomass heating systems were installed for several campus buildings or complexes. These boilers have variously utilized wood pellets, cordwood (produced inhouse or procured locally), and wood chips produced from small diameter poles harvested in-house from the NCS property and adjoining properties. Poles were cut in 2011 and 2012 by Tucker Culpepper with some support by an intern and other NCS staff, and in 2014 and 2015 by Carter Rowley. In the winters of 2013 and 2014, John Foppert (another local logger and forester, and this plan's author) began harvesting cordwood on the property and from an adjoining property managed by NCS. As of 2016, Carter is continuing to cut poles and cordwood, aiming to meet a demand of approximately 12,000-14,000 twelve foot poles and 30-35 cords of larger diameter wood annually. Approximately 100 cords (predominately hardwood cordwood) have been harvested from the property since 2014.

12

Regulatory context Several overlapping jurisdictions create the legal and regulatory sphere in which management of the NCS forest takes place. Federal regulations rarely bear on local land-use practices and, in the absence of a federally listed endangered species or a point-source violation of clean water laws, are not pertinent to management of the NCS forest. State-wide laws do not restrict forest management activities, but the recommended Best Management Practices (BMPs) for Water Quality are developed at the state level and compliance with those standards is a requirement of many other programs. Local government in the Town of North Elba does not restrict management.

By far the most significant regulatory constraints placed on the property derive from the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). While the Park itself was established in 1892, and subsequently expanded over then next 79 years, it was not until 1971 that the APA was created by the state legislature and charged with regulating land-use on State and private land within the Park. The only regulations promulgated by the APA that directly affect forest management are a restriction on upland clearcuts over 25 acres without agency approval, and a restriction on wetland clearcuts over three acres. In addition, permitting is required for most building and infrastructure development projects, and new restrictions on land-use or management activities may be inserted into a permit. NCS was granted a permit to construct a new school building in 2011 (amended in 2012: Agency Permit 2011-178A) which delineated a “Critical Environmental Area” (CEA) within 150 feet of the state highway right-of-way and within 1/8 mile of the boundary with Forest Preserve. As explained in paragraph 19 of the Findings of Fact section of that permit, Condition 6 was amended to allow for forest management activities within the CEA. Condition 6, in its entirety, is quoted below: No new land use or development shall occur within 150 feet of the edge of the right-of-way of NYS Route 73, or within 1/8 mile of the adjoining NYS lands designated as “Wilderness” area, without first obtaining a new or amended Agency Permit.

No trees, shrubs or other wood-stemmed vegetation shall be removed within 25 feet of the edge of the highway right-of-way or within 25 feet of the adjacent state land Wilderness area, unless a new or amended permit is obtained. Outside of the 25 foot vegetative buffer, the selective removal of vegetation on the project site shall be undertaken in accordance with the “Forest Management Plan for the North Country School Camp Tree Tops Forest,” prepared by Dan Gilmore Forester, Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks and dated February 19, 2007, and shall be undertaken such that vegetative screening of development on the site is maintained and the existing character of the highway corridor and wilderness critical environmental areas are maintained. In no case shall the removal of vegetation result in development on the project site becoming more visible from the State land Wilderness area or NYS Route 73. These conditions shall not be deemed to prevent the removal of dead or diseased vegetation or of rotten or damaged trees or of other vegetation that presents a safety or health hazard.

Any changes or updates to the Forest Management Plan shall be submitted to the Agency for review to ensure the changes do not result in adverse impacts to the critical environmental areas and to determine if the revised plan requires a new or amended Agency permit.

Operational considerations The NCS campus (like the community itself) is in many ways unique. More so than nearly any other working forest, the NCS woods are almost constantly being skied down, hiked through, ridden on, worked with, played in, climbed over, slept under, studied, explored or in some way used. The challenge, from a management perspective, is compounded by the fact that the source of so much of that activity is children—and curious, independent, resourceful children, at that. Safety, therefore, must be the principal 13

consideration and will ultimately depend on caution, communication and common sense on the part of those who, as a consequence of their work, add a degree of danger to the already busy woods.

Along with safety concerns, there are a number of obstacles and hazards that complicate forestry operations around the NCS campus. Countless buildings—ranging in size from lean-tos, platforms and cabins, through yurts, sheds and houses, and up to dormitories, classrooms and barns—are scattered within the forest or along its edges. Also to be avoided are additional farm, facility and recreational infrastructure, such as fences, garden beds, water lines, drain fields, a toe rope, a rock climbing wall, and much more.

The task of protecting the people and property of the NCS community has been made somewhat easier by the decision to carry out much or perhaps all of the woods work in-house. Such an arrangement ensures fluid communication about where and when work is happening and allows for a degree of caution and common sense that might be hard to ask of or get from a cost-conscious contractor. The community has experimented with different equipment and personnel arrangements over the past several years. Currently a small, tractor-drawn forwarding trailer, a medium-sized tractor with a skidding winch, and an ATV are available for extracting and handling wood. A willingness to make capital investments to build operational capacity means that the equipment line-up may yet expand, though the preference for the small-scale is pronounced and the recommendations presented in this plan have been developed to be compatible with the machinery at hand.

Where the property adjoins State land to the east and north, the boundary line is well established and has recently been blazed by the State in yellow paint. Along the main western line, from Round Lake to the campus's entrance off the Cascade Road, the property abuts land owned by the Dexter family and their Round Lake Farm Trust. That family has a very close relationship with the NCS community and allows full access to, and use and management of, their land by NCS. The line dividing the properties has been obscured by the mutual trust and overlapping sense of responsibility that connects them, but it is prudent, nonetheless, to keep track of the boundary on the ground. A small parcel, also belonging to the Dexter family and held in trust, abuts the NCS property in the southwest and forms most of a north-south boundary there; a small, skinny lot just south of the campus entrance accounts for a small portion of that north-south line and the east-west running line that forms a corner there. Those lines are discernible in the field but are in need of reblazing. A final small parcel belonging to the Round Lake Farm Trust sits along the campus's northern line and is not well marked in the field. It is strongly recommended that these corners be located and the lines maintained.

14

VI. G ENERAL O BSERVATIONS The property-specific data and information from which this plan was developed were drawn from multiple sources and are representative of the iterative, adaptive nature of forest management. Qualitative stand assessment, boundary inspection and updated mapping were carried out in early 2016 and complement the author's first hand experience cutting wood and building trails on the property in each of the two prior winters. That work was guided by the Fuelwood Resource Assessment—a Paul Smith's College capstone project also by this plan's author—prepared in 2009. Fifty-six 1/20 acre fixed area plots were located and sampled for that project and these data provide the quantitative basis for the recommendations presented in this plan. That project was informed by the 2007 management plan developed for the property by Dan Gilmore, the Stewardship Forester for what was then the Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA) as part of their FSC group certification program; that plan, in turn, drew from a 2003 project by then SUNY-ESF student Mike Farrell.

In relying on an earlier set of inventory data, this plan cannot stray too far from stand boundaries that have already been delineated. Nonetheless, evolving management uses, considerations and objectives for the NCS woodlands are better reflected in an updated stand map; similarly, a new numbering system has been adopted for the sake of clarity. Underlying site conditions ensure that each successive plan or report delineates and describes broadly similar stands, but comparisons among them are best done with a bird's eye view.

The management recommendations presented in this plan represent the informed advice of the professional foresters of Pekin Branch Forestry. These recommendations reflect the foresters' professional and academic experience in forest management, silviculture, conservation and the suite of related fields that inform modern forestry; they have been developed following the principles and practices of scientifically sound forestry, as described in the relevant management guidelines, textbooks and academic journals. This plan has been written to comply with the American Forest Foundation's 2015-2020 Standards of Sustainability for Forest Certification. Implementation of this plan and adherence to the recommendations and restrictions it sets out should qualify the property for certification from the American Tree Farm System (ATFS), whose program is internationally endorsed by the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

Ultimately, stewardship is measured by results, rather than just intentions. This plan has been written to be an informative, accessible tool that can further connect the community to its woods. Its intent is to facilitate an increasingly active role from within the community in on-the-ground management. This plan should provide community members with sufficient information on their forest—the condition it is in, the dynamics that shape it, the factors that constrain it—that they may knowledgeably consider future management options and feel confident in contributing to the on-going discussion. Nonetheless, this plan is a technical document and its effective implementation depends on the oversight of and continued input from qualified, professional foresters. Given the breadth and complexity of silvicultural considerations that are incorporated into this plan's recommendations, trees should generally only be cut if they have first been marked by a forester; when the prescription is sufficiently straightforward and the logger demonstrates a strong grasp of the concepts involved, it may be appropriate for the forester to provide detailed instruction and close supervision rather than tree-by-tree marking.

15

VII.

S TAND D ESCRIPTIONS & M ANAGEMENT R ECOMMENDATIONS

Presented below are detailed stand-by-stand descriptions of the forest, the long-term structural, compositional and functional goals for each stand, and the near-term silvicultural treatments or management activities that have been prescribed to advance each stand toward those goals. Over the course of the management period for which this plan has been written, work has been prescribed for a number of areas throughout the forest. Work is called for in the traditional (bucket collection) sugarbush that should be attended to annually or at least every few years. All sections of the conventional (tubing collection) sugarbush need to be treated; the timing of work there is intended to coincide with the replacement of mainline tubing, on the assumption that the tap lease is extended and collection infrastructure is overhauled.

Other areas of Stands 1 and 2 have work called for, both of equal priority, and should be fit in around the more time-sensitive conventional sugarbush treatments. The schedule presented below is offered as a suggestion, but as long as all of the work is completed by the end of the management period it does not need to be strictly followed.

In addition to the stand-specific prescriptions offered below, a set of principles and expectations for logging operations is offered here. In addition to State the BMPs for protecting water quality, it is essential that the logging called for in this plan is carried out with a significantly higher degree of attention to safety, neatness, and consideration of others than is standard for most harvesting operations. Wherever logging is taking place, trails and roads should be kept clear and smooth, and all branches, limbs and other debris should be chopped finely and left lying close to the ground. Care should be taken to leave snags and large dead wood standing, provided they do not pose an undue safety risk. Extra care should be given to minimizing damage to trees in the residual stand: well thought out directional felling, restraint in where equipment travels and when it operates, and a general willingness to prioritize stand health over logging productivity.

The silvicultural prescriptions presented below are technical and complex, bringing professional judgment and quantitative analysis to bear at a fine spatial resolution. Having been developed in detail, these prescriptions should position the forest to continue to grow and develop so that, over the long-term, the “fit� between the community and the forest feels ever more tailored. In the near-term, however, it is not these ecological considerations but rather the operational ones that will determine whether or not the community will be fully happy with their woods and the management happening there. Given how widely the NCS forest is used, it is essential that the logging called for in this plan is carried out with a significantly higher degree of attention to safety, neatness, and consideration of others than is standard for most harvesting operations. On an on-going basis, trails and roads should be kept clear and smooth, and all branches, limbs and other debris should be chopped finely and left lying close to the ground.

Estimated harvest volumes are included in each prescription on a per acre basis and are shown in the summary schedule as totals for the 15 year period. These figures are provided for planning purposes and should be primarily used to gauge the expected workload each treatment will entail. Each operation should remove both low-grade fuelwood and some salable sawtimber, and in varying proportions. Actual volumes, of course, can be expected to vary somewhat from the estimates presented below, but a general harvest rate of 60 cords per year (as called for here) is an appropriate target.

In addition to the prescribed silvicultural treatments, needed boundary line maintenance has been noted on the schedule of management activities and should be taken care of as soon as possible. 2019 will 16

mark ten years since the inventory data on which this plan has been based was collected; the property should be reinventoried then and the findings brought to bear on a reassessment of the goals and strategies proposed in this plan. In 2021, this plan should be updated to incorporate that new data and reflect any new thoughts, concerns or considerations on the part of the community or their foresters. The plan should be formally reviewed again in 2026 and a complete reinventory and plan update should be done in 2031.

17

S CHEDULE O F R ECOMMENDED M ANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

Year

Area

Activity

Total volume

2016

Stand 3

Boundary line maintenance

Annually

Stand 1

Silvicultural treatment (traditional sugarbush)

100 cds

2016-2020

Stand 1

Silvicultural treatment (non-sugarbush)

120 cds

2019

Stand 1

Silvicultural treatment (conventional sugarbush)

160 cds

2019

All areas

Reinventory

2021-2031

Stand 2

Silvicultural treatment (non-sugarbush)

2021

All areas

Review & update management plan

2021

Stand 2

Silvicultural treatment (North side suagrbush)

130 cds

2023

Stand 2

Silvicultural treatment (South side sugarbush)

150 cds

2026

All areas

Formal management plan review

2031

All areas

Reinventory & update management plan

18

240 cds

L AND C OVER C LASSIFICATION & F OREST S TANDS M AP

19

S TAND 1

N ORTHERN H ARDWOOD

41 ACRES

S TAND C ONDITIONS This stand occupies the northeast corner of the property, bounded to the north and east by State land and to the west and south by the mixedwoods and softwoods of Stand 3 and, in one small place in the southeast, by the small stream the separates it from Stand 2. The stand rises up from a toe-slope position to the craggy top of Trouble Mountain, which marks the property's high point and the beginning of a ridge leading to Pitchoff Mountain's summit. The concave hillside faces south-soutwest and becomes extremely steep at the top. The soils throughout the stand are all stony basal tills, ordered in series from the very deep, very productive Mundalite soils down slope, where the depth above the compacted till layer in these soils provides both permeability and water holding capacity, through the moderately deep Rawsonville soils on the upper slope positions, to the thin Hogback soils and bare rock at very top. The deep, rich Mundalite soils account for about 80% of the area of the stand.

Given the quality of the site, it is likely that the pre-settlement composition of this portion of the property had always been dominated by hardwoods; it is likely, too, that it remained forested throughout the settlement and modern periods, with no evidence in the field or the historical record suggesting it had been cleared for agriculture. Whatever the mid-19th century land-use patterns (charcoal production, sugaring, commercial logging) had been, some series of dramatic events, probably pivoting around the 1903 fire, led to the establishment and release of the cohort which dominates the present stand. The exact sequence of events is unclear, but a dense crop of sugar maple seedlings was established not long after the turn of the century and began growing aggressively around 1920. Hence, the present stand is made up of stems with true ages between 100 and 120, or perhaps a bit older, but with a consistent effective age of near 100.

The excellent network of roads and trails by which the stand is accessed speaks to the extent and degree of use these woods have seen since the camp and school have been established. Many of the roads are passable with a car or truck and many more are easily traversed with a tractor or light off-road vehicle.

Much of the road network has been maintained to facilitate sugaring, which began in sections of the stand in the 1940's. Currently, sap is gathered in buckets from about 11 acres in the center of the stand and an additional 16 acres of sugarbush have a tubing collection system; the remaining 1/3 of the stand is untapped, of which two or so acres are inaccessibly steep and rocky.

NCS farm staff may have done some minor tending in the sugarbush over the years, but in general little work seems to have been carried out until Eric Fahl thinned sections of the stand in 2007. That entry almost exclusively removed firewood-grade material and did not significantly reduce stocking. The thinning concentrated on removing beech from below and only harvesting senescent maple stems. A small amount of follow-up work has been carried out since then, largely consistent with the manner in which Eric cut, though on occasion opening up the canopy more aggressively.

Structurally, the stand remains relatively simple: even-aged with a typical stratified mixed-species arrangement. That is to say, although trees of all sizes are currently present, they are of the same age-class and they tend to be segregated into distinct canopy positions according to species. Sugar maple dominates the main canopy strata, while beech is largely relegated to a subordinate, sub-canopy position. Scattered yellow birch, beech and black cherry are established in the main canopy strata, though they are infrequent.

This simplified structure is, in places, beginning to break down. Individual tree mortality and somewhat widespread crown die-back within the main canopy has left some neighborhood sites less than fully occupied and allowed for a patchy new cohort to develop. The extent of this new cohort is limited and compositionally it does not offer much of either the sugar maple it might eventually replace or the other high value hardwoods (yellow birch, white ash, black cherry) that are sought after to boost diversity.

Presently, beech dominates the regeneration cohort as well as the sub-canopy strata that has to date occupied most of the newly available growing space.

20

Q UANTITATIVE S TAND D ATA (2009) SITE CLASS: I & II DETERMINED BY: Soils mapping/field examination ACCESS DISTANCE: Less than one mile AGE STRUCTURE: Even-aged, 100 years old STOCKING GUIDE: NRS 132 SIZE CLASS STRUCTURE (% B.A.): 6-10”: 18%

OVERSTORY B.A./A.: 128 sq ft ACCEPTABLE B.A./A.:114 sq ft QUADRATRIC STAND DIAMETER: 12.1” NUMBER TREES/A.: 160 PERCENT STOCKING: 103% 10-16”: 43% 16-22”: 28% 22+”: 11%

S TOCKING G UIDE 140

18

14

12

10

8

120

7

6

Basal Area

100 80 60 40 2009 Inventory 20 0 0

100

200

300 Trees per acre

D IAMETER D ISTRIBUTION

21

400

500

600

M ANAGEMENT O BJECTIVES The broad suite of goals the NCS community has for its forest will be best served in this stand by a combination of management strategies. Throughout the stand, structural complexity and age-class diversity should be cultivated. This gradual transformation will enhance the stand's productivity (by allocating growing space away from individuals or patches in decline and toward vigorous new cohorts), build resiliency (by diversifying exposure to risk and creating functional redundancies), and maximize the likelihood of maintaining continuity of the benefits and yields the community expects, even as the stand ages further. In other ways, management among the different sections of the stand should diverge. All sections of productive sugarbush should be strictly managed to promote healthy and vigorous sugar maples and to maintain the highest sustainable density of taps over time. Outside of the sugarbushes, the management should emphasize compositional diversity (in part to compensate for the lack of diversity in the sugarbushes) and should allow for a less regulated, more responsive approach to stand development.

The traditional (bucket collection) sugarbush should be a model of excellent management. The lack of tubing and well-developed road network make frequent, low-intensity treatments feasible. The sugarbush should be transformed into a balanced, uneven-aged stand through a modified application of a single tree selection system. The target future stand structure should incorporate each of the following considerations: it should provide for the continuous establishment and recruitment of sugar maple regeneration in sufficient abundance to maintain a balanced structure; it should facilitate a pattern accelerating stem growth through successive size-classes that leads to demographic sustainability; and it should maximize the aggregated number of taps that can be put in without compromising future productivity. Specifically, such a structure would maintain a basal area of 70-75 ft2/ac, distributed among size-classes with 20-25% in poles, 30-35% in small sawtimber, and 40-50% in large and very large sawtimber. It should not be necessary to restrict the maximum diameter, provided all stems are vigorous and the target allocation among size-classes is maintained. The long period of transition to this target structure (over 50 years) should focus on promoting vigor among the healthiest stems in the main canopy cohort, identifying any thriving sugar maple stems belonging to a younger cohort and fully releasing them, and establishing a uniform understory of regeneration throughout the sugarbush to serve a as pool for recruitment.

Many of the same principles are applicable to the conventional sugarbush, but must be modified to accommodate the operational limitations of the tubing system. While still aiming for a balanced age-class structure, silvicultural work in this section of the stand will be less frequent (10-15 year intervals) and therefore will have to be more intensive. Individual tree tending will still be necessary to promote vigor on a tree-by-tree basis, but neighborhood scale treatments, akin to small group shelterwoods, will be required to secure the desired regeneration. The longer the interval between entries, the more the system will be regulated with an area-based control system and the more individual tree growth dynamics will resemble those of an even-aged stand. Like the traditional sugarbush, the transition period will be quite long and the same silvicultural goals should be emphasized.

Outside of the sugarbush, the stand should be managed with an irregular system, with a focus on complementing the management strategies at work elsewhere in the stand. Whereas the sugarbushes will be managed conservatively, uniformly and with a strong emphasis on sugar maple, the balance of the stand should be transitioned aggressively and in a way that maximizes spatial heterogeneity and species diversity.

A full continuum of canopy openings should be implemented, from single-tree to group shelterwood to small-to-medium patch clearcut. Across existing cohorts, and as new regeneration is developed, a strong preference should be given to high value, non-maple hardwoods, disease resistant beech stems already present, and under-represented but potentially viable northern hardwood associates. Long-term yield regulation should not be a controlling factor in managing this portion of the stand, so long as a more or less consistent supply of harvested products can be maintained within a broader system of continuous cover in attractive, interesting woods.

22

S ILVICULTURAL P RESCRIPTION Across the stand, stocking should be reduced, promoting health, improving residual timber quality and creating a more attractive forest. In the traditional sugarbush, basal area should be gradually brought down to 80-90 ft2/ac with successive light entries over the course of the management period. The highest priority is to identify vigorous pole-sized sugar maple stems outside of the main canopy cohort and free them from competition from above or from the side. Additionally, 10-15 sugar maple crop trees per acre should be selected from the main cohort (on the basis of health, form and potential longevity) and released, allocating as much growing space as each stem can accommodate without risk of windthrow or degradation (e.g. from epicormic sprouting or sun scald). Any additional removals necessary to meet the stocking target should be non-sugar maple stems or senescent and low vigor sugar maple, selected as when thinning from below. These removals should be roughly uniform, though they may be somewhat clustered to facilitate the release of quality sugar maple regeneration, where it is present. The pace of removal should be such that the target basal area is only reached by the end of the management period. It is estimated that, on average, one cord per acre will need to be removed annually to meet the stocking target by the end of the management period.

The conventional sugarbush should should be treated somewhat more aggressively, with a stronger emphasis on regeneration. Small patch cuts (1/10 acre) or larger group shelterwood cuts (up to ½ acre with 10-40 ft2/ac residual stocking) should be distributed through the sugarbush and should comprise about 10% of that portion of the stand. Patches should be located to release established regeneration, remove concentrations of low-vigor stems, or be generally well distributed throughout the sugarbush. The matrix area between the patches and groups should be treated in the same manner as the traditional sugarbush— crop tree release of vigorous poles and select main cohort stems paired with a uniform thinning from below —but with a somewhat higher stocking target (90-100 ft2/ac). The timing of this entry should coincide with the overhaul of the tubing system and should be completed before re-installation begins. The estimated harvest volume is 10 cords per acre.

The remainder of the stand should be treated with larger patch clearcuts and group shelterwoods.

Patch clearcuts should be between 1/3 and 2/3 acres and group shelterwoods up to one acre with residual stocking between 10-40ft2/ac. Approximately one third of this area of the stand should be treated in this way over the course of the management period. Patches and groups should be located according to the following criteria: (1) to release well established advance regeneration of preferred species; (2) to improve residual vigor and quality by removing concentrations of senescent and poor quality stems across all sizeclasses and low-vigor small sawtimber unlikely to graduate quickly into the large sawtimber size-class; (3) to improve the representation of a wider range of species within the stand; and (4) to create spacing within the stand that is well suited to the terrain, representative of a variety of site conditions (to encourage diversity of regeneration) and roughly even. If possible, the seasonal timing of harvesting activities in the patches and groups should be varied (i.e. some on protected ground in winter, others on unfrozen ground to expose bare mineral soil) to further increase the diversity of site conditions and the regeneration response.

Enrichment planting of species currently not present in the NCS forest (such as basswood, northern red oak or butternut) is feasible and should be coordinated with other components of the harvest planning process.

In the matrix area between patches and groups a non-uniform free thinning should be carried out. Crop tree selection should follow the same criteria as elsewhere in the stand but with an explicit emphasis promoting non-maple species. This treatment should yield around 10-12 cords per acre. Work in this portion of the stand can proceed at whatever pace is appropriate, though the entire area should be treated by the end of the management period. It will not compromise the silvicultural objectives outlined above if patches are cut one by one, or beginning with the smallest openings, to allow time to gauge the community's response and solicit feedback.

23

S TAND 2

N ORTHERN H ARDWOOD

67 ACRES

S TAND C ONDITIONS This stand sits in the southeast corner of the property, bounded to the south by the Cascade Road, to the east by the Forest Preserve and to the north along a somewhat arbitrary northeast-southwest running line separating it from Stand 3. This line roughly parallels both the stream and wetland complex bisecting Stand 3 and a low ridge formation at the center of this stand and marks the diffuse boundary between the mixedwoods-hardwood association in that portion of Stand 3 and hardwood-mixedwoods association in adjacent section of this stand. Soil arrangements are complex throughout the stand with a variety of soil types represented. Deep, well-drained ablation till (Monadnock soils) occupy the lower ground to the south, and partially wrap around the central ridge. These soils are intermixed with thinner Tunbridge soils up slope, and they grade into a Rawsonville-Hogback complex of medium and very thin soils and bare rock at the top of the ridge. The north slope of the ridge mimics the concave slope of Stand 1, with the quality of the site increasing to the northeast where the longer slope provided more mineral and organic material to enrich the toe-slope soils. Toward the southwest of the north slope, poorly drained Adirondack soils encroach as the site transitions toward mixedwoods and softwoods.

It is unclear what portions of this stand had been cleared and farmed, but it is likely that pasture extended into much it; the relatively flat, southernmost portions may have been cultivated. A few acres on top of the ridge are inaccessibly steep or inoperably rocky, but could conceivably have been open for grazing by some intrepid sheep. Agricultural abandonment appears to have coincided with a separate series of disturbances (some combination of fire and logging, as discussed elsewhere in this plan), potentially creating an age-class structure that may be considerably less complex than the land-use patterns that led to it.

The variability of site conditions (and perhaps, of past land-use) contribute to a higher degree of species diversity than observed elsewhere on the property. While some areas of the stand have grown into the nearly pure maple of a classic sugarbush, much of the stand features attractive yellow birch and red spruce stems among the largest size classes. The distribution of balsam fir is uneven, and it tends to be clustered in the lower parts of the stand. In many places, this balsam appears to represent a second cohort, rather than a component of a stratified even-aged arrangement. Aside from the striped maple, and perhaps some of the beech, nearly all of the rest of the stand is of the same approximately 100 year old cohort.

Two separate mainline tubing networks have been set up in the stand by Tony Corwin, collecting sap from either side of the central ridge. Together they account for just over 30 acres. Some sections of these conventional sugarbushes had been thinned by Eric Fahl around 2008, in the same manner as described for Stand 1. His work extended into other areas of the stand, as well, where he also cut some of the higher quality birch that was in decline. Aside from maintenance of sap-line corridors, no further work has been carried out in this stand since then.

There is a good network of trails in the southern portion of the stand that is suitable for woods equipment but not vehicle traffic. There is a small landing accessible from the Cascade Road, but it would be difficult to haul wood back to the main campus without traveling over the state highway. The northern portion of the stand also has a good road and trail network and is better connected to the infrastructure of the main campus. Recreational resources are dispersed throughout the stand, including the rock climbing area, the top of the downhill ski hill, the crag cabin, numerous hiking trails and a variety of other attractions.

Also, the State maintained hiking trail to Pitchoff Mountain begins in this stand and cuts across its southeast corner.

24

Q UANTITATIVE S TAND D ATA (2009) SITE CLASS: II DETERMINED BY: Soils mapping/field examination ACCESS DISTANCE: Less than one mile AGE STRUCTURE: Even-aged, 100 years old STOCKING GUIDE: NRS 132 SIZE CLASS STRUCTURE (% B.A.): 6-10”: 24%

OVERSTORY B.A./A.: 134 ft2 ACCEPTABLE B.A./A.:114 ft2 QUADRATRIC STAND DIAMETER: 10.8” NUMBER TREES/A.: 211 PERCENT STOCKING: 110% 10-16”: 42% 16-22”: 14% 22+”: 20%

S TOCKING G UIDE 160 140

18

14

12

10

8

Basal Area

120

7

6

100 80 60 40

2009 Inventory

20 0 0

100

200

300 Trees per acre

400

D IAMETER D ISTRIBUTION

25

500

600

M ANAGEMENT O BJECTIVES Management of the sugarbush portion of this stand should follow the same regime outlined for that portion of Stand 1. Over the long term, the stand should increasingly take the shape of a balanced unevenaged stand. Individual tree tending in conjunction with neighborhood scale regeneration treatments should provide for both new cohorts with abundant sugar maple and health and vigor in the residual stand. The conversion to an uneven-aged structure will take many decades, but the sooner it is started the smoother it can be. As in Stand 1, the longer the interval between entries, the more closely the system will follow an area-based control model of stand development and regulation. The more marginal sites within the sugarbush, where beech is more prevalent and balsam fir is increasing in abundance, will require larger patches or lower residual density group openings in order to favor maple establishment. If these sites end up with species mixtures rather than pure maple (with beech and balsam if they regenerate under too much shade, or the birches and others if they regenerate to too much light) so be it.

Outside of the sugarbush, the stand should transition into an irregular uneven-aged structure.

Similar to the process described for the analogous portion of Stand 1, the emphasis of management should be on developing complexity within the stand through spatial heterogeneity and species diversity. Canopy openings representing as broad a range of sizes, shapes, orientations and residual structures should be employed. Compositional goals can accommodate a higher proportion of sugar maple in the stand than is targeted for the section of Stand 1 that falls outside of the sugarbush, so long as other species are also well represented. Like Stand 1, the management regime described here presents opportunities for enrichment by planting, which could include species not present on the property (in the woods) like red oak, as well as species which are found elsewhere and could thrive in the stand, but are not currently present, like white pine or red pine. Yield regulation should not be the controlling factor in managing this portion of the stand; sustainability can be provided for by ensuring that regeneration is present and health and vigor are maintained. In the same vein, the stand need not be perfectly uneven-aged; a stand with lumpy age-class distribution can still be productive and beautiful.

S ILVICULTURAL P RESCRIPTION The sugarbush portions of this stand should be treated with the same prescription described for the conventional sugarbush in Stand 1. Small patch cuts (1/10 acre) and larger group shelterwood cuts (up to ½ acre with 10-40 ft2/ac residual stocking) should be used together to regenerate an area of about 10% of the sugarbush. Patches and groups should be located over existing sugar maple advance regeneration, among concentrations of declining stems, or just generally well distributed through the sugarbushes. A crop tree release of vigorous poles and selected dominants should be paired with a uniform thinning from below to a target of 90-100 ft2/ac in the matrix between patches and groups. Mainline tubing replacement among the two networks in this stand and the network in Stand 1 should be staggered to allow for concerted operations in each section prior to re-installation. Similar to Stand 1, this harvest should yield about 10 cords per acre.

In the non-sugarbush areas, the treatment should work toward breaking up the stand's even-aged structure with a combination of free-thinning, patch clearcuts and irregular shelterwoods. The aggregate area of regeneration treatments should be around 25%; all accessible portions of the matrix should be treated. Entries may be spread out to suit operational needs, but the entire area should be treated by the end of the management period. In locating patches and groups and in selecting crop trees for release, the same considerations described in Stand 1 apply here: the focus should remain on promoting stand health, cultivating diversity, and improving timber quality and value. This treatment should yield 8-10 cords per acre.

26

S TAND 3

M IXEDWOODS

57 ACRES

S TAND C ONDITIONS This wide ranging, slightly gerrymandered stand occupies the center of the property. Stands 1 and 2 mark its boundaries to the northeast and southeast, respectively, while the farm, camp and main campus hem it in to the west. This stand sprawls across the gentlest terrain of the NCS forest, including the flat, wet belly along the stream corridor and the foot of the slopes leading down to it and to Round Lake. That stream corridor traverses the mucky, acidic, organic soils (Burnt Vly and Searsport) that have formed over the poorly drained sands laid down at an inlet of glacial South Meadow Lake. Rimming these lowlands to the south are the stony, wet Adirondack soils, a shallow, poorly drained loam perched above a very deep, compacted lodgment till. North of the lowlands, the very deep, sandy Monadnock ablation tills slope gently to the southwest.

Most of this stand had likely been cleared for agriculture and some northern portions on the workable Monadnock soils may have been cultivated. The forest is generally slightly younger through this stand than in the adjacent stands, indicating the these fields were mostly still open when the camp acquired the property. The stand's composition follows the site gradients or delinieations, with the drier, upland Monadnock soils supporting mixed woods, the wetter Adirondack soils tending more toward a true softwood association, and the mucky organic soils suitable only for conifer swamp species, where trees can grow at all.

The stand is generally even-aged, with a canopy structure that reflects the developmental patterns of the species present. In places, white pine is emergent while elsewhere spruce and fir are intermixed and differentiated across strata. At this stage of development, the hardwoods—particularly white and yellow birch—have either successfully established themselves in dominant or codominant positions or have ceded their ground and been pinched out of the stand. As the site tends more toward the hardwood side of the mixedwoods continuum, overstory sugar maples and mid-story beeches become more prevalent.

Timber quality is typical for the forest type, with a high proportion of acceptable stems but far fewer individuals with a high potential for significant future value growth. The wetter sites are prone to windthrow and trees there are generally more susceptible to decline than those that grow on more conducive sites. Stocking is variable, owing to the variability in micro-site conditions as well as the high degree to which portions of the stand have been developed for camp and school use. The northern part of the stand, in particular, encompasses many tent platforms, lean-tos and cabins; in places it can be hard to discern whether the camp has encroached on the forest or the forest has encroached on the camp. The southern portion of the stand also takes in much of the downhill ski area, including the acre or so of open land that forms the main trail. In general, most stems are reasonably well positioned for continued growth and intervention would be necessary more to influence composition or improve quality than to regulate density.

Roads and trails criss cross the stand and connect it to the lake, farm, camp, school buildings and other parts of the woods. Access across the swamp is limited but it is represents a small enough area and other roads and trails are near enough to it that management is feasible there. Some work was carried out

by Eric Fahl around 2008, and there has always been some nibbling around the edges as problem trees threaten camp infrastructure or trails are kept clear.

27

Q UANTITATIVE S TAND D ATA (2009) SITE CLASS: II & III DETERMINED BY: Soils mapping/field examination ACCESS DISTANCE: Less than one mile AGE STRUCTURE: Even-aged, 70-80 years old STOCKING GUIDE: NRS 132 SIZE CLASS STRUCTURE (% B.A.): 6-10”: 49%

OVERSTORY B.A./A.: 102 ft2 ACCEPTABLE B.A./A.:78 ft2 QUADRATRIC STAND DIAMETER: 8.3” NUMBER TREES/A.: 269 PERCENT STOCKING: 60% 10-16”: 30% 16-22”: 12% 22+”: 9%

S TOCKING G UIDE 200

18

180

14

12

10 8

160

7

6

Basal Area

140 120 100 80 60

2009 Inventory

40 20 0 0

100

200

300

400 Trees per acre

500

D IAMETER D ISTRIBUTION

28

600

700

800

M ANAGEMENT O BJECTIVES A flexible, responsive management strategy that creates and maintains an irregular stand structure will best serve the community's wide range of goals. In the near- to medium-term, the stand should be maintained in its current, mostly even-aged arrangement, with the emphasis of management on increasing volume growth of a diverse assemblage of the highest quality stems and maintaining the richness and quality of wildlife habitat. Where poor quality stems are clustered at the neighborhood-scale, where windthrow or decline break up the canopy, or where desirable seedlings naturally establishes themselves, regeneration should be opportunistically cultivated or released. As the stand matures further, larger areas may be treated with varied irregular shelterwood methods that are spatially and temporally non-uniform, carrying multiaged structures through extended regeneration periods followed by longer periods of mostly even-aged structures. As with other sections of the property managed with an irregular system, yield regulation should not be the controlling factor in this stand. Stand-scale sustainability should be assessed over a period similar to a rotation, and it is provided for by maintaining full site occupancy by attending to stand health and vigor and furnishing sufficient regeneration.

S ILVICULTURAL P RESCRIPTION No work is called for in this stand for the first, five year portion of the management period. In keeping with the responsive, flexible intent of the management objectives, light entries may be made into the stand if they comply with the overarching goals set out above. The stand condition should be reassessed at the scheduled re-inventory and plan update.

O THER M ANAGEMENT R ECOMMENDATIONS As soon as possible, the boundary lines separating the NCS property the small Round Lake Farm Trust parcel in the northern part of this stand should be identified and blazed; the line separating the property from the adjoining parcel to the south (Defoe & Hare) should be re-blazed.

29