To the average mountain biker or hiker on the Pine Brook Trail, there may not be anything about the area that stands out. Lots of trees, some dead and downed wood — an average “backyard” if you grew up adjacent to northeastern national forests. To James Donahey, forester and silviculturist for the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests, the unnaturalness towers over this stand of trees. The Pine Brook Trail cuts through a mature red pine plantation.

“Red pine is natural in Vermont,” says Donahey. “But this density of red pine is unnatural. This species would not grow so close together and all at the same time on its own.”

As soon as he says it, it becomes more obvious that something is “man made” about the place. Walking through the stand, you’ll see other species — beech, black cherry, white pine — but mostly red pine. Mostly red pine that doesn’t seem to vary greatly in height or width (to the untrained eye, anyway), and upon reflection, that does seem weird.

Plantations are tree stands planted artificially and often crop-like, and red pine plantations like the one on the Pine Brook Trail are common in Vermont. After much of the state was cleared for agriculture in the 1860s, concerns rose about a loss of soil productivity from erosion on formerly grazed lands. Abandoned agricultural lands seemed nearly unusable for anything. Soils were depleted, vegetation was gone, wildlife had moved on. Reforestation was imperative and red pine had no problem rising to the challenge.

From cleared to planted to reforested

A lot of the reforestation occurred in two waves. The first by workers of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the second under the Soil Conservation Service’s Soil Bank program. The intention was to cultivate forests that could one day be harvested for wood products, and in the intervening decades, forests could provide roots to stabilize soil during summer rains and canopies to provide habitat for Vermont’s rebounding wildlife.

Many stewards turned to planting red pine on barren land. The seedlings were easy to grow in a nursery, hardy to transport to planting sites, and grew fast, yielding a quality product when harvested. Better yet, red pine was a workhorse on the land — reinvigorating soils, stabilizing erosion, protecting watersheds and providing habitat.

However, a pine plantation is a lifelong project planned for a particular purpose. Trees are deliberately planted at an unnaturally high density and close together because the intention of the planter is to harvest before those unnatural conditions become a problem. Red pine is a workhorse on the land, but a plantation of red pine is always meant to be temporary, and not every well-intentioned planter can stick it out for 70 years to see the fruits of their labor. As a result, some plantations end up in the care of the National Forest System as they graduate to their planned purposes. Now it’s time for the agency to follow through with the plan for this plantation. It’s time to harvest.

A second life

You may think you know your favorite spot in the woods like the back of your hand.  But a timber crew will literally inspect every tree for their most redeeming qualities in a forest stand. A team of three accompany Donahey on the Pine Brook Trail to do just that. Sporting orange vests and holstering paint cans, the crew is out to mark these trees for a future logger. If a tree receives a splattering of orange paint, it stays on the landscape as it is. If a tree receives yellow paint, the tree will be harvested, destined for a second life as lumber, a utility pole, plywood or pulp.

They are eyeing every specimen — pine or otherwise — to see the potential of the trees. Are they good habitat? Are they suffering from beech bark disease? Are they in good enough condition to build a house, or are they better off heating one?

“I remember being on site for a logging operation the first time someone told me that some of the harvested trees were going to be telephone poles,” says Donahey. “And it blew my mind. I know it sounds like nothing but think about it — it will stand for another 50 years! Storing carbon and meeting a common need for decades; it’s amazing. Trees are amazing.”

Venturing further into the plantation, the potential of the red pine grows heavier. Someone planted these pines to someday be a quality timber product. Now, their artificial proximity has become unhealthy. Pockets of the red pine are dying in waves from a combination of the prolonged high density and their inability to repel small beetles known as bark beetles. The longer they remain as they are, more of their potential goes to waste.

“The trees have entered into a phase of high competition stress,” says Donahey. “Individual trees are becoming more susceptible to bark beetles, and they are dying. The beetles are spreading to the individuals around that tree and that mortality just starts radiating out.”

Those that survive the beetles aren’t likely to fare much better. “You can start to see surrounding red pine start leaning out into these openings [created by dying pine] because they were really being supported by their neighboring trees at that high of a density — eventually they will be pulled over by snow and wind,” says Donahey.

Still, there is more to consider than just the red pine in the stand. A timber sale on the national forest is prescribed with clear, ecological goals, aimed at improving the overall health of the forest. This red pine plantation is destined to be “clearcut with reserves,”  a technical term for a prescription to cut most trees but to leave at least 10% as they are. Donahey expects more than 10% of this stand will stay and be able to grow to their full potential in the newly cleared space. The goal is to convert this plantation into a young, wildlife supporting stand, and the crew has already spotted ample wildlife supporting trees. All the red pine, however, will go.

Making space for wildlife

This once barren landscape has become decent wildlife habitat, thanks to that pine plantation. Other tree species have taken root and wildlife has noticed. Ironically, the pine is now holding the landscape back. While the red pine is suitable for wildlife, it isn’t as fitting as other species in meeting wildlife needs. In addition, more sunlight and space are essential for the younger, more diverse vegetation to continue to grow in the area.

The goal is to preserve the work these red pines have already done and to set up the land so it can improve as wildlife habitat going forward. With that purpose in mind, the crew scans the forest carefully with an eye for wildlife serving trees. Donahey reaches out his hand, resting it on a trunk before pulling back and spritzing the trunk with orange. He explains that he was measuring a crevice in the trunk, it’s bigger than his thumb which means a bat could live inside. Bat habitat stays.

As the crew highlights the potential of the landscape with their orange paint, the plantation begins to look a bit wilder. One crew member stops to tag a cluster of what he says are great trees but gushes more about the snag, or standing dead tree, the other trees are huddled around. He explains the snag is a great food source and home for critters and fungi, and that the surrounding trees will help protect it from being blown over—the cluster and the snag will stay.

Reforesting for a resilient future

Reforesting is a labor of love that spans generations. The harvest is just one chapter for this plot of land. What may look barren the day after the logging ends will fill in with seedlings and raspberries, brimming with the songs of migrating birds by the second spring. Those scattered trees marked in orange to be kept will all have an opportunity to reseed into the clearing. Young seedlings and saplings of native trees like eastern hemlock and red spruce that have already become established beneath the canopy of the red pine will have sunlight to grow. Foresters will enrich the young forest with a mixture of planted native species like northern red oak and white pine. The high number of tree species will grow into a forest with much greater resilience in the face of a changing climate, rather than the vulnerable monoculture it replaced.

Forester Donahey will be back to monitor the new growth over the next several years.