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Clearcuts like this one will be allowed only with scientific justification if Question 2 passes.

By most accounts, Gerald Nelson Jr. represents what the public dislikes about logging in Maine today. A logging contractor from Freedom, he blows through woodlots like a hurricane.
"Nelson has built a reputation of destructive logging practices, and of not paying stumpage. He typically and repeatedly preys on out-of-state, absentee landowners," forester Stephen Elliot wrote to the Maine Forest Service in June 1993, in a letter that is now part of Nelson's court record. "Nelson's reputation is well known in the logging community. No respectable person would be associated with him It is beyond my comprehension that Nelson is still in business with all of the laws that govern stumpage sales."
Nothing seems to stop Nelson, even after two dozen victims have complained about the loss of hundreds of acres of woods. The Attorney General's office is seeking civil sanctions, although Nelson beat an attempt to prosecute him criminally. Nor would Nelson be much deterred by passage of any of the three forestry referendums that have come before voters since 1996.
"We need better laws, more enforcement, more education," said Linda Conti, the assistant attorney general handling the case. "I'm very frustrated."
Nelson does not represent the forest industry. But his continued depradations highlight a problem that stymies landowners and policy makers alike. The problem is secrecy and landowner ignorance. The Maine Forest Service can track just about every cord of wood cut in the forest today, but its enormous data collection engine produces only a broad picture for the public. We know clearcutting is down overall, but we have no idea who's doing it or where. As a result, we end up with blunt policy prescriptions like "An Act Regarding Forest Practices," the latest referendum, which goes to a statewide vote Nov. 7. The act does not address some of the worst abuses, such as rogue loggers, and it penalizes some benign practices, including elements of the "green" certified forestry practiced by Seven Islands Land Co., and may cause unintended consequences on small woodlots.
More disclosure, of course, would help, but the forest industry has consistently thwarted legislative attempts to open up records.

Trying to find out what goes on in the Maine woods today is no easy task. We hear so much about clearcutting - the practice of shearing forests as if they are cornfields - that the view from a plane is surprising. While attending the Acadian Institute, a foundation-supported environmental journalism program heavy on field trips, we flew in float planes north from Millinocket, swinging west of Baxter State Park, and back east to Portage. From the air, the woods looked velvety and endless, jeweled with shiny ponds and lakes. Arrow-straight dirt highways and a checkerboard pattern of openings gave the landscape a farmed look, but shagginess was the overall impression. Even the infamous Ragmuff cut, once the biggest pockmark in the woods and now filled in with new growth, failed to shock. "It's not as bad I thought," a Boston Globe reporter remarked afterward.
The Maine Forest Service says clearcutting has declined by two-thirds since 1994, and now represents just 3 percent of all the wood cut each year. Last year, 18,000 acres were clearcut, a total area not much bigger than Isle au Haut. "The people in Portland have this image of northern Maine that there are hardly any trees left, that it's all clearcut and the trees don't grow back. None of it's true. But during a clearcut referendum, that's what they continue to hear," said Abby Holman, campaign manager for the Forest Heritage Coalition, which opposes the referendum.

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Jonathan Carter is back in the referendum business with Question 2

A bigger concern is the woods are being cut down faster than they are growing back, says Jonathan Carter, the architect of this year's referendum. Carter says large landowners try to hide forest destruction by classifying near-clearcuts under innocuous-sounding names like "shelterwood" cuts and "partial" cuts.
"These cuts, based on no known scientific guidelines, are devastating the future productivity and regenerative ability of the forest ... However you look at it, they're overcutting," said Carter, a man who seems to relish his role as villain of the forest industry.
The forest service says large landowners began overcutting in the mid-1980s ­ largely to salvage trees dying as a result of a spruce budworm epidemic. The overcutting continues. The forest service estimates that cutting exceeds growth by 43 percent and projects the imbalance to continue for the foreseeable future.
This may sound ominous, although Robert Seymour, a forestry professor at the University of Maine, says "a little tweaking would bring it into balance." He said the problem is not overcutting, but slow growth, which could be juiced by better timed harvests or more intensive management, which usually means more herbicide applications and the replacement of naturally diverse stands with plantations of the same kind of tree. Both those practices are viewed with alarm by environmentalists.
The forest service also says the woods are getting younger, a trend noticeable in the size of harvestable trees. When artist Winslow Homer went to the Maine woods more than 100 years ago, he depicted two-man ax teams>

Transfer interrupted!

It's even more difficult to figure out what's going on in southern Maine, away from the paper company holdings. Conventional wisdom holds that these smaller woodlots are responsibly managed by farmers, heirs of family homesteads, back-to-the-landers and yuppie lawyers. This is the view pushed by the 11,000-member Small Woodland Owners Association of Maine, an organization that promotes stewardship and opposes the referendum.
Forest service data supports the overall view that growth is more than matching harvest. But the big picture masks tremendous variation, experts say. Some landowners never log, and others log intensively. Small woodlots are also the turf of rogue loggers like Nelson and forest liquidators, who buy land, strip all available timber, and resell for development.
"On small woodlots, you'll get everything from the finest management to the most abysmal," Seymour said. He expresses concern at surveys that show only 30 percent of small woodlot owners hire foresters to supervise logging. "That shows they get taken advantage of by logging contractors. It's a 50-year legacy," he said.
Abusive logging may even increase on small woodlots as paper mills compensate for reduced supply from large landowners like J.D. Irving, which is shifting away from pulp markets and toward longer-horizon timber markets. "You just can't generalize," said Seymour.
All this guesswork and speculation is an inevitable byproduct of the forest service's refusal to release "wood processor reports"- data collected by the mills on the volume of wood bought from individual landowners. The forest service releases generalized reports based on the data, but it's what's not in them that intrigues many observers.
"What they do not release is who's doing what, where and why," said Carter. "The public does not have access to this because the industry does not want the public to know who's the big culprit." He said disclosure would show who's clearcutting, who's converting natural stands to mono-culture plantations, who's using the most herbicides, who's not respecting species diversity.
"We'd know exactly what companies are doing. We could question it," said Carter.

Files
Reports on the amount of wood cut during harvesting operations across Maine are kept by the Maine Forest Service but not released to the public. Critics say full disclosure of harvesting practices will cut down abuses.

This year's referendum is an attempt to bring accountability to forest management.
It calls for a permit for all clearcuts larger than five acres. The permit system is aimed at making sure clearcuts are justified on silvicultural grounds, says Carter, who suspects economy is the prime reason for most of them. In addition, the referendum would establish a complicated system for determining sustainable harvest levels on all 11.2 million acres (two-thirds of forest acreage in Maine) that currently receive a tax break under the Tree Growth Tax Program. It requires landowners to look back 10 years to determine the harvest levels for eight different species. Not only would this require additional recordkeeping and an enforcement bureaucracy, but it is a nonsensical way to determine sustainability, says John Cashwell, woodlands director of Seven Islands, which manages 950,000 acres for the Pingree heirs.
Giving Carter the benefit of the doubt on how the formula would work, Cashwell says it would still reduce Seven Islands' harvest by a third. Seven Islands, recognized as a leader in sustainable management practices, is one of only two large landowners in Maine to submit to an intensive third-party audit certifying their harvests are ecologically sustainable.
"We try to do forestry as good as anyone in the nation and it would hurt us," Cashwell. "It (referendum) takes away any incentive to do forestry. I don't think it's an accident. It's a socially-driven agenda to cause instability on an annual basis in the forest industry. That's where he's at."
The Achilles heel of the referendum, and the focus of the campaign to defeat it, is vague wording about whether landowners would be allowed to "bank" growth each year and cut up to 10 years at a time, or whether they would have to cut annually only what has grown in the past year. The crucial sentence reads: "This means that the yearly allowable cut levels may not be greater than the average annual growth during the past ten years."
Carter concedes the language could have been clearer, "but I will not ever agree that you can't bank." Ultimately, interpretation will be left to a nine-member sustainability council appointed by the governor. "It's inconceivable that any nine people appointed by the governor would come to any other conclusion. There is no disagreement about banking. We all think it should be allowed."

But a raft of experts who have scrutinized the referendum wording have concluded just the opposite. They say landowners could cut no more than a single year's growth at a time. These experts include Tom Doak, head of the Maine Forest Service; Vincent McKusick, former chief justice of the Maine Supreme Court; and Seymour and two colleagues at the UMaine forestry school.
"It is difficult to see how the statute could state more clearly that no banking is allowed," according to McKusick's opinion, which was sought by the referendum opponents. "If drafters of the referendum in fact had intended to permit banking yearly allowable cut levels, they could very easily have so provided, but they elected not to do so."
Opponents have geared almost their entire campaign around the assumption that banking is prohibited. Small woodlot owners have been the most vocal. "If this referendum passes, frankly, I'm out of business," Jim Robbins, a fourth-generation sawmill owner in Searsmont, told the Boston Globe.
"If (the referendum) were to pass the way it is written now, I would immediately pull out of Tree Growth," Roger Knight, owner of Smiling Hill Farm in North Scarborough, told Casco Bay Weekly.
An idea that grew out of past failed referendum campaigns was to force improvements through increased disclosure. This non-bureaucratic approach to accountability holds no guarantee of success, but it's proved effective in cleaning up toxic chemical emissions into the air and water, said Will Everitt, Maine field director for Toxics Action Center. Massachusetts and New Jersey, leaders in toxics disclosure, have seen 50 percent reductions in toxic chemical emissions since laws went into effect a decade ago, he said.
"It's hard to measure, but (disclosure) definitely has some effect. They never want to be number 1," said Everitt.
Companies that emit toxins raised some of the same objections to disclosure that the forest industry is raising. "They said it would give information to their competitors, they said the information would be useless to the public and that if they saw it the public would be unnecessarily scared," said Everitt. " Disclosure hasn't hurt them. Industry is alive and well."

Files
Reports on the amount of wood cut during harvesting operations across Maine
are kept by the Maine Forest Service but not released to the public.
Critics say full disclosure of harvesting practices will cut down abuses.

The current situation in the woods is akin to knowing a river is polluted, but being denied access to the volume of discharge coming from factories along the river, said Roland Sampson, a Democratic state representative from Jay, who has twice sponsored disclosure bills in the Legislature.
Sampson said disclosure won't tell competitors anything they don't already know, that the public is the only one currently in the dark. "Let's face it, large landowners in particular, they know what their competitors are doing. They can get aerial photographs. All they have to do is look."
Disclosure of wood processor reports has been opposed by the industry and the Maine Forest Service on grounds that it would expose individual business strategies to competitors. The information is not that important anyway, says Tom Doak of the forest service.
"We're talking 200,000 landowners in the state. We don't need to be looking at individual landowners every year. It's more important to focus on the forest as a whole," said Doak.
"What we try to do is prohibit the worst and try to encourage them to do the right things." He said the overall picture will improve with the start of annual field surveys from random spots in the woods.

The secrecy-is-necessary argument is also being debunked by J.D. Irving, the giant Canadian conglomerate that is the largest landowner in Maine with 1.5 million acres. Irving recently published a 47-page summary of its management practices on a third of its holdings in Maine. Publication of the report was part of having its practices certified as environmentally sustainable by the Forest Stewardship Council, the most rigorous and public of two certification programs. The report includes data on dollars-per-acre investments, herbicide applications and harvest volumes.
Irving says the risk of disclosing sensitive information to competitors was outweighed by the public stamp of approval.
"Ultimately, we think third-party audits are going to be a pre-requisite for doing business. We want to be ahead of the curve rather than behind it People want to know that we are managing for more than just timber," said Keith.
Irving's disclosure debunks the secrecy argument as "a smokescreen," said Cathy Johnson of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which supports the referendum but also believes it should be amended by the Legislature to specifically exempt owners of less than 1,000 acres.
"If Irving can do it, why can't the others? All these companies know what the other is doing The only one who doesn't know is the public.
"You could shut us all up if you'd get FSC certified," said Johnson.

Excepting Irving and Seven Islands, the industry prefers a less rigorous certification program called the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Unlike FSC, which was developed with input from environmentalists, SFI is an industry creation that does not require disclosure of the results. Presumably, favorable reviews will be released but not unfavorable ones. International Paper, Plum Creek, Hancock Timber Resources, Fraser Paper and Mead are undergoing or have completed SFI audits.
Seymour said the competing certification programs have at least begun to separate a "circle-the-wagons" industry into "discrete companies following separate strategic paths." You can tell the best from the rest by inference, he said.
"Hey IP, why haven't you (undergone FSC certification)? Or Plum Creek? I think their silence speaks volumes They're not ready to be measured," Seymour said.
Rob Bryan, a forest ecologist for Maine Audubon, which opposes the referendum, said disclosure of wood processor reports wouldn't tell anything about sustainable harvest levels. He puts great stock in certification and said SFI is moving to toughen its standards, recently announcing that sustainability will be integral to audits, not just part of the name. Eventually, the certification programs will provide the accountability, Bryan said. "I think it's going to bear fruit In five years SFI will look a lot different But it's a slow process and big industries are slow to change. It doesn't take much time to collect signatures for a referendum."
Maine's Bureau of Public Lands is prodding the certification process by having its half-million acres audited by both programs. It will publish the results of both, too.
Certification does not address accountability on smaller woodlots, said Lloyd Irland, a forest economist and one of three auditors who worked on Irving's certification. A complete filed survey might pre-empt future referendums and would at least provide data for targeted prescriptions, he said.
"I've been saying for 20 years we should do a periodic, careful survey," said Irland. "In all three northern New England states in the last several years we've had a lot of controversy we really need to know what's happening on the ground. Is it degrading the forest's productivity? How many loggers are choosing to clearcut? High-grade? How many are improving stands? What's the trend? I've been an advocate of periodic benchmarks so we can tell trends."

Until a bigger spotlight is shone on the Maine woods, reforms may always miss the mark. For only with full disclosure of what's happening on the ground will policies match up with forest problems.
But the question at hand is Question 2. Its supporters say it reasserts a public role in forest policy and establishes an accountability mechanism that could be improved upon in the future. Brownie Carson, executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, says, "This forestry referendum addresses the fundamental problem in Maine's woods: balancing logging with tree growth. We recognize that the language of this referendum is not perfect. However, no law that is passed is ever perfect. Even the U.S. Constitution has been amended 26 times."
The referendum also enforces only what the forest industry claims to practice - sustainable harvests, in which trees are clearcut only for silvicultural reasons, its supporters say.
But other critics of the status quo say Question 2 is a setback for forestry reform. "They're dealing with a complicated problem with a simple solution," said Irland. "The alleged crisis supporting this (referendum) isn't real. The numbers have been selectively edited." The cure is more damaging than the problem, he said. "Why is it necessary to reduce the harvest by 30 percent in order to correct a 14 percent shortfall?" asks Irland rhetorically.

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Tammy Packie
Yes on 6 promoters Chris Morris and Jennifer Goldman set up shop at the Skowhegan Wal-Mart.

Here it is, almost Election Day, and even folks who don't pay much attention to political matters can't help but be influenced by the range and intensity of the issues at hand. We're deluged with radio and TV ads and programming. The daily commute follows a fluttering highway of yard signs, banners and bumper stickers. Campaign buttons and lapel pins bristle on co-workers' clothing. The evening news breathlessly reports the latest polling data.
Of course, the White House race is the big one. George W. Bush made a quick campaign stop at Bangor International Airport Friday and thousands jammed a hangar to see him. And the statewide ballot questions are big news - at least some of them. There's a definite hierarchy. At the top are death with dignity, video gambling and forest clearcutting, all well-funded, pro and con, and boosted by advertising campaigns, call-in programs, public debates and prime time media coverage.
The lower-tier issues are barely heralded in the public consciousness. You might not even know they're out there. A change in waterfront tax law, voting rights for the mentally ill, and oh, yeah, extending civil rights to the gay and lesbian communities - all important issues, but not igniting the controversy of the first three.

Hold it. Gay rights? When did this turn into a take-it-or-leave-it issue? What's happened to "We are everywhere" and the high-profile, passionate fight for equality under the law? After 20 years of wading through the legislative process, braving the judgments and slams of the Christian Right, and relieving the prejudices of the masses, where, exactly, is the energy behind the Yes on 6 campaign?
Trying to gauge the direction and the temperature of the effort, I called Yes on 6 headquarters in Saco to see if I could catch a ride on the Equality Express, the campaign's RV mobile unit. It took a few days to get linked up with media secretary Tony Giampetruzzi, and another day or so to hammer out a plan with Jennifer Goldman, the Equality Express coordinator. Finally, we agreed to meet in Waterville, and on the appointed afternoon I climbed aboard the slogan-covered red, white and blue bus and headed toward Skowhegan, with Goldman driving and the campaign's field coordinator, Chris Morris, along for the ride.
Since the Equality Express is billed as a grassroots awareness-raising effort, I expected to find more campaign representatives on board, and more of a happenin' atmosphere. But Goldman, Morris and I were the only riders that day. Our destination was the Skowhegan Wal-Mart parking lot; no particular "event," just an opportunity for local people to hear more about the goals of the campaign. After that, Goldman said, the bus would head for the Farmington campus of the University of Maine; again, no rally or other assembly was planned.
Goldman told me the bus has been on the road to rural communities across the state since the second week in September. "By Nov. 7, we will have spent time in every county in the state," she said. The bus has visited all the campuses of the university system, and most other colleges, along with church meetings, rallies and bean suppers at Grange Halls. "At each stop we're getting the word out, recruiting volunteers and registering voters," she said. At no time have they met with opposition, and never have they been asked to leave, she said.
In response to the suggestion that this "preaching to the choir" routine is unlikely to bring new supporters to Yes on 6, Morris maintains. "The strategy is not to change people's minds, but to educate the undecided. When people find out that right now in Maine you can be fired from your job because you're gay or lesbian, or because someone thinks you are, they're very supportive."
Also, since the devastating people's veto of 1998 overturned Maine's fledgling gay rights law, grassroots organizers have worked on acquainting small-town residents with their homosexual neighbors, he said, breaking down traditional us-and-them barriers.
Morris said the most recent poll shows Mainers favor the passage of Question 6, but narrowly. Nonetheless, he feels the campaign will succeed. "I believe Mainers are against discrimination," he said. Morris, a veteran of similar campaigns in Idaho, Michigan, Washington and Colorado, says the lack of visible contention in Maine's small towns bears testimony to "people's wanting to settle the issue and have fairness prevail."

Still, despite Morris' optimism, the campaign seems to be flying alarmingly below radar. Yes on 6 yard signs are scarce in these parts; I know of just three in all of Orono, excluding the campus. Along Route 2 to Bangor, heavily papered with signs from all the various campaigns, I have seen only a couple for Question 6. On my recent trip to Skowhegan aboard the Equality Express, one lonely Yes on 6-er fought for space in the overcrowded in-town rotary. Even my hosts seemed jubilant to see it there.
I'm not a big TV or radio fan, yet it is still surprising that I have seen no ads and have happened upon no debates or call-in programs.
Even supposing that the atmosphere in Maine has softened on the issue - which seems likely, yet far from certain - shouldn't the campaign be out in front with its message of fairness and equal rights?
Yes on 6 manager Jeanette Fruen says the focus of the campaign is on the grassroots level, and much of the financial and organizational energy has been diffused to the hinterlands. Fruen, a veteran of last year's defeat of the attempt to constrain abortion rights in Maine, as well as other winning campaigns in many states, says the community-level focus has been successful. "We've attended 35 house parties all over the state," she said. "We have contributors from every county. Our responsibility has been to make sure that our local organizers have the materials they need and that people who ask for more information get it." She dismisses concern over the visibility and organization of the campaign, and hints at greater things to come in the 10 days ahead.

But some members of the gay and lesbian community, including well-known leaders of past Maine Won't Discriminate campaigns, suggest the low-decibel signal of Yes on 6 may originate in a painful divide within the group itself, a schism most are anxious to keep quiet, at least until after the vote. One source of dissonance is the change in the wording of the law. The bill, LD 2239, was written last February by Sen. Joel Abromson [R- Portland] and reflects a compromise with the Maine Catholic Diocese, a powerful opponent of previous bills. Under the new language, churches may be exempted from the mandates of the anti-discrimination law if it violates their beliefs and teachings.
The bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee, passed through both houses of the Legislature with little opposition, and was signed by the governor, with a curious lack of fanfare, at the end of the legislative session in April.
The new language allowed the controversial endorsement by the Catholic Church, a sort of backhanded nod of acceptance that lets the church abjure discrimination while at the same time excusing itself from the legal obligation to practice what it preaches.
Spokesman for the Diocese Mark Mutty said the endorsement allows the church to take a stand against discrimination based on orientation rather than on behavior, a fine, "don't ask, don't tell" line Mutty admits looks like, but insists is not, hypocrisy. He said the Bishop's reasons for giving approval now are straightforward. "The separation of church and state means that we want to be able to hold our organization to a different set of standards than the world at large. For example, if someone works here in the church in a visible position, they need to sign a contract saying they'll live according to the teachings of the church. The church teaches that the expression of sexuality should take place between a man and a woman within the bounds of marriage. Period."
Mutty said the exemption clause pertains to the diocese itself, the parishes and chancery, and Catholic schools. Affiliates like Catholic Charities and health care facilities forfeit the exemption if they accept state funding. Similar restrictions apply to other denominations that wish to claim exempt status.
Regardless of the intent, one effect of the diocese's endorsement is a financial vacuum in the camp of the opposition. Mike Heath, director of the Christian Civic League, said although the Christian Right is still strongly against Question 6, the loss of the Catholic Church's financial support has crippled the battle. "We were unhappy about it," he said, "and unaware of the negotiations that were going on." Heath said other than the weekly message from the pulpit, organized opposition is limited to local leafleting and telephoning efforts.
The Maine Council of Churches supports the bill.
Some gays and lesbians plan to vote against Question 6 because of the compromise with the church. "After the 'partial birth abortion' question was defeated," one said, "it was clear that we didn't need to cave in to the interests of the Catholic Church the law should have been written clean and pure."
Some veterans of past gay rights campaigns did not return calls or refused to discuss the divisive church issue; others spoke off the record. But their collective silence in the waning days of the campaign speaks volumes about the sapped energy of the Yes on 6 effort.
Terse official comments from the community are typified by Maine Civil Liberties Union Director Sally Sutton: "When the bill was before the Legislature, we had some concerns over the religious exemption the possibility of tightening up that language. But the law that is before Maine voters now provides protection to all citizens, and we are in full support of it."
Another behind-the-scenes controversy is whether the newly drafted legislation should have been put out to referendum at all. Since the earlier bill had been approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor without a public vote, opponents had access to the people's veto mechanism to overturn it.
The bill this time around is written to require public approval at the outset, thereby disabling that option. But some within the gay community argue that it was neither wise nor necessary to offer the public the opportunity to turn the bill down, given the approval and support of the Legislature and the changing political times - even in the short period between the '98 veto and now.
Growing out of these two philosophical and strategic concerns is a less high-toned argument over the campaign in general - the process and progress of its fundraising, the allocation of those funds, the distribution of materials. Workers in rural areas have complained of a lack of signs and other material and organizational support. One Portland resident said, "They raised $260,000 and all they've got is that bus, and already they've ripped the air conditioner off the top."

All this has taken its toll among the ranks of those who could be united in celebrating an important achievement whose time seems likely to have come. Most supporters argue that the endorsement of the Catholic Church has removed an overwhelming obstacle from the path to success. Jeanette Fruen says she doesn't think the religious exemption "has been divisive at all the church is always exempted everybody understands that." And Fruen says times have changed enough that passage of Question 6 is looking good. "I think there's no question that times have changed significantly in the past few years, partly because so many people have come out about their sexual orientation. Virtually everybody now knows someone who is gay or lesbian; 10 years ago that would never have been the case."

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