None Nature Conservancy News Room Press Releases Search All Press Releases Bruce Kidman Phone: (207) 729-5181 x204 E-mail: bkidman@tnc.org

240,000-Acre Deal Protects Jobs and the Environment

Katahdin Forest Project Creates Unprecedented Partnership

Millinocket, Maine — August 27, 2002 — Great Northern Paper, Inc. and The Nature Conservancy today announced an unprecedented partnership designed to protect both jobs and forestland around Mount Katahdin. The non-profit conservation group has agreed to provide low-cost, long-term financing for Great Northern Paper. The company will place a conservation easement on 200,000 acres of forestland around Mount Katahdin, which will guarantee public access, traditional recreational uses, sustainable forestry, and no future development. In addition, the company will transfer 41,000 acres in the fabled Debsconeag Lakes wilderness area to the conservation group.

“The Katahdin Forest Project is more than an innovative agreement between the nation’s largest conservation organization and the region’s major employer,” said Kent Wommack, executive director of the Conservancy in Maine. “The goal of this project is to provide a healthy future for these forests and long-term stability for these mills. We are doing this in a way that honors Great Northern Paper’s long tradition of conservation and stewardship, the community’s needs, and the recreational values of Maine people.”

“This is an opportunity to help ensure future generations of good jobs in the mills and woods, and continued access to a landscape of forests and ponds exceptional in every way,” said Lambert Bedard, Chief Executive Officer of Great Northern Paper. “For our business, this partnership means greater flexibility as we continue to focus on our core business and modernize our paper making process.”

There are three goals of the Katahdin Forest Project:

1. Maintain the natural resource base economy of the region by providing long-term financing to support Great Northern Paper’s drive to modernize and be a market leader in uncoated and coated specialty papers; 
2. Ensure public access, traditional recreational uses, and sustainable forest management of the lands surrounding Mount Katahdin, which link together six existing conservation parcels, and
3. Preserve the 41,000 acre Debsconeag Lakes wilderness area, which connects Baxter State Park with the State’s Nahmakanta ecological reserve.

In the agreement, The Nature Conservancy is purchasing $50 million of existing loans to Great Northern Paper, retiring $14 million of it and refinancing the balance at very competitive rates. John Hancock Financial Services, which sold the mortgage to the Conservancy, made significant contributions to the deal, which Wommack called “an example of corporate citizenship at its highest level.”

“We are deeply satisfied to be able to play a role in this agreement that will benefit the region in so many ways,” said Ken Hines, senior managing director in John Hancock’s Bond and Corporate Finance Group. “We believe this agreement will help conservation efforts, the forest industry and the communities of the region for years to come.”

By eliminating future residential and commercial development not related to forestry, the conservation easement on these 200,000 acres provides protection for the working forest, which is the backbone of the economy of the region.  The easement continues Great Northern Paper’s policy of public access for traditional recreation uses. Private leaseholder will see no changes to lease policies throughout the project area.

Lying virtually in the shadow of Mount Katahdin, the 41,000-acre Debsconeag Lakes area acquired by the Conservancy contains the highest concentration of remote ponds in New England. These include Rainbow Lake and its entire watershed as well as the string of Debsconeag lakes, all resources prized for recreational fishing and boating as well as wilderness scenery. A 15-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail‘s “Hundred Mile Wilderness” runs through the property. Wommack said hunting, fishing and other traditional uses will continue on the Debsconeag parcel, but forest management will be phased out over time.

The Debsconeag Lakes region has been at the top of the list for many conservation groups for decades, said Wommack. The Nature Conservancy identified it as among its highest priorities through a several year process of conservation planning that evaluated resources across the 31 million-acre Northern Forest (stretching from the Canadian Maritimes across Maine, Quebec, New Hampshire and Vermont into northern New York State). The placement of protected areas, called ecological reserves in Maine, within a context of sustainably managed working forest has emerged as a trend common across the region.

The current agreement with The Nature Conservancy continues a tradition of conservation by Great Northern Paper. In 1980 and 1997, the company established conservation easements on an approximately 42 mile stretch of the West Branch of the Penobscot River and in 2000, sold 3,600 acres on Trout Mountain, at the southeastern edge of Baxter State Park, to the Conservancy.