An Integrated Approach to New England Conservation and Community
The climate crisis is more than a technical glitch—an unfortunate mismatch between burning the jackpot of fossil energy that underlies the rise of industrial civilization and the earth’s capacity to safely absorb the waste. This crisis is driven by an unjust, extractive economic system that has repeatedly undermined both natural systems and human communities. We need urgently to muster an enormous societal effort to remake the way we treat the land. Conservation needs to move from seeking relief from the system of injustice and extraction to replacing that system with something better.
New England has seen its share of injustice and extraction: the decimation of Native people and expropriation of their land; the commodification and extirpation of wildlife and forests; massive forest clearing for agriculture; overfishing; dams, and water pollution that drove the explosive rise of a textile industry that relied upon the extraction of southern cotton by slaves and sharecroppers and the exploitation of generations of immigrant millworkers here at home. The climate crisis is but the culmination of this market-driven way of doing business.
Luckily, New England has been blessed with remarkable natural resilience: a large part of its forest and wildlife have bounced back. A history of spirited conservation efforts aided that recovery. About one quarter of our region is now conserved land. Conservation has benefited everyone, but not equally. Conservation needs to greatly expand, but it needs to serve all communities. To address the climate crisis and improve upon our conflicted heritage of extraction and conservation, we need to build just and sustainable natural landscapes and human communities, from the ground up.
I mean from the ground up in two senses. The first is in drawing upon diverse natural systems and a range of cultural traditions, and integrating their stewardship in ways that work together for forests, farmlands, wetlands, waterways, and fisheries. The second sense is working democratically, from the local level, to empower people in all kinds of communities—from urban neighborhoods to rural villages—to mitigate not just carbon emissions, but the power of the extractive system that has disconnected these communities from their natural roots.
“Today, most decisions about land use and community development are made by the real estate market, and the global market in commodities such as food and wood. Efforts to oppose the will of the market are beaten back by the political clout that wealth confers upon those who own the largest financial stake. That power to shape the market needs to be dispersed to those whose livelihoods and communities are at stake.”
An integrated approach to conservation requires acknowledging, and patiently reconciling, many contradictions. Wildlands versus woodlands. Forests versus farmland. Marine reserves versus fisheries. Conservation versus development. Urban versus rural. Native versus settler. Integrating and advancing all together will require not so much compromise between these competing interests as collaboration among all of them. We must recognize that each is weak by itself, but all are stronger when combined, both ecologically and politically.
Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities (WWF&C) and A New England Food Vision (NEFV) have advanced an integrated vision of conservation and communities. All the elements of this vision need to be considered together in ways that add up. How much of this vision we can accomplish will be determined by whether we can empower a more democratic process than the one that presently calls the shots. Today, most decisions about land use and community development are made by the real estate market, or the global market in commodities such as food and wood. Efforts to oppose the will of the market are beaten back by the political clout that wealth confers upon those who own the largest financial stake. That power to shape the market needs to be dispersed to those whose livelihoods and communities are at stake.
The vision of protecting at least 80% of New England in a mixture of wildland, woodland, and farmland is detailed on the WWF&C website. This would entail a range of developed and undeveloped land in different parts of the region, as illustrated on this map. The areas labeled "Forest Dominated" have 90% or more tree cover, with very little farmland or settlement. "Suburban" and "Urban" areas (mostly in southern New England) are dominated by 60% to 85% developed land, with small but critical patches of farmland and forest. New England has only a few areas where farmland dominates the landscape, with smaller pieces of farmland and development scattered across the "Exurban" and "Forest and Farms" areas in which forest cover ranges from 50% to 75%.
Elements of Integrated Conservation in New England
Forests: At least 70 percent
Forests are the backbone of New England’s natural systems. Forests overwhelmingly dominated the landscape in the pre-colonial era, but by the late nineteenth century, agricultural clearing had reduced forest cover to less than half of central and southern New England. Northern New England remained mostly forested, but its forests were consigned to large-scale extraction of timber and pulp, transforming most of them to a perpetual state of ecological adolescence. With the twentieth-century decline of New England farming, forests rebounded to about 60 percent of southern New England (and much more of the northern states), but have been slowly declining since 1970 in the face of development. Today, about 80 percent of New England is forested.
The WWF&C vision calls for at least 70 percent of the region to remain in forest, permanently protected from development.That protected forest would accommodate two ambitious, seemingly contradictory goals that can stand together in powerful synergy: dedicate at least 10 percent of the landscape to Wildlands, and increase wood production from the surrounding Woodlands, employing ecological forestry. Both can help the forest regain ecological maturity.
Wildlands: 10-20 Percent
Today, formally designated and protected Wildlands cover a little over a million acres, or about three percent, of New England, according to a careful inventory conducted for Wildlands in New England: Past, Present, and Future (2023). Wildlands are special, “untrammeled” places where human management is strictly curtailed, and natural processes prevail. The most prominent Wildlands in New England are Baxter State Park, parts of the White Mountain and Green Mountain National Forests, portions of state forests, and a spine along the Appalachian Trail. In recent decades many smaller Wildlands have also been protected by private conservation organizations, bringing wild places closer to where people live. We need more Wildlands of both kinds, amounting to at least 10 percent of the region. That could rise to 20 percent or more, if we can also rein in our demand and satisfy our need for wood products from the surrounding forest.
Katahdin Brook, Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. Photo © Jym St. Pierre.
Wildland doesn’t mean land that has never been touched by human beings. In pre-colonial times Native people lived in a state of reciprocity with forests and other natural systems throughout New England, and the concept of wilderness was perhaps unnecessary. But in our time, Wildlands have become necessary—precisely because of the way industrial society uses forests. Wildlands are defined not by their past but by their future: they are places where recovering natural systems can reacquire old growth conditions by being left to themselves.
Wildlands have intrinsic value that we need to respect: the species that inhabit them have a fundamental right to exist. Wild forests develop fully mature ecological structure and dynamics that cannot be found even in well-managed woodlands—large trees, dead snags, and copious down and dead wood. Wildlands provide the best habitat for an important part of the region’s biodiversity. They are also unmatched at protecting air and water quality, and at storing vast amounts of carbon.
Woodlands: 50-70 percent
If it were not for our society’s need for wood products, we would have no compelling reason to cut trees, and forests could take care of themselves. How much wood do we need, and how much of that should be produced within our own region? In the forthcoming “Beyond the Illusion of Preservation,” colleagues and I have estimated that by 2060 we could reasonably reduce our lumber consumption by 25 percent. This figure depends on the rate of regional population growth, and the size of the houses we build: addressing our need for affordable housing means building smaller single-family houses and more multi-family housing units. With the rise of the internet, paper consumption has already declined 25 percent over the past two decades, and if we can slow the mania for more packaging, we believe that trend can be continued.
Fishing on the Androscoggin River. This photo, as well as the following one, appear in Above the Notch by Fletcher Manley, a new book of stunning photos of Coos County, New Hampshire. Copies may be purchased through Taproot at 101 Main Street in Lancaster or Bondcliff Books in Littleton. Photo © Fletcher Manley.
New England is as heavily settled as it is heavily wooded, and in fact has about the same ratio of forest to people—two acres—as the United States as a whole. Therefore, producing roughly as much as we consume—being in net balance—is a good benchmark for ecological responsibility.
Today, with heavy-handed cutting in the industrial forests up north, and very little being cut from the family-owned forests of southern and central New England, our region is producing about three-quarters of the wood it consumes—but little more than half of its lumber. If we were to demand less wood, recycle more, and spread lighter harvesting over a larger part of our forest, New England could produce virtually all the wood products it consumes. This would entail a period of reduced cutting on the industrial forest lands, and increased cutting across family forests.
David (left) and Dana Southworth, are the third and second generation operators of the Garland Mill in Lancaster, the last water-powered sawmill in New Hampshire. Dana's father, Harry, and his brother, Tom, acquired the mill in 1974. It has run continuously since 1856. Photo © Fletcher Manley.
Responsible forestry puts ecological values first, and wood harvesting second. Ecological forestry looks to natural forest structure and dynamics for its cues: thinning young stands, letting trees grow longer to produce higher quality timber, regenerating forests by harvesting small patches, and limiting larger openings to a small percentage at any given time. The result of these practices is that most of the forest is always in a fairly mature state. Using low-impact logging methods across the landscape as a whole can provide a diverse range of habitats, protect water quality, and maintain a strong rate of growth and carbon sequestration, while also meeting our need for wood products.
Together, Wildlands and Woodlands can provide a full suite of biodiversity habitat: Wildlands bring the depth that includes old growth conditions; Woodlands surround that with the breadth of a diverse, connected landscape. Study of Wildlands gives us a baseline for ecological forestry—the dynamics and structure to aim for. Walking in Wildlands gives many of us a sense of humility and spiritual connection with nature; while walking in lovingly-managed Woodlands offers us a more direct sense of material connection that is equally satisfying. Careful recreational use, united with a revived, sustainable forest products industry, is a great boon to the rural economy.
We also need to protect and expand urban and suburban forests, and make them accessible to more people. Many of these forests are minimally managed, aside from their trail systems—but those trails can be heavily used. Wildlands and Woodlands are each deeply compelling to a large part of the conservation community, and they join at the center. We need both.
“In New England, the union of interest between wild and wood-producing forests grows even stronger when farmland is added to the mix. Like wood, our food has to come from somewhere. Integrating more food production into local communities and regional landscapes can be done in ways that are attractive and sustainable, and do not undermine other natural systems, such as forests. We have that opportunity in New England.”
Farmland: 7-15 percent
In New England, the union of interest between wild and wood-producing forests grows even stronger when farmland is added to the mix. New England, in Thoreau’s time, was dramatically over-cleared, and it is fortunate that so much was able to return to forest. But in the process, too much of our capacity to grow food was lost. Like our wood, our food has to come from somewhere. Integrating more food production into local communities and regional landscapes can be done in ways that are attractive and sustainable, and do not undermine other natural systems, such as forests. We have that opportunity in New England.
Today, farmland covers about 5 percent of New England, or about 2 million acres. From that farmland and its fisheries, the region produces between 10 percent and 20 percent of its own food. In A New England Food Vision, we have calculated that this could be increased to about 50 percent of our food (measured by acreage footprint)—but only if we are willing to expand our farmland base to some 15 percent of the landscape (about what it was in 1945), and reorient the way we use it. At the very least, we should protect all our remaining farmland and keep it in production.
The author's farm in Massachusetts, where he and co-owners raise beef cattle on grass. The new house at right was constructed from a low-grade thinning of the woodlot behind, under a long-term Forest Stewardship plan. Photo © Brian Donahue
New England does not abound in great cropland, but much of its farmland is well-suited for grazing, and for tree crops. Today, most of our limited cropland is producing hay and corn silage for a beleaguered dairy industry. A better long-term approach might be to shift more of that cropland into vegetables and fruits; to reduce our meat consumption and simultaneously bring it out of abhorrent feedlots and back home to New England; and to move our dairy and livestock production more heavily into grass-based and silvopastoral systems. Perennialized farming can help rebuild soil health and organic matter, prevent sediment and nutrient runoff into waterways, and provide opportunities to create habitat for open land species, including grassland birds such as bobolinks (this works on our own farm). Growing more of our own food is the best way to keep alive the more attractive elements of New England’s Yankee agrarian tradition, integrated with Native traditions, and welcoming new arrivals.
Growing more food in New England offers resilience in the face of likely disruptions to the long global supply chains of the industrial food system, which exacerbates global warming. Growing more food locally can help people connect both with the land, and with how they eat. Small-scale urban and suburban community farming can produce part of our vegetable supply while empowering people to take more democratic control of their land and food. New England farmland is expensive. Farmers, belonging to communities who have long been marginalized and excluded, must have access to rural and urban farmland. Food justice, which connects equitable access with sustainable regional production, lies at the heart of a New England food vision.
A New England Food Vision, released by Food Solutions New England in 2014, imagined a possible future of food justice and sustainable fishing and farming, in which the region produces half of its food. New England Feeding New England is a follow-up study by the New England Food System Planners Partnership, examining how the region could produce 30% of its food by 2030.
Waterways and Fisheries
The history of New England’s fisheries is strikingly similar to that of its forest: relentless intensification of extraction over centuries, moving from species to species, leaving behind transformed ecosystems; accompanied by the equally relentless consolidation of access to the “resource” in the hands of a few absentee corporations, devastating communities who have lost economic control of their own destinies. This process culminated with the late twentieth-century near total collapse of cod, one of the great fisheries in the history of the world—a staggering drop from landings of 100 million pounds in the 1980s to just one million pounds today.
As cod went down, lobster (at least in Maine) went up—from 20 million pounds in the late twentieth century, to over 100 million pounds today (that counts the shell, so it is not directly comparable to cod). Part of this rise may be a direct result of the decline of cod and of warming oceans, which have produced perfect conditions for lobsters in the Gulf Maine, even as they have led to the collapse of lobsters south of Cape Cod. But lobster’s success is also the result of sound, community-based management: for almost a century it has been illegal to take lobsters that are too small, but also those that are too large, which has maintained the breeding success of the stock. These rules are zealously enforced by lobstermen themselves, as are the number of traps that can be deployed, at the community level.
The explosion of lobsters has produced a monoculture that most likely cannot last, especially as waters continue to warm and the lobsters, in effect, crawl north to Canada. What is needed in its place is a more broad-based ecological recovery, with more diverse, community-based fishing to sustain it. This starts with forest and farmland stewardship that reduces nutrient runoff and ensures unpolluted waterways, estuaries, and marine ecosystems. Alongside that comes the removal of dams and restoration of large runs of anadromous fish such as river herring, known to the Passamaquoddy as “the fish that feeds all.”
Ted Ames, co-founder of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries (MCCF), once described the Gulf of Maine as "a collapsed ecosystem crawling with crustaceans." The MCCF and the North American Marine Alliance are two organizations that work for more ecologically complex and socially equitable, community-based fisheries. More diverse fishing, more small and midsize fishermen. Photos © Jym St. Pierre.
In the coastal zone, controlled by states and local communities, we need the restoration of shellfish beds, thriving small-scale aquaculture and seaweed farming, and more diversified fisheries that once again include groundfish. In the offshore fisheries, managed by the federal government, we need limits to the consolidation of fishing catch shares, a more community-based approach to their distribution that supports small and medium-sized fishermen, and an ecosystem-based approach to management. More of what is caught in New England waters needs to make its way to New England consumers who have learned to “eat with the ecosystem,” rather than focusing on, for example, shrimp from Southeast Asia.
“These visions for forests, farms, and fisheries have an ecological dimension: more diversified, mature natural systems; an economic dimension: more widespread, diversified production that supports more producers; and a social dimension: reconnecting urban and rural communities to the natural systems and products of our region. We need revitalized urban places that are both denser and greener.”
Human Communities: 10-11 percent
These visions for forests, farms, and fisheries have an ecological dimension of more diversified, mature natural systems; an economic dimension of more widespread, diversified production that supports more producers; and a social dimension of reconnecting urban and rural communities to the natural systems and products of our region.
The region faces a housing deficit, and we need to rebuild strong, vital communities. We also desperately need renewable energy development. The key to reconciling conservation and necessary development is to cluster new construction so that it leaves forests and farmland as intact as possible. This is true both at the regional and local scale. Most development should concentrate on rebuilding existing cities and suburbs, making them healthy and attractive places to live.
We need revitalized urban places that are both denser and greener—which can be accomplished primarily by reclaiming space from the automobile. We need to encourage mid-rise housing and multi-use redevelopment around public transit and bikeways, and wherever possible to repurpose existing buildings and to put as much solar capacity as we can on rooftops and over parking lots.
Some rural repopulation is needed to revitalize rural communities, and to accommodate a migration which is probably inevitable in the age of Covid and climate refugees. Here again, development should be concentrated as much as possible around existing villages rather than sprawling all over the landscape. The same principle applies at the level of individual parcels: put the houses together, rather than scattered across the property, and leave the forests and farmland in good working order. At every level, choose density over sprawl.
The social benefit of clustering development is increased access and connection in walking and recreation, in local food and wood production through protected private farms and woodlots, in community gardens and farms, and in food forests. The political benefit is that neighborhoods and communities enjoy far more democratic control over how development and conservation is balanced and integrated, rather than leaving most of the power with developers and the real estate market.
Key connections
To drive policy in directions that are contrary to market signals, but that elevate justice and sustainability above efficiency, we need to make connections that form effective political coalitions. Here are a few examples:
Access to healthy food for all
The best way to increase production of food in New England is to make sure that more people have the means to buy it. Social and environmental externalities make processed food cheap, but a substantial part of our population cannot afford good, healthy, local food. To ensure just access to good food for all requires a living wage, universal health care, and affordable housing. People who have more money to spend, spend more of it on food.
Until everybody enjoys a decent standard of living, we need increased food support programs that are tied to sustainable local and regional food production. States can use their resources simultaneously to increase food justice, and to build greater resilience and regional production into our food systems as we face a future in which brittle global supply chains may become unreliable.
Affordable Housing
In just the same way, we need policies that tie desperately needed affordable housing to local and regional wood production. In rural areas, we need simple housing designs that can be drawn in part directly from local woodlands, keeping housing dollars in the local economy. In urban and suburban areas, we have an opportunity to build denser housing, much of which could utilize wood through “mass timber” technologies. This has great potential to link the urban need for housing with a sustainable rural economy. However, to be truly sustainable, like any industrial technology, mass timber must be forced to meet high environmental standards, and must be sourced from ecological forestry, or it will simply foster another round of extraction.
“We need to protect and expand urban and suburban forests, and make them accessible to more people…. We need to greatly increase funding for urban neighborhood-controlled green spaces—everyone has a right to live within a ten-minute walk of a natural area.”
No net loss of forest and farmland and net gain of urban green spaces.
We need an enormous increase in funding to achieve something close to “no net loss” of this green natural infrastructure. This can include conservation easements on family-owned forests and farmland, but also much more fee ownership of larger parcels by local land trusts, municipalities, and tribes. We need a great wave of locally owned community forests and surrounding state and federal-owned Wildlands.
Unless we institute strong local and regional planning that encourages clustered residential, commercial, and renewable energy development, protecting open space only drives development to the next available piece of property. We need to drive the real estate market in a direction it does not want to go, because it naturally caters to those with the most wealth. Therefore, we need strong “no net loss” regulations that reward more socially responsible development, and that make sprawling development pay dearly through penalties that help with compensating land protection.
Cultivating Community in Portland, Maine embodies the spirit of the New England Food Vision. Photo courtesy of Cultivating Community.
Beyond that, we need to address the issue of more equitable access to land. Land in New England is expensive, and simply placing an easement on it to protect its natural benefits does not always open it to more people. We need to greatly increase funding for urban neighborhood-controlled green spaces—everyone has a right to live within a ten-minute walk of a natural area. When farmland is protected by land trusts, we need mechanisms such as long-term leases by which more of it can be made available to a much wider, more diverse range of farmers. We need a similar reopening of broader, community-based access to fisheries. And a large portion of protected forest needs to restore foraging rights for Native people, on top of a big increase in rematriated tribal land.
Forest, Farm, and Fisheries Viability
We need to stop viewing food and wood solely as commodities to be extracted in the most “efficient” way possible, and instead look at how they can be produced while supporting a broader range of ecological and social benefits. Just and sustainable food and wood should be rewarded for their environmental and social internalities: well-paid workers, thriving natural and human communities, and beautiful landscapes.
That reward could come in the form of ecosystem services payments for forest and farmland. Such payments should not be determined by carbon storage alone, which is difficult to measure and varies according to the site and what one is managing for. These payments should reward meeting an exceptionally high set of standards for soil health, water quality, and biodiversity, perhaps as determined by soil and water conservation districts. We need similar support for a community-based approach to our coastal zone and in-shore fisheries, combining ecological restoration with flexible, sustainable seafood harvesting, ocean farming, and public access.
Some portion of such ecosystem-service payments should flow to rural municipalities as well, to compensate for the local property tax relief that is granted to owners of forest and farmland. A logical source for such payments is state climate action programs, coordinated on a regional basis, and backed by massive federal support. Creating ecologically-sound landscapes and socially-just communities is a necessary part of building resilience in the face of climate change, even as we seek to mitigate it.
“To combat climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and injustice, conservation and social movements must merge to protect natural systems and build more resilient communities. We must build political coalitions between urban and rural communities that are powerful enough to enact such mechanisms. Each is too weak to accomplish much on its own. Local democratic control and green redevelopment of urban and rural communities should be linked.”
Integration and reconciliation
To combat climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and injustice, conservation and social movements must merge to protect natural systems and build more resilient communities. In New England most of the population is in the south, while most of the forest and farmland is in the north. We must build political coalitions between urban and rural communities that are powerful enough to enact such mechanisms. Each is too weak to accomplish much on its own.
Urban communities have endured a history of disinvestment and toxic pollution that is precisely mirrored by ruthless resource extraction, without building an enduring economic base, in rural communities. Local democratic control and green redevelopment of urban and rural communities should be linked. This will require economic mechanisms that tie equitable access to food and housing with sustainable production of food and wood, not only within states but also flowing across state lines.
Wildlands and Woodlands. Forests and farmlands. Conservation and development. Urban and rural. All these apparent contradictions can be reconciled and integrated. But there is a deeper conflict in the conservation world that has finally risen to visibility that needs to be set right: Native versus colonial settler. Realizing an integrated conservation vision will require reparations to Native people through expanded “land back,” foraging access to public lands, including Indigenous voices and insights in conservation decisions, and recovery of Native traditions of land stewardship. The same is true of other people of color who have been exploited and marginalized in both economic development, and land conservation, in New England.
At the same time, we need to retain the best elements of settler culture—including traditions of mixed husbandry and woodland stewardship—alongside a growing appreciation for wild, self-willed natural lands. To survive and prosper we need to farm, to harvest wood from our forests and fish from our seas, and to do so at a scale capable of supporting an urban and industrial society. We need to bring the best of Indigenous stewardship, the best of Yankee agrarian culture, and the best of modern science and industrial technology to bear on the challenge of sustainable living. That will require a tremendous feat of reconciliation.
To succeed we will need to move beyond purely market-based approaches to land ownership, resource extraction, and housing and energy development. We need to empower communities and assert more democratic control over how real estate and commodities markets are allowed to function, in the face of powerful opposition from vested interests who will fight to maintain the status quo. We need something much better: an integrated approach to conservation and communities, built from the ground up.
Brian Donahue is Professor Emeritus of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University, and a farm and forest policy consultant. He holds a PhD from the Brandeis program in History. He co-founded and for 12 years directed Land’s Sake, a non-profit community farm in Weston, Massachusetts, and now co-owns and manages a farm in western Massachusetts. He sits on the boards of The Massachusetts Woodland Institute, The Friends of Spannocchia, and The Land Institute. Donahue is author of Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town (1999), and The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (2004). He is co-author of Wildlands and Woodlands and A New England Food Vision.