Visitors entering Bear Brook State Park from Allenstown may have noticed a lot of trees cut down around Catamount Pond near the park entrance on Deerfield Road.
It seems like a big deal. About 2,600 trees spanning over 32 acres were cut, following another tree harvest last fall. If you came to the park to see a serene forest, it might be a surprise.
But it is routine: Similar timber harvests take place about once a year in the park, which is a working forest.
This one produced a lot of useful stuff: 511,245 board feet of lumber, 132 tons of pulp that can be used in different ways, and 3,311 tons of biomass chips.
Just as importantly, however, it and last fall’s timber harvest here are preparing a future recreational trail. Park officials took out dead and dying pine trees while leaving smaller hardwoods to help reseed the forest. They removed “snags and many poorly formed and dying stems, which were identified as potential hazards,” Gregory Keeler, communications director for the Division of Parks and Recreation, wrote in an email to the Monitor. Concern about falling trees and limbs has kept a trail in the area closed for several years.
The park plans to create an accessible trail system here that meets ADA guidelines to increase outdoor recreational opportunities for people with disabilities.
“In particular, we plan to use the trail as a main route for our accessible Track Chair,” Keeler wrote.
The Track Chair is an off-road version of a motorized wheelchair that is capable of going over roots and rocks, so it doesn’t require paved trails. Increasing opportunities for people with disabilities was one goal in the 2021 Bear Brook State Park Management Plan.
Bear Brook was bought by the state in the 1940s as a “multiple use state park,” which includes cutting trees for sale. At least one timber harvest takes place in the park every year, and the state Division of Forests and Lands, which includes the parks, runs 20 to 25 timber harvests every year. It manages about 170,000 acres of state forests and parks, 60,000 acres of Fish and Game wildlife habitat areas and another 13,000 acres of flood-control zones.
Done properly, a timber harvest can make woods healthier by allowing new growth to help plants and encourage wildlife. In the Northeast, regeneration happens through natural reseeding from nearby woods; unless foresters are trying to introduce a species that isn’t present, planting of new trees is not required.
Almost no true old-growth forests exist in New Hampshire as virtually every wooded area has been logged at least once in the past, producing an artificial ecosystem where, for example, all the canopy trees are roughly the same age. Combined with the stresses of pollution, invasive species and the changing climate, this often means that leaving forests alone may not be the best way to keep them healthy.
