Maine: Citizens of Portland get ready to review Forester’s plan for Tree cutting in your city forests!

PORTLAND — The state’s largest city is known for its urban landscape,
but a few hundred feet from busy Stevens Avenue stand some of Maine’s
oldest white oaks and hemlocks, mainstays of a public forest network
that covers about 300 city acres. Now, for the first time, Portland
has a professional management plan to make sure some of its trees and
forests don’t fall victim to neglect, invasive species or the
pressures of city life.

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Maine’s largest city has a surprising collection of old trees and
large forests, especially the 111 acres of natural forest behind
Evergreen Cemetery, said Rene Noel, the forester who conducted the
survey and wrote the plan.

The forester’s plan recommends that the city take a more active management role by cutting some trees to protect the oldest ones and promote desirable new growth, and removing invasive trees and plants by cutting and applying herbicides.

Without
such maintenance, it says, the historic and heavily used forests would
gradually decline, and Portland would lose a link to the pre-urbanized
landscape that earned it the nickname “Forest City.”

The recommendations will be submitted to the city’s Land Bank Commission
on April 2 as part of a public review, and some could be implemented
as soon as this spring, Tarling said.

The new management plan focuses on the Evergreen Cemetery woods and Mayor Baxter Woods, two of the city’s largest forests, as well as two smaller woodlots, Pine Grove Park and Baxter Pines.

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