An aggressive harvesting plan filed by a Maine timber liquidator has New Hampshire officials wondering about the future of their cherished North Woods.

“It appears that trees are being harvested at a rate that can’t be sustained into the future,” said Steve Weber, the state’s chief of wildlife with the Fish and Game Department.

Weber said more cutting is raising concern that habitat will be changed, resulting in changes to native wildlife.

Coos County Planning Board members were told in early January that North Woods timber harvesting could balloon this year. Rep. Fred King, R-Colebrook, who chaired that meeting, said an average of $242,000 in timber revenue was collected by the county since 2001. That will grow to $1.7 million this year based on cutting plans, according to reports.

One of those plans was filed by a Mainer known for liquidating his lands.

Success plan

T.R. Dillon of Anson bought more than 22,500 acres in Success, an incorporated township east of Berlin, in 2003. His forester, Ted Tichy of Milan, N.H., told the Coos County Planning Board that Dillon intends to harvest 300,000 cords of wood from 19,000 acres of that land. Half of the 300,000 cords will be cut at a rate of 50,000 cords annually for the first three years of the project.

Most, if not all of the wood, will be sold to a mill in nearby Berlin.

Tom Dillon, who owns the company, said in a telephone interview from Success on Tuesday that he also is harvesting timber from land he owns in Oxford, Franklin and Somerset counties in Maine. The Maine wood is sold to Maine mills, Dillon said. Among them: International Paper in Jay and MeadWestvaco in Rumford.

Dillon’s move into Success, which abuts Oxford County to the west of the Mahoosuc Mountains, preceded efforts in Maine to curb overharvesting.

Maine passed legislation that went into effect this month that prohibits what has been called liquidation harvesting. People who buy land, cut more than half of the standing timber then sell the land within five years would be in violation of that law.

New Hampshire doesn’t have any comparable protection for its lands.

Weber, the wildlife chief for New Hampshire, said he isn’t in a position to propose any, either.

“That’s not our bailiwick,” he said Tuesday, adding that such policy falls under the purview of the state’s elected leaders.

Land owner’s rights as well as conservation issues would have to be taken into consideration before any such legislation would be approved.

“We’re the Live Free or Die State,” Weber noted.

Maligned

Meanwhile, Dillon maintains he’s being maligned in reports dealing with the harvesting plans.

An Associated Press report published Monday said Dillon faces six counts of overharvesting in the Lancaster, N.H., district court.

Dillon said the report is wrong.

“New Hampshire doesn’t have an overharvesting law,” he said.

And, he added, the charges that deal with harvesting practices actually face Michael Kelley, a New Hampshire logger hired by Dillon to cut on some of Dillon’s land.

“I want to hire local loggers,” Dillon said. Kelley “has a reputation as being one of the best loggers in the state.”

Added Dillon: “I follow state laws.”

He said that in more than 30 years of logging in Maine, he “was only fined three times.”

Mike Mullen, who monitors enforcement activities for the state Department of Environmental Protection, confirmed that by phone on Tuesday.

He said Dillon or people working for him may have been named in other complaints, but those complaints were either mitigated on-site or unfounded.

The last time Dillon was fined was in June 2002 when the Board of Environmental Protection approved an $11,500 assessment against Dillon’s company for soil disturbance in several streams in Mexico.

Fourteen months earlier he was fined $4,800 for erosion problems with streams in Roxbury and Andover.

A violation in March 2000 in Whitefield led to a $2,700 fine.

“I don’t think three fines in 30 years is too bad,” Dillon said.

He said “environmentalists” who don’t like the idea of woodlands being harvested have led to him having an undeserved bad rap.

“They don’t like what I do,” Dillon said.

He denied there are plans to liquidate his entire Success holdings.

His son, said Dillon, intends to keep much of the land and harvest it again in 30 to 40 years.

“Trees just keep growing back,” Dillon said.