CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Conservation efforts in the 26 million-acre Northern Forest have been highly successful in the past decade, but the forest products industry is struggling against overseas competition and its high-paying jobs are dwindling, a new report says.

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York must cooperate to bolster the forest products industry and local communities, according to the report released Tuesday by a group updating the work of the Northern Forest Lands Council.

The four states and their congressional delegations also should push for more stable conservation funding, as well as federal tax and environmental policies that promote sustainable forestry and a healthy business climate, the report said.

“We’re losing real, living-wage jobs in the forest products industry,” said Charles Levesque, executive director of the North East State Foresters Association, which sponsored the report.

The report recommends:

• Investing public and private resources in community and economic development and studying how to help forest-related businesses compete in the global economy.

• Continuing public and private investment in conservation and forest stewardship efforts.

• Supporting private landowners in practicing sustainable forestry and good environmental stewardship, while encouraging continued public access to private lands for recreation.

The good news in the report is that, despite accelerating changes in land ownership and development pressures, the size of the forest is about the same as a decade ago.

Conservation easements and fee-for-recreation arrangements have helped tremendously, giving landowners incentives to protect the land from development.

But as development has driven up land values, easements have become more expensive. Also, government agencies and nonprofits need more people and money to monitor compliance with the easements, the report says.

Addressing the problems of the $15 billion forest products industry is even more urgent, to ensure there is a strong local market for all grades of timber, the report says.

The number of forest economy jobs, which generally offer good pay and benefits – from foresters and loggers to furniture craftsmen and paper mill workers – has declined overall by about 20 percent in the past decade, Levesque said. Tourism and recreation-related jobs have increased, but most do not pay a living wage.

Global competition is a major challenge, but the state and federal governments can help by ensuring that environmental and safety regulations for paper and sawmills are stable and consistent, Levesque said.

They also can encourage investment in wood energy plants and factories that make oriented strand-board, an alternative to construction plywood that uses very low-grade wood.

Rising oil prices and state laws requiring power producers to invest in renewable energy are helping, as evidenced by Public Service Company of New Hampshire’s decision to convert a power plant in Newington to use wood chips, he said.

“Wood has looked bad for the last 10 years because of the cost of that power, but all of a sudden, wood looks good again,” he said.

The forestry practices of private landowners, who own more than 21 million acres, or more than 80 percent of the forest, have improved over the past decade with the rise of programs to certify sustainable forestry and products. Companies including Home Depot give preference to wood from certified timberlands, and the report recommends finding ways to improve the market for certified forest products.

The report also recommends giving landowners economic incentives to open their lands to public recreation and to compensate them for growing vandalism and damage caused by the expanded use of all-terrain-vehicles and other off-road vehicles.

Carbonetti wants federal income taxes on the sale of forest land indexed to inflation, to reward good forestry. The report also recommends changes to federal taxes on estates.

“Right now, we have a tax system that penalizes stewardship and rewards liquidation of the timber resource,” Carbonetti said of the income tax.

Landowners who keep timberland for a decade or more and harvest it selectively pay large capital gains taxes when they sell, simply because inflation and development pressures increase the land value, he said.

So-called “timber liquidators” who buy land and cut everything on it, then quickly resell “the carcass” for less than they paid, pay almost no capital gains tax, he said.

“These liquidators, they roll their money constantly, there’s less risk, there’s lower taxes to pay, they’re then spinning out of that property and investing their cash somewhere else,” he said.