By Jodi Hausen,Staff Writer

DEAD RIVER TOWNSHIP – State officials have put a hold on cutting some old trees in Bigelow Preserve until after Columbus Day, according to David Soucy, director of the Bureau of Parks and Public Lands.

Because of their age and stand characteristics, mature forests between 60 and 100 years old harbor habitats not found elsewhere, according to the bureau’s Web site. Andrew Whitman, a forest ecologist with the Manomet Center for Conservation Studies, said the trees in question are not old growth, which are older trees.

The Department of Conservation and the bureau were scrutinized after they released a harvest prescription for more than 1,000 acres in the preserve in July.

“We need to dispel myths and give people good information, and that takes time,” Soucy said Tuesday. The department is avoiding 60- to 100-year-old trees to give people from environmental groups the opportunity to look at them and examine the prescription, he said. “We’re open to constructive suggestions.”

Bob Weingarten of Friends of Bigelow Preserve said the group was not given ample time to review the complex plan. The bureau hired contractors to begin logging two to three weeks after the prescription was released, he said Wednesday.

Site walks, hastily organized by the bureau, were irrelevant, he said, once contractors had been hired.

“We felt excluded from the process,” he said.

Soucy said the operation in Bigelow, although sensitive, is not dramatically different from what is being done throughout Maine. He did not anticipate a controversy, he said.

“Friends of Bigelow wasn’t looking for a confrontation,” Weingarten said. “We trust Steve Swatling. He’s a great manager of the preserve,” he said. Swatling wrote the prescription.

The Friends of Bigelow Preserve had contacted the Northern Forest Alliance, a coalition of environmental organizations, for more support. Members of that group, including the Maine Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Council of Maine, met with bureau representatives Sept. 20. Rob Bryan, an ecologist with Maine Audubon, was there.

Bryan has examined the prescription and believes the bureau needs clearer guidelines for writing prescriptions.

“The important thing to recognize is to come up with an approach to maintaining the old growth. It’ll be setting a precedent for how to go about this in the future,” he said Tuesday.

But, he said, he has a lot of faith in the Department of Conservation, which manages the preserve under the bureau. He said Swatling does good work.

Whitman, of the Manomet Center, was also at the September meeting and said Tuesday that it is an issue of economic versus ecological value. His concern is not that the trees will be cut, but that the state may want to return in 20 years and do the same thing, he said.

“It’s a subtle thing,” he said. “We don’t know the difference between a 100-year-old forest and a 180-year-old forest.”