WELD – A Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands plan to restore some areas of Mt. Blue State Park to natural forest will improve views on Central Hill of Tumbledown and Jackson mountains and Webb Lake on the trail system.

About 10 people listened Thursday night, as representatives of the bureau reviewed and discussed the project, which is to begin in January. The meeting was held at the Weld Town Office.

Selective harvesting of nearly 2,000 cords of wood in a mix of logs and pulpwood, which will be the majority of the cut, is expected to produce about $47,000 in net profit to the state’s general fund.

The overall plan is to selectively cut about 117 acres, or 1.5 percent, of the nearly 8,000 total acreage at the park, a popular daytime recreation site and overnight camping spot during the season.

The plan calls for thinning red pine, Norway spruce – an exotic species that is dense and not growing well – white pine, with some showing blister busts, and white spruce that is doing poorly.

The Bureau of Parks and Lands, a division of the Maine Department of Conservation, plans to have a forest management demonstration done by Maine-ly Trees, Inc. of Strong, which has a five-year contract to harvest wood for the state.

Bureau representatives will be on site several times a week to make sure sustainable forestry practices are adhered to once the project begins in January.

The park was established in several stages beginning in the 1930s under a depression area government program to acquire idle farm land, said Mark Miller, a consultant forester on the project.

The park grew from 4,920 acres to 5,020 acres to nearly 8,000 acres in recent years. During state budget deliberations, the bureau was given a reduction target of about $1.9 million for the 2006-07 biennium. When the bureau was looking for cuts, it was faced with either raising fees or “destaffing” parks. The Legislature opted to do forest management demonstration projects to help make up the shortfall with timber sales from selective cutting at several sites, which it sees accounting for about 25 percent or $500,000 of the targeted $1.9 million reduction.

The focus at the Mt. Blue park, which spans Weld, Avon and Temple, is on plantation management and restoration forest management, said Tom Morrison, bureau director of operations.

The park is comprised of five different forests: northern hardwood consisting of birch, beech and maple; spruce forest; white birch and poplar stands; open acres with naturally reforested stands; and more than 100 acres of plantation, Miller said.

The overall goal is to transition plantations planted through a federal work program to natural forests and create a mixed-age species and encourage seedlings to grow, Miller said.

The project will protect wildlife habitats and improve them if they can and improve aesthetics, according to the state.

Besides thinning 30 to 40 percent of the plantation, the plan is to also remove some of the taller trees to let more light in, Miller said.

Bob Thorndike, owner of Maine-ly Trees, will use state-of-the-art light-touch harvesting equipment to minimize impact, he said.

Part of the education demonstration program is to have workshops, and following the harvest, interpreted displays. All wood yards used will be cleaned of debris and seeded with a hardwood mix, Miller said.

State law allows timber harvesting in state parks for use within parks, for wildlife habitat improvement, for fire, insect or disease control, for recreation or aesthetic improvements, and for forest management demonstration areas. Thorndike, who was chosen from five bidders in 2004 to cut public lands, did the recent selective harvest of about 480 acres or 65 percent of Range Pond State Park in Poland and the state was quite satisfied with the job, Morrison said. That project generated $130,000.

The Mt. Blue project will help the state fulfill its contract obligations of 5,000 cords a year to Thorndike, Morrison said.