UMaine Forest Green Endowment
Transcript
Keith Kanoti:
We are here in the University Forest. This is the Demeritt Forest, which was acquired by the university in 1939. It is 1,865 acres in Old Town in Orono and it is the primary teaching forest for the university. The mission of the forest is teaching, research and demonstration. That is what our management is focused on, on this property.
We own about 13,500 acres between the university and the University of Maine Foundation. That is what our office manages are those 13,500 acres.
The Green Endowment is lands that were donated to the University of Maine Foundation with the purpose of supporting the education of students and the university. They are across the state. They have come from many donors.
What our office does is we manage timber on those holdings. When we have a timber sale and generate revenue from that, it goes into the Green Endowment Fund. What that fund does is it allows us to hire students to help out with the management of the forest and, more importantly, it allows them to basically have some real hands-on forestry educational experience as part of their work experience.
Alexander Audet:
18.3.
Ben Thorne:
We are doing a wide variety of things. We have been doing some inventory. We have been doing boundary line work. We have been doing timber cruises, which is looking at wood, marking wood. We have also being doing some tree felling and skidding. We have been using sawmills, cutting up boards. So, a whole variety of things.
Alexander Audet:
This is a good place. All right.
So incredibly inspiring that there are people out there who care enough about this profession in Maine and are willing to invest in students like us for the next generation so that we can get the skills we need to be able to keep up the level of forestry that has been practiced in Maine for decades.
So many people on campus use the Demeritt Forest for a recreational facility. I think they value it so much, just talking to the students during the school year. It is one of the reasons why this campus is so great. It extends so much further than I think most people know and it does so much more for the university. It is one of those hidden treasures in the university and the state of Maine.
Ben Thorne:
We are having this experience to broaden our horizons in the future and be able to give back when we are older and when we are in the age of the people donating and we can better manage the land, keep it going for future generations.
Alexander Audet:
The great thing about forestry is that it is such a diverse field. There is so many components to it. There is marketing. There is science. There is on the ground fieldwork — ground pounding. There are so many avenues I can go down. Getting out of to the field at this stage and just exploring the whole profession, it has really given me a feel for how diverse this job is and how many places I can take it.
Keith Kanoti:
The special in the university system itself is certainly many donations that come in of many things. Many of them are monetary, but this one it is the perfect fit. It ties the land and the education of the students in a forestry state, which I think is a great thing. It is just a really Maine thing to do.