I wonder how much the internet has affected the price of paper and helped deals such as these along:
Deals Turn Swaths of Timber Company Land Into Development-Free Areas, by Felicity Barringer, NY Times: Timber companies and conservation organizations have been working to arrange and announce a cascade of deals transferring large, unbroken swaths of forestland into the hands of government, nonprofit — or even commercial — groups that are committed to keeping them free from development.
On Tuesday, the International Paper Company announced it would receive $300 million in a deal arranged by the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund for 217,000 acres in 10 states around the Southeast.
The largest single tract, an unkempt 25,668-acre peninsula between the Pee Dee and Little Pee Dee Rivers in South Carolina, will ideally revert to the cypress and longleaf-pine forest that once covered these sandy flatlands. The company also said it had sold 69,000 acres of forestland in Wisconsin for $83 million to the Nature Conservancy.
The third and largest deal is intended to preserve up to 400,000 acres of land near Moosehead Lake in central Maine. Financial and other details are still being worked out ...
But for all the good news, celebrated by all sides, a stubborn fact remains: ... these deals over the past two years ... represent barely 2 percent of timber company lands that are coming on the market in the East. And in many places like parts of North and South Carolina, conservation groups are competing for the land with developers who seem more determined than ever.
"Based on market components," said David Liebetreu, International Paper's vice president for forest resources, "our forestlands are worth a lot more to other people than they are to us." International Paper is not the only company making that calculation. ...
The quick succession of sales, Mr. Carter said, provide a golden opportunity for conservation organizations — but the amount of state, federal and nonprofit money available is dwarfed by the amounts that can be offered by developers of residential communities, golf courses and hunting clubs. "The federal government is, for practical purposes, out of the conservation land acquisition business," Mr. Carter said.
An analysis of federal budget... shows conservation financing — money available for conservation purchases either directly or through grants to states — has shrunk to about $140 million annually from more than $500 million in 2001. ...
The state had been trying to acquire those two tracts from their succession of timber company owners for more than a decade. When International Paper made clear last summer that it would sell all or part of its 6.5 million acres of forestland around the East, the conservation groups brokered a deal; this week, the $32 million bond issue that cements it was signed by Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican. And here, as with the other tracts, International Paper is guaranteed a supply of timber for its nearby mills for at least five years.
The South Carolina bonds ensure that the state is the eventual heir to the Woodbury tract, where canebrakes and occasional skeletons of old cypress trees interrupt the not-so-neat rows of half-grown loblolly pines. ... The tracts were chosen based on their ecological value, including the presence of endangered species, the stock of hardwoods and softwoods, and the proximity to other protected areas... "It's a great example of private, public and nonprofit cooperation," said International Paper's chairman and chief executive, John Faraci.
The fact that the paper company retains the right to a supply of timber rankles a few environmentalists, but not Jamie Dozier, a biologist with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Mr. Dozier grew up not far from the sandy second- and third-growth forest that thrives in the swampy areas between the Pee Dee River, which carries rich red soils from the Piedmont, and the blackish, acidic Little Pee Dee.
"They are the only folks who own very large pieces of land," Mr. Dozier said. Referring to booming Myrtle Beach 40 miles away, Mr. Dozier said, "You'll have a 1,000-home subdivision pop up there in two weeks." While it will be a decade or more before that kind of development pressure arrives here in Marion County, he said, such deals are necessary to prepare for the future. ...
