TIMES RECORD • May 7, 2021
The white pine I’m cutting is Maine’s every-tree. The fingerling pitch pine a few yards away is common enough nationally, but increasingly rare in Maine. And it has set up root in an even rarer stretch of land, a sand-plain grassland, now so rare that it bears an S-1, or critically imperiled, rating. Left on its own, this sand-plain would become a pine forest with some oaks interspersed. If we trim out these 900 trees, and then, next spring — with permission and help from the Forest Service and town Fire Department — set a prescribed fire to this land, we will sustain it as sand-plain grassland habitat for three species of butterflies, the dusted skipper, the hoary elfin, the cobweb skipper. ~ Sandy Stott