Be it waterfowl staging/breeding areas, hawks nests or trees inhabited by chimney swifts, we recognize the importance of maintaining these avian wonders on the landscape. This category also retains important moose calving areas, natural mineral salt licks, and other critical habitat for uncommon to rare northeastern mammals.

Northern Goshawk Nest near Wallagrass Lakes

Location: Northern Maine

The northeast is famous for its pristine waters and hosts a large diversity of fish species. While our riparian management zones provide ample watercourse protection, the sites within this category are those deemed extraordinary in nature. The category includes important cold water refugia and the world’s only spawning grounds for rare type of smelt.  

Lake Utopia Dwarf Smelt

Location: Lake Utopia, New Brunswick

This category includes uncommon to rare aquatic ecosystems, such as the small temporary bodies of water known as vernal pools that are prodigious breeding and nursery grounds for amphibians, invertebrates, and reptiles. This category also includes lakes and wetlands that host a diversity of rare or uncommon plants.  

North Forks Stream Area Vernal Pool

Location: Near Keswick River, New Brunswick

Nine Mile Deadwater Plant Site

Location: Northwestern Maine

While it is almost impossible to locate an area of the northeast that has not undergone some form of human disturbance in the 400+ years since European settlement, occasionally our company locates or is informed of such an area. Conservation forests are those that are critical to the long-term maintenance of rare forested ecosystems or those forests that are critical to the needs of the local community for resources such as drinking water wellfields. 

Our foresters are trained to recognize the signs of old growth. Taking a small, pencil-sized core of a selected set of trees on a site allows a forester to count the annual growth of a tree without undue harm. Other old-growth indicators can include: 

• The presence of a suite of very slow-growing lichens on the tree bark, as well as a good survey of the site for any man-made disturbance such as old road beds or cut tree stumps.
• The presence of large wood debris (dead trees decaying on the forest floor), large standing dead trees (snags), as well as “pits and mounds”, where large trees have long ago been toppled by the wind and a hole is created.

 Dead Brook Old Growth Forest

Location: New Brunswick

This area of the northeast is in the enviable botanical middle ground of being on the southern range of some of the near-arctic plant species and for being on the northern extreme range of some more southern plants. This category also includes the plant species Furbish’s Lousewort, which is not found anywhere else in the world.  

Indian Lake Goodyera Site

Location: Grand Lake Area, New Brunswick

Image courtesy of

Fox Brook Ledges Rare Plant Site

Location: Northern Maine

Historical and archaeological sites of higher than average cultural value are included in this category. These may include old logging, fishing, or hunting camp locations, which are long-abandoned and with only a few scattered remains to indicate their locations. Some sites are designated to preserve more prominent settlement areas, where old stone foundations and structures can still be located. The category also includes sites of importance to Indigenous peoples, like traditional camp locations and meeting places where travelers would have gathered.  

Baskin Cemetery

Location: Southern New Brunswick 

Charlie Bear Petroglyph Site

Location: Northern Maine

Unique geological features include sites such as:

• rare geological formations
• fault lines that define distinct types of bedrock
• significant geomorphological phenomena such as eskers, moraines, and drumlins left behind on the landscape by the flow of ancient glaciers and rivers element   

Another element within this category is fossils. These may be found in the sedimentary rocks of some locations along the coast of the Bay of Fundy, as well as in northern Maine limestone. 

Square Lake Marine Fossil Site

Location: Northern Maine

Otter Brook Canyon

Location: Western New Brunswick

The breeding and rearing habitat of rare to uncommon amphibians, reptiles, and invertebrates are represented in this category.  

Emerald Pond Hatch Site

Location: Central New Brunswick

Purple Lesser Fritillary (Butterfly) Site

Location: Northern Maine

Image courtesy of Dave Hanson.

This category features forest stand types, or individual trees, that have attained an unusual size, or are in themselves rare or uncommon for a given area. A stand containing Red Oak (Quercus rubra) in Northern New Brunswick or Maine is considered significant because this region is close to the northernmost limit of its distribution.

Hovey Hills Hardwoods

Location: Western New Brunswick

Jones Pond Red Oak

Location: Northern Maine