Skip to Navigation Skip to Content
Decorative woodsy background
by Erick Ingraham Winter 2025

How Harvested Wood Moves through Maine

Wood flow
Illustration by Erick Ingraham.

With trees covering 17.5 million acres (90 percent of the state’s landmass), Maine is the most forested state in the United States. Private landowners – corporations, institutional investors, families, and individuals – own 90 percent of that land. Harvesting happens on only about 1.7 percent (roughly 295,000 acres) of Maine’s forested area, and this drives the state’s forest products industry. Which species of trees are cut, where they are processed, and the end products depend on various factors, including forest type, geography, and the ever-changing markets.

Read the companion piece on innovative forest products in Maine, “Beyond Logs: Lincoln Aims to Lead the Way to a Forest Bioproducts Future” in our Winter 2025 edition.

by Erick Ingraham

Estimated average annual growth and harvest from 2020–2024 from the U.S. Forest Service Inventory and Analysis National Program.

Wood usage percentages derived from Maine Dept. of Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry’s 2023 Wood Processor Report, acres harvested from the 2021 Silvicultural Activities Report.

Thanks to Jessica Leahy and Robert S. Seymour for their review.

This illustration is made possible through generous support from the Maine Timberlands Charitable Trust.

© 2025 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.

No discussion as of yet.

Leave a reply

To ensure a respectful dialogue, please refrain from posting content that is unlawful, harassing, discriminatory, libelous, obscene, or inflammatory. Northern Woodlands assumes no responsibility or liability arising from forum postings and reserves the right to edit all postings. Thanks for joining the discussion.