We Need Your Help

Maine Woodland Owners is committed to helping small woodland owners develop succession plans so they can know their life’s work will be passed on to someone who will continue their stewardship efforts. Here’s another topic to stimulate landowner efforts to develop and improve their plans.

Maine Woodland Owners is starting to write a succession planning workbook for Maine woodland owners to use in the future. We have been using workbooks from other states to start our succession planning program in Maine, but feel that they don’t provide all that we need to deal with the state’s particular circumstances and culture.

Part of the workbook will include stories of families who have gone through the succession planning effort and what they chose for their solutions. Obviously, there are many choices of how to deal with land for the future. Therefore, there will need to be different stories presented to reflect the different options available – everything from the sale of the land on the open market with a conservation easement attached, to stories about family gifting or donations to land trusts. SWOAM realizes there may be certain facts about a plan that will need to be kept confidential, but we also know that actual examples of what some have done will be very useful for others who are starting the planning stages.

If you have an interest in sharing your plan and its process, please contact me directly so we can arrange a discussion and perhaps an interview. I can be reached at: Rich Merk, 216 Forrest Edwards Road, Otisfield, Maine 04270-6416; phone: 627-4102 (home) or 415-1628 (cell) or e-mail: mqh@fairpoint.net

Thanks for your consideration. Maine Woodland Owners could really use your help on this special project.