Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the effects of a conservation regime premised on property negotiations between state, conservation NGOs, and for-profit timberland owners. This system is changing a culture of open access to forestland while simultaneously contributing to distrust of these institutions.

Paper long abstract:

In the last few decades, forestland conservation in northern New England has been dominated by a market-based approach, including industry-regulated forest management and the negotiation of land ownership and easement purchases among environmental NGOs, state agencies, and for-profit timberland owners. Land governance entities sell conservation easements and carbon credits for additional income and to finance land purchases. In addition, forestland is predominantly privately owned and rural economies increasingly depend on access to this private land for recreation-based tourism. Indigenous leaders maintain power by playing peripheral roles in conservation and land access negotiations. This paper asks how this system of institutional leaders negotiating conservation and access is affecting the relationships between the state, conservation NGOs, indigenous peoples, and others using the land for logging, hunting, hiking, camping and other forms of recreation. Based on ethnographic research with land users and agency representatives, I document a class-inflected shift in how people interact with the environment. To promote conservation and keep landowners happy, state agencies and NGOs encourage trail access, overnight lodges, and formalized permission from landowners. Understanding conservation negotiations to be articulations of power and authority, I argue that this system of negotiating conservation is slowly changing a culture of open access to private land while simultaneously contributing to distrust of government, industry, and NGOs.