This article covers a lot of the complexities of what is going on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02protect.html?th&emc=th
April 2, 2006
"Deals Turn Swaths of Timber Company Land Into Development-Free Areas
By FELICITY BARRINGER
BRITTONS NECK, S.C., March 28 ?- Timber companies and conservation organizations have been working to arrange and announce a cascade of deals transferring large, unbroken swaths of forestland into the hands of government, nonprofit ?- or even commercial ?- groups that are committed to keeping them free from development.
On Tuesday, the International Paper Company announced it would receive $300 million in a deal arranged by the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund for 217,000 acres in 10 states around the Southeast.
The largest single tract, an unkempt 25,668-acre peninsula between the Pee Dee and Little Pee Dee Rivers in South Carolina, will ideally revert to the cypress and longleaf-pine forest that once covered these sandy flatlands. The company also said it had sold 69,000 acres of forestland in Wisconsin for $83 million to the Nature Conservancy.
The third and largest deal is intended to preserve up to 400,000 acres of land near Moosehead Lake in central Maine. Financial and other details are still being worked out between the Plum Creek Timber Company, the Nature Conservancy and two regional conservation groups.
But for all the good news, celebrated by all sides, a stubborn fact remains: The nearly one million acres that have been preserved in these deals over the past two years, including a 257,000-acre tract in the Adirondacks, represent barely 2 percent of timber company lands that are coming on the market in the East. "
