The Trump administration’s plan to close Bartlett Experimental Forest as part of a sweeping U.S. Forest Service consolidation has prompted some of New Hampshire’s most respected private landowners, foresters, and wildlife biologists to step forward with a single message. There is, they say, no substitute for the research Bartlett produces, and no way to recover what is lost if the site is shuttered. According to a Concord Monitor report republished by New Hampshire Public Radio and the Granite State News Collaborative, that argument is now landing inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has formally committed to reevaluate the closure decision.

The reevaluation does not save Bartlett. It only buys time. And that distinction is what is pushing tree farmers and timber operators in the White Mountains and across the state to put their own names on the record about why a research forest founded in 1931 is worth fighting for.

A Woodlot in Wilmot That Tells the Whole Story

The Concord Monitor’s reporting opens with Ann Davis, a New Hampshire tree farmer who in 2002 bought 380 acres between Wilmot and Springfield, then watched a 1998 ice storm’s damage continue to play out across her hardwood stands. With guidance from local foresters trained in the Bartlett research tradition, Davis carried out four timber harvests aimed at salvaging the storm-damaged beech, red maple, and birch while encouraging new growth.

The result, two decades later, is the kind of working forest that has become Davis’s professional calling card. “The spruce and the pine that were left after that, they they were maybe 10 or 15 feet tall, and now 20 years later, they are 40 feet tall,” she told the Concord Monitor. “[They’re] really starting to have timber value, but they’re also just beautiful to look at.” Davis and her husband have since expanded the farm, named Woods Without Gile, to 530 acres, and the operation was named New Hampshire’s Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year in 2022 and Northeast Regional Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year in 2024.

When the Forest Service announced last month that Bartlett was on its closure list, Davis was, in her own word, devastated. “Just about everybody in the state of New Hampshire, I would suggest, enjoys either the beauty or being in a forest at some time during the year, and for some people, it’s almost every day,” she said. “The research that they do about forest management and forest health and all the rest of those things may not be an immediate impact, but over time, the loss of that resource and that loss of that knowledge, you just never get it back.”

A 95-Year Research Record

Bartlett Experimental Forest was established in 1931 inside the White Mountain National Forest. According to the Forest Service material cited by the Concord Monitor, the site spent its first 50 years focused primarily on managing hardwood for timber using established silvicultural techniques. Over time, researchers used Bartlett’s long-term plots to push management science forward, particularly on tree quality development, regeneration methods, and thinning practices.

In the last two decades, the Bartlett research portfolio expanded to look at the dynamic between vegetation management and the habitat needs of amphibians, small mammals, and birds across their life cycles. That work has shaped how hardwood management, regeneration, and habitat planning are practiced not just in northern New England but across the country. Researchers from Bartlett have published, trained, and consulted on projects that touch federal lands, state forests, and private timberland in roughly every region with significant hardwood inventory.

Mariko Yamasaki, a wildlife biologist who joined the U.S. Forest Service in 1984 and worked extensively at both Bartlett and the Massabesic Experimental Forest, told the Concord Monitor that the value of that work is the way it bridges the gap between research and the people who actually manage land. Private landowners, state agencies, and commercial foresters all manage with different priorities, she said, and research is what gives them a shared vocabulary.

“If we as researchers can share the key pieces of how you can manipulate habitat and provide for the full range of terrestrial vertebrates that use forests in New England, hey, that’s pretty good,” Yamasaki said. She also told the Monitor that diversity-focused forest management, which mixes tree and plant species alongside effective cutting practices, produces both stronger timber and better wildlife habitat, two goals that legacy management traditions sometimes treated as in tension.

The Timber Industry’s Position

Jasen Stock, the executive director of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, told the Concord Monitor about a tour he had taken a few years earlier at Bartlett, which featured a side-by-side comparison between properly managed timber stands and a “high-graded” test plot. High grading, Stock said, is “cut the best and left the rest,” a practice that for decades was applied across northeastern hardwoods and produced exactly the kind of poor stand structure visible in the test plot.

That visual lesson, Stock said, is now the centerpiece of how the association talks to landowners about why they should hire a trained forester. “When we take a group out there and we say, ‘Why do you hire a forester? Why do you hire a land manager that understands forest management?’ You can take them out to that stand and say, ‘This is why,’” he told the Monitor, “because the decisions you make today are going to affect the long-term growth and productivity of this property 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.”

That argument is not new in New Hampshire forestry circles, but its delivery vehicle is. Without Bartlett’s demonstration plots, there is no neutral, federally maintained, century-long comparison that landowners can walk through. State forests do not have the multi-decade controlled experimental design. University-owned demonstration parcels carry fewer historical layers. And private working forests, by definition, do not run the kind of management contrast that the experimental forest exists specifically to maintain.

How USDA’s Reevaluation Decision Came About

The current chapter started in March, when the Forest Service announced it would move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah, consolidate regional offices, and close more than 50 of its 77 research and development sites nationwide. Bartlett landed on the closure list immediately. Hubbard Brook, the more famous of New Hampshire’s two experimental forests, was placed under “evaluation,” which industry insiders read as the same thing with a softer label.

That setup is what prompted bipartisan pushback from Governor Kelly Ayotte, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, and Representative Chris Pappas. On May 11, Ayotte announced that USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins had agreed to keep Hubbard Brook open and to reevaluate the planned closure of Bartlett. Ayotte and Shaheen also pressed for staffing support and infrastructure investments at Bartlett, including bunkhouse improvements, in their conversations with Rollins.

The Bartlett reevaluation is a partial win. It is not a guarantee. As covered in the companion piece on Hubbard Brook’s confirmed reprieve and Bartlett’s continuing limbo, the USDA has not committed to a binding timeline for the second look, and the broader nationwide consolidation push is still active. Without a clear funded commitment, Bartlett’s permanent staffing, its long-term data instruments, and its training capacity for the next generation of foresters all remain in question.

The Stakes for a State That Sells Forest Products

New Hampshire is the second-most forested state in the nation by percentage, with roughly 80 percent of the land area covered by woods and forest products contributing meaningfully to rural economies, especially in Coos, Carroll, Grafton, and Cheshire counties. The state’s forest products industry, including logging, sawmills, paper, and downstream manufacturing, supports thousands of jobs and depends on management practices that keep stands productive over multi-decade rotations. Bartlett’s research is one of the primary inputs into those management practices.

The Bartlett site also sits next door to the broader White Mountain National Forest policy fight over the Trump administration’s roadless rule rollback, which has put the future of access, harvesting, and habitat decisions across the entire White Mountains in flux. The closure question is not happening in isolation. It is happening at the same moment that timber operators, conservation groups, and federal officials are renegotiating the terms of how the White Mountain National Forest gets managed for the next generation.

That convergence is part of why the testimony from Davis, Yamasaki, and Stock matters. They are not advocates pushing an abstract policy preference. They are practitioners describing why a federal research investment, built up over nearly a century, cannot be replaced by a press release from a regional office in Utah. As Davis told the Concord Monitor, the loss of accumulated forest knowledge is the kind of loss “you just never get it back.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Bartlett Experimental Forest?

Bartlett Experimental Forest is a U.S. Forest Service research site established in 1931, located inside the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. It maintains long-term experimental plots used to study hardwood management, regeneration, silviculture, and habitat for wildlife including amphibians, small mammals, and birds. Bartlett has shaped forest management practices across the United States for decades.

Is Bartlett closing?

Bartlett was placed on the U.S. Forest Service's closure list as part of a March 2026 reorganization. After bipartisan pressure from New Hampshire officials, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins agreed to reevaluate the closure decision in May. The site has not been permanently saved, and no specific timeline has been announced for the reevaluation.

Who is advocating for keeping Bartlett open?

A broad coalition has spoken out, including tree farmer Ann Davis of Woods Without Gile, retired Forest Service wildlife biologist Mariko Yamasaki, and Jasen Stock of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association. Governor Kelly Ayotte, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, and Representative Chris Pappas have led the political push from the state's congressional delegation.

How does Bartlett's research reach private landowners?

Bartlett's research informs the silvicultural techniques used by local foresters, who in turn advise private landowners across New Hampshire and the broader region. Examples cited by the Concord Monitor include shelterwood harvesting and patch cuts used at Woods Without Gile to improve wildlife habitat and protect water sources, and the side-by-side high-graded test plots that the timber industry uses to teach landowners why professional management matters.

Why can't another site replace Bartlett?

Bartlett's value lies in nearly a century of continuous, controlled experimental plots with multi-decade comparative data. That kind of dataset cannot be reconstructed elsewhere because the time depth is not transferable, and the historical management contrasts on the site are unique. As advocates told the Concord Monitor, once that institutional record is interrupted, the accumulated knowledge cannot be recovered.

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