Saturday August 11th, 2007
Steve Shaler and Hemant Pendse
Bangor Daily News
Steve Shaler and Hemant Pendse
Bangor Daily News
It may seem like a surreal roadtrip to travel from a muddy logging operation deep in Maine’s woodlands to the floor of the U.S. Senate and back to a climate controlled laboratory in Orono, where wood is sheared into tiny nanofibers, eaten by experimental enzymes or cooked down into sugars that will re-emerge as new wood bioproducts. The logging site, Congress and the lab may offer the most creative partnerships for sustaining forest lands in Maine as well as forests throughout the world. For many generations of Maine residents and visitors, the woods, waters and wildlife of Maine’s forests are its defining cultural and economic heartland. Because new products made from wood fiber (bioproducts) have the potential to ensure Maine’s forest values for future generations, a partnership between Congress, the forest and the laboratory may prove essential...
