Great Oaks Wilderness Sanctuary Protects Approximately 553 acres of Mature Forest in Parsonsfield, Maine, as Forever-Wild
Editor’s Note: This article has been adapted from the Northeast Wilderness Trust website.
In January 2024, Northeast Wilderness Trust announced the creation of the Great Oaks Wilderness Sanctuary. As Maine’s newest forever-wild landscape, Great Oaks Wilderness Sanctuary is free to become a future old-growth forest, providing countless gifts for our relatives — wild and human alike — for generations to come. This exemplary Northern Hardwood Forest, with prominent stands of red oak and eastern hemlock, reaches from the summit of Dearborn Mountain down to the shoreline of West Pond.
Map courtesy of Northeast Wilderness Trust
Three generations of the Lougee family have largely left the land to its own devices, resulting in a forest that is one of the oldest in southeastern Maine. In the mid-1900s, Arthur and Laura Lougee acquired this land, which past generations of their family had cared for. They passed along their deep respect and admiration for the forest to their children and grandchildren.
Laura and Arthur, both avid watercolor painters, captured the beauty of the land and its views in hundreds of paintings. Laura sculpted the plants and animals around her and even incorporated Nature as a medium, making spider web and mushroom spore prints. Their son Jim came to know every contour of this land, studying geology, botany, and entomology in his spare time to better understand its natural history. Jim once invited staff of the Maine Natural Areas Program to Dearborn Mountain and showed them a cove of exceptional old trees — beech, sugar maple, basswood, white ash, and hemlock — many over a century old and more than 100 feet tall.
Today, the only cutting in these woodlands has been for firewood. This approach led to the development of older forests with considerable structure, complexity, integrity, and beauty.
“It’s a really special place, in part because my brother Jim insisted that it not be logged in any way. He’d say, if a tree falls, let it lay down to rest and rot — that’s the way nature works.”
Photo © Jerry Monkman/Ecophotography
About Northeast Wilderness Trust: Northeast Wilderness Trust conserves forever-wild landscapes for Nature and people, and it envisions a landscape of connected, resilient wildlands shared by a human culture that recognizes the benefits of wild places. It accomplishes this work by acquiring and stewarding land as forever-wild, and by holding forever-wild conservation easements on properties owned by other organizations or individuals. Northeast Wilderness Trust also champions wilderness in the public sphere. Across New England and New York, the Wilderness Trust secures wild places where Nature can thrive, wildlife can wander, and people can find beauty and quiet. Since its founding in 2002, Northeast Wilderness Trust has protected 82,071 forever-wild acres. Learn more at www.newildernesstrust.org.