Cumberland Plateau

In October, 2007, The Lyme Forest Fund (“LFF”) closed on 125,310 acres of timber interests on the Cumberland Plateau in northeastern Tennessee. The properties are part of a landscape scale mosaic of private working forests and public land including the Frozen Head State Park and the Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area and are located in Scott, Campbell, Anderson and Morgan Counties.

The timber is Appalachian hardwood with oak species (chestnut, white, red, scarlet, and black) representing approximately 45% of the sawtimber volume. Yellow poplar represents another 25% with sugar and red maple each making up another 5%. Other species of interest include hickory, black cherry, white ash, and beech.

This deal is part of a larger public-private partnership involving LFF, another timberland investor, the State of Tennessee and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). State funding came from an $82 million bond initiative for land protection proposed by Governor Phil Bredesen and passed by the Tennessee legislature.

Public interest in these forests is driven by their conservation and recreational value. The area’s forests provide important watershed protection for numerous downstream communities and are popular outdoor recreation destinations. Scientists have ranked the Cumberland Plateau as a globally significant area for its diversity of plant and animal species. The area harbors rare species of bats, salamanders, fish and plants. The landscape scale of the project is also critical for wide ranging species. Migratory songbirds are dependant on these forests, and bear and re-introduced elk are also found there. Habitat for the Cerulean warbler, a threatened species, was critical in identifying key forest tracts for conservation.

The timber interests purchased by LFF fall into three categories with a separate subsidiary entity established to own each:

1. The Lyme Tennessee Forest Company, LLC owns 24,606 acres of unencumbered fee simple land. This land was a lower conservation priority and did not attract conservation funding.

2. The Lyme Brimstone Forest Company, LLC owns 23,216 acres of lands encumbered by a working forest conservation easement held by the State of Tennessee. The easement prohibits any development, requires Lyme to be third-party certified to the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) Appalachian Forest Standards, transfers all hunting and recreation rights to the state, creates a 5,000 acre “forest management exclusion zone” within the easement area, and limits future sub-division to no more than five components.

3. The Lyme Cumberland Forest Company, LLC owns 10 years of timber harvesting rights on 77,488 acres. This ownership is in the form of a Lease from the State of Tennessee which retained the perpetual timber rights and the surface estate. As with the easement encumbered property, the Lease requires the lands to be FSC certified and creates a 5,000 acre forest management exclusion zone in which timber harvesting is prohibited.