AMHERST – Lumber company W.D. Cowls is completing its sale of 5,000 acres – about a third of its forested land – in a wilderness conservation plan worth $30 million or more.
“It just didn’t make sense to keep as much as we had,” said Cinda Jones, president of W. D. Cowls and developer of The Mill District in North Amherst. “It’s a sad day. But I could have just as easily picked development.”
The buyer is a New Hampshire for-profit investment management organization, Lyme Timber Co., working with conservation nonprofits Kestrel Land Trust and The Trustees of Reservations.
Kestrel said it plans a public celebration in October, after the conclusion of the transactions.
This year, Cowls is selling 19 parcels in 10 towns totaling 2,864 acres. Neither buyers nor sellers world say how much the properties are selling for, but as of this week, registries of deeds in Hampshire and Franklin counties had recorded 15 transactions totaling $10.7 million.
The properties include local peaks and the headwaters of the North Branch of the Manhan River in Westhampton, where town officials have been working on the conservation deal for months.
Last winter, Cowls sold Lyme 2,396 acres, including two of the largest unprotected contiguous forested tracts in Massachusetts in a deal worth $20 million, according to deeds on file. The deals also involved Kestrel and The Trustees of Reservations.
Even after both sets of transactions, Cowls – a ninth-generation company founded in 1741 – will likely remain the state’s largest private landowner, Jones said this week. The second-biggest landowner is selling off real estate as well, Jones said.
The opportunity to make money from the vast landholdings just isn’t there in 2025, she said. Cowls has a home center in North Amherst.
Jones and her brother, Evan, closed the business’ sawmill in 2010, but continued operating Cowls Building Supply.
Jones had deals in place with solar power developers, but ran into local opposition, tightening regulation and diminishing subsidies.
“We decided to convert a third of the timber assets into real estate that makes money,” she said.
That would include commercial space and housing.
Generations of land buys
Jones’ ancestors acquired the woodlands slowly, much of it in the late 19th century as farmers abandoned unproductive acreage and joined the Industrial Revolution.
One 300-acre tract near Catamount Mountain in Colrain is pockmarked with cellar holes from long-vanished farmsteads.
Jones said her grandfather bought even more land when farmers faced hard times in the Depression.
“They had a mill to feed,” said Peter Stein, managing director of the Lyme Timber Co. “This was their wood basket. The world changed.”
Land sales by timber companies is a national trend. Lyme, founded in 1976, has a portfolio of 1.3 million acres of working forests in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Michigan, Wisconsin and in Quebec, Canada.
Lyme makes money by harvesting timber, selling development rights to conservation organizations and state forests, as funds become available from such groups, and by collecting carbon offsets that utilities purchase.
In 2001 and 2002, Lyme acquired 2,300 acres in Otis, in Berkshire County, that could have been subdivided for development. Instead, it’s now state forest, Stein said.
The Cowls land is intriguing, he said.
“Every parcel we have acquired adjoins existing conservation land,” Stein said.
Kestrel, The Trustees of Reservations, the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust and the state can do a great job conserving property with what they control, he said. But if land is subdivided and some of it is built up, wildlife can’t move and some benefits of preservation are lost.
“There will be water quality benefits, recreational access,” Stein said. “I would argue this is part of what people are calling nature-based climate solutions.”
The properties all provide important wildlife habitat as well, Stein said.
“I think everybody will be happy,” he said of the transactions.
LAND DEAL AT A GLANCE
W.D. Cowls timber lands changing hands in 2025 encompass 2,864 acres made up of 19 parcels in 10 towns in Franklin and Hampshire counties.
Notable environmental features on the properties include:
COLDWATER FISHERIES:
6,000 feet of the North Branch of the Manhan River
3,000 feet of Rice Brook
3,000 feet of Foundry Brook
1,550 feet of Tucker Brook
The properties also include the headwaters of Johnny Brook, Bean Brook, Roaring Brook, Nye Brook, Beaver Brook and “vast” wetlands complexes.
HIGH-ELEVATION SITES:
Breakneck Hill (elevation 1,331 feet)
Cub Hill (elevation 1,380 feet)
Catamount Mountain (elevation 1,400 feet)
The acquisition by the Lyme Timber Co., in association with the Kestrel Land Trust and the Trustees of Reservations, follows the purchase in 2024 of 2,396 acres in Amherst, Belchertown and Pelham (in Hampshire County) and Gill and New Salem (in Franklin County).
Stories by Jim Kinney
Read the original article on MassLive.
Comments