With rare exception, trees don't get cut down in Edgecomb's Schmid Preserve.

Access routes for emergency vehicles are kept tree-free and, several years ago, cutting was done on about one acre for a woodcock habitat, Schmid Preserve Advisory Committee Chairman Robert Leone said.

Now, Edgecomb officials are looking at possibly trying to have some selective cutting done. But they may have to get past an old court order to do it.

The October 1998 order banned commercial harvesting at the town-owned preserve, Leone said.

On December 2, the committee, selectmen and the town's capital improvements committee discussed the order, which stemmed from a lawsuit. The suit challenged harvesting that was being done to fund a survey of the preserve property, Leone said.

Selectmen planned to check with the town's attorney to see if there could be some basis to seek a change, a decade and a half after the order. Any money from harvesting might go toward the preserve's needs.

Edgecomb Fire Chief Roy Potter would like to see some cutting done, to reduce the fire risk at the preserve.

“In a forest, you should do selective cutting,” Potter said in an interview December 8. “If you just let it go, the dust layer gets thicker and thicker.”

Potter also would like the access roads in the approximately 730-acre preserve to be in better shape. “Right now, we'd be hard-pressed to get our fire equipment through there,” he said.

Leone said he wouldn't mind the roads being worked on, as long as that doesn't lead to non-emergency use. The preserve doesn't allow motorized, wheeled vehicles.

“To us, they're trails, not roads,” Leone said December 9.

The panel Leone chairs is an advisory panel to the selectmen, who serve as the preserve's trustees.

The recent meeting with selectmen and the capital improvements committee centered mainly on a possible redoing of the preserve's management plan, Leone said. The current plan dates back about 13 years, when the preserve had about 100 fewer acres than it does now, he said.

Potter, who was at the December 2 meeting, said he found the discussion encouraging. “Very much so,” he said.