New Hampshire is about to slam the door on a quiet but consequential argument over what its publicly owned forests are for. House Bill 1205, which prohibits state- and county-owned lands from being enrolled in carbon sequestration projects, has cleared both chambers and is heading to Gov. Kelly Ayotte for signature. As the New Hampshire Bulletin reported on the bill’s progress, the measure resolves a debate that began as an obscure question about timber economics and ended as a clear statement about how Granite Staters expect public land to be used.
The vote was lopsided in committee, narrow on the Senate floor, and ultimately not particularly close in either chamber. The deeper story, though, is about what New Hampshire is choosing not to do, and the answer is: tie up its public forests in 30-, 50-, or even 100-year contracts that would constrain how those lands can be managed for generations.
What HB 1205 Does
HB 1205 prohibits state government and county governments from enrolling any state- or county-owned land in a carbon sequestration program. The prohibition is categorical. There is no exception for short-duration contracts, no carve-out for projects that allow continued timber harvesting, and no opt-in mechanism that would let an individual county decide for itself.
The bill was introduced on behalf of prime sponsor Rep. Arnold Davis, R-Milan, and shepherded through committee by Rep. Mike Ouellet, R-Colebrook. The House Committee on Municipal and County Government voted 13-1 to recommend passage in January, with Rep. Julie Gilman, D-Exeter, casting the lone dissenting vote in favor of an enabling-statute alternative that would have let counties opt in to a prohibition on their own. The bill went on the consent calendar and moved through the chamber without floor controversy. The Senate amended the bill modestly and the House concurred.
The result is a flat statutory ban. As of the day Ayotte signs the bill, no state agency and no New Hampshire county can sign a carbon sequestration contract on land it owns.
What Is Being Banned
Forest carbon sequestration is the process by which trees pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and convert it into wood, leaves, and root mass, locking the carbon away in plant tissue and forest soils. Healthy, growing forests do this naturally. Some of the captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere when trees are logged, when they decompose, or when they burn.
Forest carbon credits monetize that natural process. A landowner agrees to manage a parcel of forest in a way that increases or preserves the amount of carbon stored there over a defined contract term. A buyer, often a corporation seeking to offset its own emissions, pays for the resulting credits. The contracts vary widely in what they require. Some allow continued selective timber harvesting, others impose hands-off management that defers logging in favor of mature and old-growth tree retention.
The contract terms also vary widely in length, anywhere from a couple of decades to a full century, according to Steven Roberge, the forest resources state specialist with the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension.
Why Lawmakers Said No
The case against allowing state and county lands into these contracts came down to two arguments. The first was about time horizons. Forest carbon contracts run long, often longer than the working career of any individual public official, and certainly longer than any single legislative biennium. A 100-year contract entered into in 2026 would still be binding on New Hampshire in 2126. That kind of generational commitment, bill supporters argued, is incompatible with how state and county forests have historically been managed.
“It’s very clear how New Hampshire wants to use its forests, its land, that it’s used for the public enjoyment and not strangled by somehow entering into 100-year contracts,” Executive Councilor Joseph Kenney, who represents the state’s northern district, said at the January committee hearing.
The second argument was about the original public bargain. Counties and the state acquired their forestlands with public money for purposes the public broadly understands: timber harvest where appropriate, recreation, water supply protection, wildlife habitat, and conservation. Carbon sequestration, supporters of HB 1205 said, was not on that list when those lands were acquired.
“We bought that land, as taxpayers, with certain expectations of what it was going to be used for,” Ouellet said at the hearing. “Tying it up feels like a break in trust.”
Rep. Alvin See, R-Loudon, also spoke in favor of the bill and pushed for an amendment to add cities and towns to the list of entities barred from enrolling lands. He wanted, he said, to remove any ambiguity about whether the prohibition applied to all public land in the state. The Senate kept the bill focused on state and county lands rather than expanding it to municipalities.
The Other Side: Revenue, Flexibility, And A Working Forest Argument
The bill was not unopposed. The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the state’s most prominent voice on forest policy, came out against a blanket prohibition. Matt Lahey, the Forest Society’s public policy director, told the committee that carbon sequestration contracts could bring meaningful revenue to forest landowners, including counties and the state, and that an absolute ban foreclosed an option that some public landowners might rationally want.
“We take that position acknowledging that there are a whole bunch of questions about these forest carbon markets,” Lahey said, “but we also believe, the forest society believes, that these types of programs could be one option for a forest landowner to generate some more revenue.”
Roberge, the UNH Extension specialist, made a related point in a phone interview. The carbon credit market is not monolithic. Some programs require strict, hands-off management that effectively converts a working forest into a no-cut reserve. Others allow significant continued activity, including selective timber harvesting, while still generating verified credits. A blanket prohibition, Roberge noted, treats those very different contract structures the same way.
He also pushed back on the assumption that managing a forest for carbon means ignoring everything else. “I think about forest carbon as a bank account,” Roberge said. “Sequestration is the interest rate and storage is the balance. The higher the interest rate, the more your balance grows. Old growth forests are definitely beneficial to have, but so are very young forests. That diversity is very important. We need all those things on the landscape.”
In the end, that argument did not move the votes. The committee saw the carbon market questions as a reason for caution about long-duration commitments on public land, not a reason to allow them under conditions.
What Was Already On The Books
HB 1205 lands on top of an existing legal framework that has been built up over the past two sessions. A separate bill, HB 123, was signed by the governor in 2025. That law established a moratorium on new carbon sequestration contracts on both public and privately owned land of more than 500 acres, with the moratorium running until November 2027. HB 123 also created a study commission to look at the tax implications of carbon contracts, the impact on forest management, and the consequences for the timber industry. The commission is required to report back by November 1, 2027.
HB 1205 is therefore an early answer to one of the questions the commission was tasked to study. Rather than wait for the commission to opine on whether public lands belong in the carbon market, the legislature has decided in advance: they do not.
The state already maintains a registry of properties enrolled in carbon credit programs through the Division of Natural and Cultural Resources. As of the most recent registry update, no county- or state-owned land was listed. In other words, the bill bars something that is not currently happening but that some carbon-credit firms had been pitching to public-land managers.
How This Fits New Hampshire’s Broader Forest Politics
The carbon ban is the latest example of New Hampshire lawmakers asserting state-level control over how forest land is managed. The decision sits alongside other recent moves on public lands and resource policy, including the federal rollback of the Roadless Rule on the White Mountain National Forest and a series of state debates over drought and wildfire risk in mismanaged forests. The throughline is a state political culture that defaults toward keeping management decisions local and short-term rather than ceding them to long-duration contracts with parties whose incentives may not align with New Hampshire’s.
That posture is not without trade-offs. Carbon contracts are one of the few mechanisms available to forest landowners, public or private, to get paid for keeping a forest as a forest rather than converting it to development. By taking that tool off the table for public lands, New Hampshire is making a bet that traditional uses, primarily timber and recreation, will remain economically and politically sufficient to keep its public forests intact.
For now, the timber industry, county delegations in the North Country, and the forest products advocacy community have aligned around that bet. The Forest Society and the academic forestry community have not, but they did not have the votes.
What Happens After Ayotte Signs
Once HB 1205 is signed, the immediate practical impact is small because no public land is currently enrolled in a carbon contract. The medium-term impact is what matters. Carbon-credit firms that had been quietly approaching the state and counties about pilot projects on public timberland will need to redirect their attention to private landowners. The Forest Society and others have signaled they are interested in working with private landowners on responsible carbon contracts, and the existing 500-acre threshold under the HB 123 moratorium will continue to apply to private parcels above that size.
The HB 123 study commission report, due in November 2027, will still come. It will, however, land on a different policy landscape. With public lands already statutorily off the table, the commission’s recommendations will be limited to private-land carbon policy and the tax treatment of carbon-related forest practices. That narrows the practical scope of the conversation considerably.
The longer-term question is how New Hampshire continues to fund the management of its public forests, particularly in the North Country, where timber revenue has historically been a meaningful piece of the picture but has fluctuated with global commodity markets. By foreclosing carbon revenue as an option, the state has implicitly committed to either holding the line on traditional management revenue or finding the management money through general appropriations. That fight, on a much smaller scale, is one that the legislature has been having for decades.
What To Watch
Three things are worth tracking in the months ahead. First, whether Ayotte signs HB 1205 quickly or sits on it. The governor has not telegraphed a position, but the bill’s clean bipartisan path to her desk and the absence of significant industry opposition suggest a signature is the most likely outcome. Second, whether any private New Hampshire forest landowners enter the carbon market in the months between now and the November 2027 sunset of the moratorium on parcels above 500 acres. Third, what the HB 123 study commission produces in its November 2027 report, and how the legislature responds to it in the 2028 session.
For now, the public-lands chapter of New Hampshire’s carbon sequestration debate is closed. The private-lands chapter is just getting started.
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For related coverage, see our reporting on Court Sides With State in Logan Clegg Case.
