Plum Creek Timber (NYSE: PCL) is the largest private landowner in the United States. Most of its lands were originally purchased as timberland.
Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Plum Creek was spun off from Burlington Resources as a master limited partnership on June 8, 1989. It converted to a real estate investment trust on July 1, 1999.
Burlington Resources was itself created from the Burlington Northern railroad's natural-resources holdings in 1988; Plum Creek Timber is therefore heir to the timberland granted by the federal government to the Northern Pacific Railway in the 1860s. Today Plum Creek Timber owns and manages timber lands in the United States. The company engages in the sale and management of timberlands, and the sale of nonstrategic timberlands. It also produces a line of softwood lumber products, including common and select boards, studs, edge-glued boards, and finger-jointed studs. These products are targeted to domestic lumber retailers, such as retail home centers, for use in repair and remodeling projects. These products are also sold to stocking distributors for use in home construction. In addition, the company engages in the natural resource businesses that focus on opportunities relating to mineral extraction, natural gas production, and communication and transportation rights of way. As of December 31, 2004, the company owned and managed approximately 7.8 million acres (32,000 km²) of timberlands in the northwest, southern, and northeast United States, as well as owned and operated 10 wood product conversion facilities in the northwest United States.
There is some controversy over the management of Plum Creek's timberland, mostly from environmental groups who decry the recent move from Plum Creek as a timber management company into a developer of its land, taking advantage of the much more profitable land values that have occurred for undeveloped land in the late 1990's to the present. Plum Creek is engaged in a proposal for a large resort and development tract in the Northern Maine Woods, on Moosehead Lake by Greenville, Maine, one of the largest undeveloped forests east of the Mississippi. This follows on the heels of their development of managed land in Washington state and Montana into high class resorts, bringing golf courses and luxury housing into the deep forests. The debate pits conservationist groups trying to balance recreation and protection, and the effects of sprawl and over-development upon wildlife, quality of life, and the employment of local populations who depend in part on the hunting, fishing and tourist trades which may be damaged by the over-development of the area.