The Lyme Timber Company

The Lyme Timber Company

The Lyme Timber Company was founded to invest in working forestland, primarily in the United States, with a focus on properties that carry conservation easements. Jim Hourdequin, who joined in 1995 and became President in 2005, has shaped the firm into a niche manager that targets timberland with development rights separated and sold to land trusts or public agencies. The underlying wealth is not publicly attributed to a single family — the firm operates more as a timberland investment manager with institutional and family office capital. The firm's strategy centers on acquiring large, productive forest properties and placing conservation easements on them, which reduces the purchase price while locking in sustainable forestry use. Asset classes include timberland real estate, conservation real estate, and carbon offsets. The firm has managed over $1 billion in total investments since inception (per the firm, 2023). Known portfolio holdings include the 130,000-acre Swift River property in Maine and the 42,000-acre Paul Smith's College VIC tract in New York. Geographic focus is the US, particularly New England, the Lake States, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southeast. The firm's team size is not publicly disclosed, but known senior professionals include Hourdequin, Managing Director Peter Stein, and CFO David LeVangie. The firm does not operate additional branded offices beyond its Hanover, NH headquarters. In 2022, The Lyme Timber Company closed its seventh timberland fund, Lyme Forest Fund VII, with capital commitments from institutional and family office investors (per the firm, 2022). It maintains no separately branded philanthropic entity. The firm's structural differentiator is its conservation easement model — it competes for timberland assets alongside traditional timberland REITs and funds but structures deals that capture both timber cash flows and conservation finance incentives. This gives it access to properties that traditional timberland investors cannot bid on, because the easement restricts future development, which lowers the land price and aligns with institutional ESG mandates.