Edge habitat

[Bobat23rd at aol.com]

Dear Andrew,
I am in a land trust in Maine and we have recently purchased 270 acres. The 
land includes woods, river frontage, a marsh and a housesite. We are 
embroiled in a debate about what is best for the land. 2 of us are "forever 
wild" people but realize that the rest of the board are "People" people and 
want people to inhabit the land in a very limited way. We are going to have 
to compromise...but we feel very strongly about one issue. One of the board 
members is trying to get us to agree to cutting back to fields to the 
original maps of 1938 when the land was used as a dairy farm. Dairy is now 
obsolete in our area and we feel that this is  destroying habitat (it  has 
since started to come back to woods) Can you explain the upside and the 
downside of creating edge habitat? I need to know how to argue this point 
technically. Or where can I find this info.

Thanks'

Bob

T