Many hikers recoiled with horror nearly five years ago when logging crews cut down 65 acres of trees at Stonington’s Hoffman Evergreen Preserve, making it look as if a hurricane had ripped through sections of the forest.

“People were so angry at us,” Beth Sullivan recalled the other day, adding “It was especially hard for me, as a tree-hugging nature lover.”

Beth heads the Stonington town committee of the Avalonia Land Conservancy, which owns and manages the 198-acre preserve. In 2019, her group recommended extensive but selective tree-clearing as a means of promoting new growth and greater natural diversity. For months, whining chainsaws and rumbling skidders often drowned out chirping birds and rustling leaves.

Thanks to Mother Nature – and aided by the planting of about a thousand new seedlings representing some two dozen different species – the restoration program appears to be working. A variety of birds and mammals still call the preserve home; new trees are growing, and once-imperiled hemlocks are thriving, along with the white pines and spruces that the late Robert D. Hoffman revered.

After earning a degree in mining from Harvard, Hoffman prospected for gold in the 1920s, roaming Ontario and Quebec on snowshoes and in a canoe. Hoffman eventually hit paydirt, founded three international mining companies, and then moved back to the United States, where he and his wife, Chippe, divided their time between homes on New York’s Central Park West and in Stonington.

Hoffman then set out to recreate his beloved Canadian forest, planting 100,000 evergreens on his estate, bounded by Lantern Hill Road, Wolf Neck Road and Route 201.

After Hoffman’s death in 1975, the property was bequeathed to the Mashantucket Land Trust, later renamed Avalonia Land Conservancy. Today, the preserve is a popular hiking and birding destination that features more than four miles of well-marked trails, open to the public.

Friends and I spent a couple hours there last week, following footpaths that weave through glorious evergreen and hardwood stands, as well as past remnants of the logging operation. No question: It will take years – more likely, decades – for all the scars to heal, but Hoffman remains a richly rewarding preserve.

Members of our group, which included Maggie Jones, Phil Plouffe, Bob Graham and Laura Ely, also poked into a stone chamber that appears similar to structures found at the state-owned Gungywamp archaeological site in Groton, and many other locations throughout the region. Various theories have emerged about their provenance – some claim that colonists used them as root cellars; others say Native Americans built them for ceremonial purposes; still others speculate that ancient explorers arranged the chambers to align with the solstices. Whatever their origin, the igloo-like enclosures are distinctively intriguing.

Laura lives near the preserve, and hikes, runs and cross-country skis there when conditions permit. She initially wasn’t happy with the logging.

“It was a magical place before the trees were cut down,” Laura said. She paused to view the expanse of woodland, crisscrossed by stone walls and fast-flowing streams. “It’s still magical,” she said.

I, too, was skeptical when I heard about the project in 2018. In November that year, a few months before logging began, I hiked Hoffman’s trails with Jim Friedlander, a member of Beth’s committee, and forester Chris Casadei of Hull Forest Products. His company was contracted to remove some 214,000 board feet of sawlogs and 250 cords of firewood.

Jim and Chris pointed out how the preserve’s oppressively dense canopy had taken a toll. Crowded trees were dying, and there was little understory. They made sense: The forest needed to be thinned.

Still, after I revisited Hoffman the next year, it was a shock to see heaps of logs scattered like giant pickup sticks, and some paths swallowed by muddy swaths cleared to provide access to skidders and other heavy equipment.

But not long after the canopy was thinned, such native shrubs as blueberry and huckleberry gradually began to fill in naturally. Black birch trees also proliferated explosively – “They were the most opportunistic,” Beth said.

After considerable research and deliberation, Avalonia decided to plant some tree species that more commonly grow farther south, including Virginia pine and longleaf pine, recognizing that the climate is warming here, and everywhere.

“We’ve had amazing successes with some trees, but others, well …” Beth said.

She noted that loblolly pines initially grew rapidly, but recently, “the deer have found them.” The damage was caused not so much from deer munching on the new trees – which now measure up to 10 feet tall – but from rubbing against the bark.

Managing the forest so it remains healthy for plants and animals, as well as attractive for hikers and birdwatchers, is tricky business. She encouraged hikers to visit Hoffman in spring, when new growth is most visible among shadbush, viburnums, tulip poplars, tupelo and sweet gum.

When we talked the other day, Beth repeated the advice that she gave in 2019: “You have to be patient.”

Information: avalonia.org/preserves/#stonington