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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday August 30 2016, @10:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the happy-birthday-NPS dept.

The US National Park Service (NPS) has opened a new park in the vast central interior of Maine. Last Wednesday President Obama designated the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument on 87,000 acres of land (by comparison, Acadia National Park, located on an island off the coast of Maine, is 49,000 acres). The park land consists of what appears to be three discontiguous pieces, the largest of which borders Baxter State Park (home of Mt. Katahdin, the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail) on its western side, and the upper reaches of the Penobscot River on the eastern side.

The park is already open to the public.

The land was donated to the US government by Roxanne Quimby, co-founder of Burt's Bees personal care products company. Quimby, a conservationist, spent decades using the proceeds from her business fortune to buy up Maine forest land; her work was controversial because she placed them off limits to loggers, snowmobilers and hunters. Quimby sold her stake in Burt's Bees to Clorox in 2007.

The new park is controversial in central Maine as well. It is a monument rather than a national park, chiefly because creating a National Park requires an act of Congress, while a national monument can be created by executive order. Obama noted, however, that Acadia National Park was originally established as a national monument as well (in 1916; it became a national park three years later).

There was, and remains, substantial local opposition to the bestowing of the land to the NPS, for a mixture of economic and emotional reasons; in particular, the land is now permanently unavailable for commercial logging, and perhaps for rights-of-way by loggers. Prices of nearby real estate may increase, making the economics more difficult for timber companies. Quimby, the donor, was controversial, as already mentioned, as was the unilateral action by Obama in designating the monument. Some fear the imposition of new air pollution controls on local paper mills. There is distrust of the NPS and fear of the emergence of a bureaucracy that will clash with local values.

But the initial harsh reaction seems to have scaled back a bit. Promises have been made to allow access to hunters, snowmobiles, and all terrain vehicles; logging access is probably another long discussion.


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  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by VLM on Tuesday August 30 2016, @11:45AM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 30 2016, @11:45AM (#395215)

    logging access is probably another long discussion

    The inevitable massive forest fire that will result is not going to understand boundaries on the map very well... The locals need to start building some kind of bare earth DMZ around the park a couple hundred feet wide like right now. Then by the time the unmaintained forest goes up in flames and kills every plant and animal in the park down to bare dirt, the DMZ will preserve the surrounding life and property.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Francis on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:27PM

    by Francis (5544) on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:27PM (#395327)

    Logging has little to do with wildfire prevention. I'm not sure where people get that idea, but it's laughably wrong. The logs that timber companies are interested in are fairly large and healthy and when they're gone, you get this new growth that's all more or less the same height that burns much more easily than the old growth did as the leaves are much closer to the ground and much closer to each other in terms of height.

    They log because there's profit in it for them, if they were serious about wildfire prevention, they'd be doing controlled burns. The crown fires are the ones that are a real pain to keep under control. And crown fires happen because we've prevented the natural fires from clearing out the brush that leads to crown fires.

    Apart from some sort of buffer area around town, there's no good reason to go logging the entirety of the forest to "prevent" forest fires as that's about profit and not about controlling wildfires.

    Unless you're planning on logging the area and then coming back routinely to make sure nothing grows there, you're still going to have to worry about wildfires.

  • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:16PM

    by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:16PM (#395350)

    You went back for seconds when the timber companies served the Kool-Aid didn't you?

    --
    "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:25PM (#395357)

      VLM's been hopelessly lost to the kool-aid ever since he started mentioning Moldbug.

      It's an interesting phenomenon, and I'm being a bit unfair by picking on VLM and Moldbug. The status quo has become progressive, so now it's hip and rebellious and edgy to embrace the wackiness that is the alt-right.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:22PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:22PM (#395383)

    Every forest burns every now and then (not very far if it's tropical). Animals run and fly away, and then come back when things grow back.
    It's our attempts to "maintain" the forest and "preserve the surrounding (...) property" which amplify the problem. Got natural forest? It's gonna burn unless you spend an unsustainable amount of money. Put that in your life or business plans, or go live elsewhere...

  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday August 30 2016, @11:29PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday August 30 2016, @11:29PM (#395494) Journal

    Yup. Loggers have been maintaining forests since the Devonian period.

  • (Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday August 31 2016, @03:11AM

    by dry (223) on Wednesday August 31 2016, @03:11AM (#395562) Journal

    They said "no logging" not "logging so lots of flammable slash is left waiting to burn"