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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.
(Score: 5, Informative) by schad on Tuesday August 30 2016, @12:08PM
I grew up in that exact area. Logging is what you do for work around there. Maybe you aren't out chopping down trees; maybe you're driving the trucks instead. Or maybe you work in the paper mill in some capacity. Or in the hospitals and grocery stores where the mill workers go. One way or another, your livelihood depends on the logging industry.
If you're not logging, you're hunting. There's a lot of poaching in Maine. We ignored it because the vast majority of the poachers were hunting for food rather than sport. Our neighbor was retired and got most of his food by hunting and fishing, year round. He didn't bother with a license because, to his mind, he had a perfect right to hunt to support himself, and he rejected the notion that he needed approval from some government bureaucrat.
In the winter, if you already had a couple freezers full of game, you'd go snowmobiling. Not much else to do in the winter. There may have been more snowmobiles than cars in that area. Although I resented it at the time, I'm glad my parents wouldn't let me ride a snowmobile. Every year, a couple kids in my class would come back from Christmas break with broken bones due to snowmobile accidents. And every year, a couple people (though rarely kids) would go missing. Found weeks later, miles downriver, having fallen through the thin ice in the center of the river while snowmobilng.
I'm not saying this is a good or bad decision. I'm just noting that "loggers, snowmobilers, and hunters" describes basically everyone who lives in that area. I literally did not know a single person whose family didn't meet at least one of those criteria. Other than my family, but we did have a reputation for being different.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:40PM
It's a trade.
My father grew up in a similar area (lived in a tent until he was old enough to require some 'scoolin, and his family moved back into town).
There was a mill that was pretty much all employment for the area, and of course the forest.
Went back about 50 years later and the entire area was clear-cut.
I've never seen my dad cry.
He cried then.
Over a long enough frame, the population exceeds what the land can provide, and there are some tough choices to be made regarding land use, population control, and the local economy.
While I'm deeply suspicious of conservation efforts, this scenario could have just as easily been about a public garden (try that in an urban area) and that tricky intersection between land, people, and government.
Anyhoo- it has given me a deeper appreciation of the arguments made by Georgist, and made we should really rethink this notion of land ownership.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:23PM
Logging is what you do for work around there.
Maybe you're doing a job that we shouldn't have around? Just like coal digging... that's another job we shouldn't have. If you keep holding on to doing things we'd rather not have done, well... then you shouldn't complain if we don't subsidize you to do it (and yes, coal -and pretty much any energy extraction- is heavily subsidized).
What I mean is: a job isn't a job. Some things just shouldn't be done as a job...
He didn't bother with a license because, to his mind, he had a perfect right to hunt to support himself, and he rejected the notion that he needed approval from some government bureaucrat.
In my mind, I have a perfect right to cross borders when and where I please & settle myself, incite violence, and not pay taxes. However, this whole "I do what I want" leads us to a dysfunctional society. We have rules for reasons. You won't like all of them, but you don't get to cherry pick which ones you obey.
I'm not trying to target /you/, I'm just making a counter argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:35PM
"this whole "I do what I want" leads us to a dysfunctional society"
BS authoritarian propaganda. the old "if it weren't for some leech pos we'd just kill each other" line. History begs to differ. Governments are almost always the source of violence even when it seems to be a fight between "crazy" individuals they were pitted against each other by some intrusion of government. Just like this immigration debate. Mexicans aren't the ones slowing down your kids education(for example), it's the government who threatens to take your house (that they have no legitimate claim over) to force you to pay taxes so they can give the money to "schools" so they can buy chromebooks and ipads for "illegal aliens"(people traveling freely. the audacity!). The mexicans are just following the system we allowed to be created. It's your fault (as a slave and illegal tax payer) and your precious government that steals and kills all over the world and divides people so that it can rule them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @08:32PM
So no more subsidizing of logging and coal digging then, eh...? I think we're in agreement?
(Score: 3, Touché) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday August 31 2016, @09:01AM
It is important to dissect all arguments to unmask propaganda. However, I cannot follow your arguments. Historically, going back 10.000 yrs, it was exactly like this: "we'd just kill each other". Given, it were local tribes killing each other, within the tribes there was a hierarchy controlling the violence. It was settlement, division of labor, and governance that tamed humanity. We still see eruptions of our old violent legacy every day, however (and arguably, I give you that) we see how societies progress, becoming more humane.
OTOH, looking at the US society, one can get doubts, no doubt. Still, I perceive your arguments as straw-men. They can be made for the US society but not for societies in general.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:31PM
We had similar issues to the AC out here on the West Coast with our fisheries becoming depleted and then we sucked it up. We cut the catch limits down significantly and bought boats. That was several decades ago, but in the mean time most of our fisheries are back and will be here for generations to come to enjoy and profit off of.
Not to mention the deer and various other wildlife that remain available for hunting because we go after poachers and limit the number of permits issued in order to balance the needs of the hunters with the animals.
(Score: 2) by Anne Nonymous on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:54PM
> Logging is what you do for work around there.
Now, with a bit of luck, logging or hospitality will be what you can do for work around there.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday August 30 2016, @09:44PM
They are not going to save the logging jobs. Logging jobs are disappearing and it has nothing to do with environmentalists. Mostly it is a result of automation. The logging camps employing a couple hundred workers in the early 1900's were replaced by a few guys with chainsaws, cranes and trucks. Those in turn are being replaced now by huge machines that grab a tree, strip its branches, crimp the tree off at the bottom and place it on a flatbed behind it. All in less time than humans could do it with any hand held tools. From roughly 100 years ago, that is a couple hundred jobs reduced to one. Even that one could go, should they develop robot drivers. Inside the timber mills you will find similar automation replacing people. Sure, there are maintenance and factory jobs involved, but none of them are going to the former loggers, plus I doubt they offset the loss of jobs for craftsmen supplying the former loggers with the tools of their trade.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday August 31 2016, @03:28AM
Used to be like that around here, minus the snowmobiles. Mills up and down the rivers, most everyone working in the bush or at a mill. Then they cut down most all the good timber, dismantled the mills and shipped them to China, became more mechanized and now there's one guy running the faller buncher, another guy running the logging truck and a foreign crew operating the ship that ships the logs to China. We're logging the national parks now as it takes a lot of acreage to employ a few loggers, the mills are almost all gone and the economy now revolves around selling real estate to Chinese billionaires. Today I heard the price of shelter has increased to 90% of pre-tax income for the average person (last year it was around 75%), even the well paying tech companies can't hire anyone as no-one can afford to live here, little well the restaurants and such and our Provincial government is saying re-elect us, look how good the economy is bubbling ctrl-w doing.