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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:25PM (#395326)

    "National Monuments are great... we love them... Just don't put them in my back yard..."

    Selfish morons...!

  • (Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:36PM

    by Francis (5544) on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:36PM (#395336)

    I think that's rather screwed up. Around here folks are fighting to get our lands recognized so that they don't get destroyed by the oil and timber industries.

    And unfortunately, if Clinton is elected, she's pretty much going to rape the land wherever possible for oil companies. It astonishes me that she still has credibility even after she chose Ken Salazar as the head of her transition team. Even after BP's oil spill in the Gulf he was still letting BP have all sorts of access to land for drilling.