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News & Updates
100 Miles of Wilderness
Protecting Wildlands Along the Appalachian Trail
By Murray Carpenter
The Moosehead Trail, a series
of two-lane roads stretching 88 miles north from Belfast, Maine, to Moosehead
Lake, is an old state effort to promote tourism in the Moosehead Lake
region. It passes apple orchards and a handful of dairy farms with their
fields of cutover feed corn.
Further north, it meanders through mill towns and former mill towns like
Corinna, Dexter and Guilford, all hard-hit by the decades-long exodus
of manufacturing jobs. Then, past the small town of Monson,it winds through
woodlands. There’s an approximate boundary here, between the farms
and mill townsof central Maine and the North Woods beyond.
Among the many signs of small
businesses along the way, a good number use the phrase Moosehead Trail.
None incorporate the longer, more exotic “Hundred-Mile Wilderness.”That
may be about to change.
The Hundred-Mile Wilderness is a vast
region of unpeopled woodlands that takes its name from a section of the
Appalachian Trail. Specifically, it’s the northernmost 100 miles
of trail from Monson to Katahdin. After crossing the
Moosehead Trail just north of Monson, it passes rugged
peaks, never-stocked trout lakes, and rushing streams, but not a single
paved road on its final push to its terminus at Katahdin. It’s got
an undisputed claim as the most remote section of the trail. This is where
Bill Bryson—whose bestselling A Walk in the Woods brought the Appalachian
Trail alive for thousands of armchair hikers—met his Waterloo.
Thing is, until recently
the Hundred-Mile Wilderness has been wilderness in name only. Aside from
a narrow ribbon of National Park Service land protecting the trail corridor
itself, the land in question is corporate woodland, owned by timber companies
and managed for timber
and pulp production. But in recent years, it’s become the site of
several significant conservation deals, which include land managed as
wilderness. And now it’s the focus of a conservation effort that’s
quickly gaining momentum, bolstered by the support of Maine Governor John
Baldacci and the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), a newcomer to conservation
acquisitions. You may not have heard much about the Hundred-Mile Wilderness,
but you will.
The recent flurry of activity was kicked off in late November,when
Governor Baldacci rolled out
his Maine Woods Legacy program at a press conference in Dover-Foxcroft,
a mill town on the southern border of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. Noting
that 5.5 million acres of Maine woodlands have changed hands over the
past six years, Baldacci expressed concern that the forest ownership
would become fragmented to the detriment of the logging industry, as well
as conservation and recreation. Further,
said Baldacci, the massive land sales have created uncertainty, not confidence,about
the region’s future.
The Maine Woods Legacy
is an effort to protect the woods while protecting jobs. This muchis not
new. Baldacci’s predecessor, Angus King, expressed the same concerns.
What is new is more talk about strengthening the connections between the
forest products, tourism and conservation
communities, including developing “gateway” communities to
the North Woods. Baldacci mentioned “backcountry wilderness recreation.”
And he highlighted the Hundred-Mile Wilderness, suggesting that an announcement
about it would soon be forthcoming.
Sure enough, in December
the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) announced its acquisition of a 37,000
acre tract of woodlands smack dab in the center of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.
The Katahdin Iron Works Project neatly surrounds Little Lyford Pond Camps,
the traditional
Maine sporting camp the AMC bought earlier this year. The acquisition
also includes, no surprise, many miles of the Appalachian Trail. The parcel
is traversed by 10 miles of the Appalachian Trail and another 15 miles
of the trail border the east side of the land. Further, it’s a rich
landscape—scenic,
full of high peaks, trout streams and lakes and, of course, plenty of
timber.
So part of the deal will
include timber management. AMC bought the land from International Paper
for $14.2 million, in a deal facilitated by the Trust for Public Land.
AMC is in the process of developing a management plan that will determine
which areas are best-suited for timber,
recreation, conservation or multiple-use. All timber operations will be
“green” certified by an independent third party. While the
extent of the partnership is hard to judge this soon, the State of Maine
will likely play a significant role in the Katahdin Iron Works deal, at
very least providing
some funding and holding easements to some of the land.
The Katahdin Iron Works
tract is a logical extension in a series of conservation lands that have
steadily marched down from Baxter State Park over the last few years.
First, in 1990, the state acquired the 40,000 acre Nahmakanta Unit of
Public Reserved Land, with over 11,000 acres managed as an ecological
reserve. Then, as part of its 200,000-acre Katahdin Forest Project, The
Nature Conservancy bought an ecologically rich 41,000 acre Debsconeag
Lakes parcel, with
eight lakes that are recreationally valuable. The unit bounds Baxter State
Park on the south. This unit is managed as an ecological reserve. These
two parcels surround the Appalachian Trail on its last 20-mile approach
to the park. (Between the southern boundary of the Nahmakanta Unit and
the Katahdin Iron Works tract is a large expanse of land owned by Plum
Creek Timberlands.)
While this degree of attention
to the Hundred-Mile Wilderness is somewhat new, there has been a consistent
interest in the area for decades. Ralph Knoll of Maine’s Bureau
of Parks and Lands says, “It’s been on the wish list for the
conservation community right from the get-go.” There are a few more
tracts of conservation land further south. Maine Audubon has the 1,600-acre
Borestone Mountain Audubon Sanctuary at the southern edge of the wilderness
(It was originally donated to the National Audubon Society in 1958. Maine
Audubon has managed it since 2000, when the Maine Audubon merged with
the national group.) And Maine Woods National Park proponent Roxanne Quimby
made some of her earliest conservation buys—three parcels totaling
nearly 3,000 acres—in the southwest corner of the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.
One is adjacent to Borestone, another is along Big Wilson Stream.
The Hundred-Mile Wilderness
is the southern boundary of the Maine Woods National Park proposal that
RESTORE: The North Woods has been advocating for a decade. But while the
new interest in the region has a conservation component, the AMC deal
is distinctly appealing to the
crowd that adamantly opposes the park proposal, including the outspoken
town managers of Greenville and Millinocket and the conservative director
of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. On the other end of the spectrum,
the deal is beingsupported by environmental groups, The Maine Chapter
of the Sierra Club, and, of course, AMC.
Karen Woodsum, who leads the Maine WoodsCampaign for the Maine
Chapter of the Sierra Club, says the group’s interest in the Hundred-Mile
Wilderness grew out of a series
of meetings with an advisory group. She first convened the group to consider
the feasibility of a Maine Woods National Park, and eventually broadened
its focus.
“For several
months, we got together and said, if we got our wish to protect any area,where
would that be?” The group hauled out the maps, and pored over them,
and the Hundred-Mile Wilderness sort of jumped out at them. “This
place already has this sort of legendary status,”says Woodsum. And
it has tremendous conservation attributes. “Especially for wildlife,
anytime you have an opportunity to protect corridors or contiguous areas,
that’s a good thing. And we’ve not had it in Maine.”
Other factors brought the area to the top of the list. Demand for remote
recreation, now really only served by Baxter State Park, continues to
be huge. This suggested the idea of building out from Baxter, creating
a “bigger, better Baxter.”
The Sierra Club
met with Governor Baldacci a couple of years ago, while he was still a
congressman representing eastern Maine. Within a month of his inauguration
as governor, Baldacci established a Hundred-Mile Wilderness working group.
Of course, Governor Baldacci is primarily motivated by improving the horrid
economy of northern Maine. But he’s also been talking about wilderness
values, and this, many say, is new. “It was incredible for us to
hear
a sitting governor talking about wilderness,” says Woodsum.
The AMC project is a good example of how the Maine Woods Legacy
can play out, says Karin Tilberg, Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau of
Parks and Lands. “It has a lot of support regionally.” The
governor, she says, is particularly intrigued by big-name draws like the
Hundred-Mile Wilderness. “It has icon status, it has name recognition.”
It will also meet many components of the Maine Woods Legacy program, including
continued timber production, more “green” certified timberland,
recreation and landscape-scale conservation. In fact, the Hundred-Mile
Wilderness area is shaping up to be a proving ground for the Maine Woods
Legacy.
Back on the Moosehead
Trail, drivers have to be on the lookout of the Appalachian Trail crossing
north of Monson. Even then it’s easy to miss. But recent events
suggest that the Hundred-Mile Wilderness will soon be more than that long
stretch of woods you pass on the way to Moosehead Lake. It’s got
the support of the state and a wide variety of others. And a killer name.
Reprinted f rom The Northern Sky News
Back to Wild Forests News and Updates
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