America's Next Great National Park by Jym St. Pierre, Maine Director of RESTORE: The North Woods Photo by Jym St. Pierre Shhhhhh. I want to tell you a secret. Ready? The eastern United States is a vast megalopolis surrounded by endless suburbs, right? Even the rural areas are nothing but towns, woodlots and farmlands tamed by centuries of development, right? There are no big wildlands left here, right? Wrong! Imagine a place with hundreds of remote lakes and thousands of miles of rivers and streams. Imagine a place which encompasses the most rugged stretches of the most famous hiking route in America, the Appalachian Trail. Imagine a place with more wild trout ponds and more majestic moose per square mile than any other spot in the United States. Imagine a place harboring the last elusive lynx in the eastern U.S. Imagine a place where native people have lived for more than a hundred centuries, but which has no cities or towns even today. Imagine a place so alluringly big and wild that it attracted Henry David Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt, Justice William O. Douglas and untold numbers of less well known wilderness adventurers. Is this place for real? Yes. Is it one of our great national parks? Sadly, no. Not yet, but it could be. The place is the Maine Woods, the largest surviving part of the great North Woods that once stretched unbroken from the Maritimes to Minnesota-the grandest remaining wilderness east of the Mississippi. For many generations, the Maine Woods was owned by those who knew and cared about Maine. However, as the global economy has grown, most of the land has been sold to timber and investment corporations which are driven more by short-term profit than by local concerns or long-term forest health. In one short generation, an area larger than the state of Delaware has been clearcut, tens of thousands of miles of private logging roads have been built, and millions of acres have been sprayed with toxic pesticides. Meanwhile, pressures continue to mount for more and more subdivisions and developments especially along remote, unspoiled lakeshores. Yet, the crisis in the Maine Woods also offers an historic opportunity. Expansive tracts of land have been changing ownership. Nearly four million acres have been sold just since last October. For $250 an acre or less, the heart of these wildlands, 3.2 million acres, could be purchased and preserved as a new Maine Woods National Park and Preserve. Protecting the wilderness character of this region would be one of the most rewarding and affordable investments the people of America could make. A keen observer once said that national parks represent the best idea America ever had. Maine Woods National Park would be the largest national park in the East, the second largest (after Death Valley) in the Lower Forty-Eight. It would be a chance to restore lands that have endured years of overcutting. We could preserve wildlife habitat, ensure public access for recreation and protect water quality in the headwaters of six legendary rivers. And, we could nurture a healthier, more diverse economy throughout Maine by helping communities supplement the struggling timber and paper industry. Establishing a Maine Woods National Park would safeguard a national treasure where the haunting yodel of loons echoes through the warm, blue summer air. It would give us an opportunity to restore to the legendary forests of Maine, the song of the wolf, the splash of the Atlantic salmon, and the magic of caribou gliding through wild woods like massive, mysterious shadows. It would be a magnificent people's park for the Twenty-first Century and a fitting millennial memorial for future generations of all species. I hope you keep this our little secret. But it's OK if you tell everyone you know.