Questions & Answers for Hunters, Anglers, Snowmobilers and Camp Owners

What is the proposed Maine Woods National Park & Preserve? How would it be established?
The Maine Woods National Park & Preserve (MWNP) is a proposed 3.2-million-acre national park and national preserve which would surround Baxter State Park, most of Moosehead Lake and portions of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in northern Maine. The first step in establishing such a park/preserve would be a comprehensive feasibility study to evaluate all the benefits and costs of the concept. Then, if the park is authorized, it will be created by public acquisition of lands within the authorized purchase area from willing sellers at fair market value.

How would the proposed Maine Woods National Park & Preserve affect traditional fishing and hunting opportunities?
It would help by protecting habitat and securing public access. Opportunities for fishing and hunting in northern Maine are not as good as they used to be. The Maine Woods National Park & Preserve would improve this by providing more diversity. Rather than having virtually all of our woodlands managed as an industrial “working forest,” lands within the park and preserve would be protected from logging, herbicide spraying, development and other activities destructive to habitat. In both park and preserve areas, fishing would continue. In preserve areas, hunting and trapping would continue without the worry that access might suddenly be cut off by changes in private land ownership. In other words, MWNP would expand the area of Maine where hunting and trapping are assured. MWNP would also reduce conflicts with non-hunters by providing some areas free of hunting.

How would the proposed Maine Woods National Park & Preserve affect snowmobiling?
It would help by securing access. Today snowmobilers worry about being cut off by private land owners. The proposed MWNP would allow snowmobiling to continue in designated preserve areas.

How would the proposed Maine Woods National Park & Preserve affect existing sporting camps and private camps?
It would help camp owners by providing longer term stability. Camps on lease lots could continue within the MWNP, but they would probably be eligible for long-term leases, rather than the increasingly expensive short-term leases common now. On owned lots, if camp owners wanted to sell, they could sell their lot so that it would become part of the park. If they just wanted to keep their camps and pass them on, they could. Moreover, camp owners would not have to worry about the forest around them being degraded by industrial forest practices. They would have much more assurance than they have now of being in a high quality natural environment.

How would the proposed Maine Woods National Park & Preserve affect the economy of northern Maine?
It would help by revitalizing, diversifying, and stabilizing the troubled economy of the region. A recent study showed that over-reliance on the forest products industry has seriously weakened the economy of Maine and the number of forest industry jobs will continue to decline even if logging increases. While forest industry jobs dwindle, professional and service sector jobs in Maine are growing, especially where environmental values are protected. By contrast, the rapid industrial-ization of the Maine Woods is putting Maine at a comparative economic disadvantage by damaging the wildland values that can be the basis of a healthy economy. Under existing federal programs, the MWNP could also pay more to state and local governments in Maine than property taxes now provide. The MWNP would help diversify the economy of Maine and the Northeast, while leaving four-fifths of Maine’s commercial timberland unaffected.

Is the proposed MWNP really just a land grab promoted by out-of-state environmentalists?
No. The MWNP is a conservative idea, in the best Maine tradition, to reestablish some balance. It has become clear that Maine needs a better balance of public-private ownerships; of managed and permanently protected lands; of opportunities for consump-tive and non-consumptive recreation; of motorized and remote, non-motorized sports; and of young and mature forest habitats. Most of the Maine Woods is owned by absentee forestry corporations, real-estate companies and family trusts which are being driven to treat the forest as a business profit center. If citizens want to protect their sporting traditions they need to actively support conservation proposals such as the MWNP which will return some lands to the public. The MWNP would protect the public interest by rolling back the poor management that has degraded our woodlands in one of the most naturally spectacular regions of the United States.

Why should sportsmen and sports-women support this Maine Woods National Park & Preserve idea?
Thoughtful outdoor adventurers were the first advocates in this country of the national park concept and have been some of the staunchest proponents for protecting the wilderness values of the Maine Woods. For instance, sportsman and artist George Catlin put forth the national park idea as early as 1832. Henry David Thoreau proposed a national preserve after a canoeing and fishing trip through the Maine Woods in 1853. In 1869, wilderness adventurer Samuel Bowles urged that fifty square miles of Maine lake and forest country “be preserved for public use... [as] an honor to the Nation.”

In the 1890s, the Maine Fish & Game commissioner wrote of the need for a preserve “under Mount Katahdin’s shadow.” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Maine Sportsman’s Fish & Game Association and the North American Fish & Game Association worked for the creation of a national park in the Moosehead-Katahdin region. A 1997 article in The Maine Sportsman, headlined “Studying North Woods Park Makes Sense,” described the advantages of the proposed MWNP. In short, sportsmen and sportswomen would probably benefit more than anyone from a public Maine Woods National Park & Preserve.

How do I get more information?
Contact RESTORE: The North Woods, 9 Union Street, Hallowell, Maine 04347, telephone (207) 626-5635, mainewoods@restore.org.

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