Maine Woods 
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“If I were a snowmobiler or a hunter, I would feel safer knowing that I had a preserve where I’ll always have guaranteed access somewhere,” says Elisabeth Kay, a Yarmouth resident who got hooked on conservation issues while working at the environmentally friendly clothing company Patagonia. “It’s not like it was 50 years ago when the same companies owned the land for 150 years. Ownership patterns continue to change dramatically, and if the land is in private hands, the public is guaranteed nothing.”
Ironically, many of the Maine residents most riled by Quimby’s land-buying spree favor a Plum Creek Timber Company’s plan to develop some 26,000 acres in prime wilderness. The reason: Plum Creek pledges to allow unrestricted public access to a majority of its land—when it gets done carving it up, that is (see sidebar).
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Park backers also face another challenge: Leaders in the towns of Greenville and Millinocket, which would become gateways into the park, oppose it. “We have wood baskets all around us feeding the mills,” says John Simko, manager of Greenville. “If you turn the Northeast into a national park, there’d be no more harvesting timber, we’d probably have to close the facilities, and the only jobs would be flipping burgers.”
Except the mills are closing anyway. In once-bustling Millinocket, two paper mills provide only half the jobs they once offered, and the main street is scarred with boarded-up shops. But they could see the light of day again with a national park on their doorsteps, says Jym St. Pierre, executive director of the Concord, Massachusetts, nonprofit RESTORE: The North Woods. “It would be an economic engine lifting the area out of its doldrums,” he says.
A RESTORE-commissioned study found that the proposed national park and preserve could bolster the state’s economy with between $109 million and $435 million in annual retail sales and support 5,000 to 20,000 jobs. It also found that over the last 30 years, residents in communities surrounding national parks in the Lower 48 saw their income grow twice as fast as the national average, with job growth almost three times the national average.
“Look at Asheville, North Carolina, the gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park [in North Carolina and Tennessee],” says Quimby. “It’s a collection of artists, galleries, retirees, investment banks, hospitals, and lawyers—an eclectic community where people want to live because the natural beauty is protected. Nobody’s flipping burgers—and if they are, it’s the same people that would be flipping them anywhere else.”
Of course, the transition could cause some residents to falter initially, as they struggle to change careers in a new economy. “But the people of these towns know better than anyone what is happening to the dying timber industry,” says Kay. “It might be scary at first, but they should also be thinking about the future, about where their kids are going to grow up and work.” Given that national parks don’t just spring up overnight, park proponents argue that the economic impacts associated with the park, both positive and negative, would spread over a long period of time, giving adjacent communities time to adjust.
RESTORE is working to persuade Congress to launch a feasibility study, but its leaders already estimate that buying land for the park would cost about $1 billion. It’s a hefty price, but one that more and more people are willing to pay: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a public park that would benefit all Americans for all time,” says St. Pierre. “Think about what Yellowstone would look like now had it not been protected,” he says. “Have you ever heard someone say that they wished the federal government hadn’t made it a park?” |
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Plum Creek: A Sign of Things to Come?
In 1998, the Seattle-based Plum Creek Timber Company bought nearly a million acres surrounding Moosehead Lake—New England’s largest lake—from South African Pulp and Paper Industries, which, while simultaneously soothing the public’s fears about clear-cutting the land, leveled tens of thousands of acres of trees in the four years before selling it. Like its predecessor, Plum Creek also allayed local residents’ fears, saying it had no development plans.
Fast-forward to 2005. With one subdivision under its belt on the first of a series of ponds called the Roaches, Plum Creek began moving forward with plans this spring to develop 975 house lots—more than half of them on shorefront property—three RV parks, two resorts (including one golf course), and a 1,000-acre commercial or industrial park.
In the spirit of conservation—required by the state—Plum Creek is committing to a 30-year “no development” zone for 70 percent of the land. To win the support of recreationists, it’s allowing for a 71-mile snowmobile trail easement, along with a similar 55-mile hiking trail.
“And this is all for free,” says George Smith, executive director of the Sports-man’s Alliance of Maine. “Unlike Roxanne Quimby’s property, Plum Creek is completely open to our use, and we also get a lot of conservation without paying any money.”
Joan Wisher has a different take. She says that she and other neighbors who live on Roach Pond in traditional cabins without electricity or running water have paid a hefty price these last few years. Early on, Plum Creek managed to smooth-talk them, she says, by telling them its plan would move slowly over a 25-year period. “In fact 80 percent of the lots were sold within the first year, leaving residents to suffer through construction chaos for more than two years,” she says. “They brought in suburban houses with all the amenities and literally made us a dust bowl.”
One long-time resident lost his favorite fishing spot, a place he had visited since 1959. Barred owls and great horned owls, which had raised their young in a heavily wooded stretch along the pond since 1985, disappeared in the dust. Residents also say questionable logging practices have silted their pond, which contains some of the region’s last remaining spawning habitat for brook trout and landlocked salmon. Tellingly, 100 of the 112 landowners have banded together, determined not to let Plum Creek tout Roach Pond as a success story.
“What happened here is a warning bell,” says Elizabeth Kay, a Maine conservtionist. “If we don’t protect this land and make it a national park, the stage will be set for the other Plum Creeks of the world to come in and build more housing developments on our shorelines.” | |
Heidi Ridgley is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C. |
