A National Treasure in Maine Deserves National Support And National Attention

Alexander R. Brash, NE Regional Director, NPCA

Bringing great ideas and great projects to fruition is never easy, and creating a great new national park is a process fraught with skepticism and acrimony, especially among the communities surrounding the new site. But as filmmaker Ken Burns recently noted, “We not only have saved these places; they have saved us.” History has proven him right, and most all Americans now appreciate such national treasures as Yellowstone, Yosemite, Everglades, and Acadia.

None of these parks were initiated by our government; rather all saw their start from a collection of interested individuals—people who worked tirelessly behind the scenes for years to conceive of these places, publicize them, and then advocate for their preservation. Thomas Meagher, Cornelius Hedges, and Ferdinand V. Hayden fought to create Yellowstone, Galen Clark and Senator John Conness pushed for Yosemite, Harold Bailey and Ernest Coe advocated for the Everglades, and Laurence Rockefeller blessed us with Acadia, St. Johns, and the Grand Tetons.

For the past two decades, there has been another such effort underway. Roxanne Quimby, Kate Barnes, Jym St. Pierre, Richard Russo, and other Maine residents have been advocating for a new national park in Maine. The proposed park would not only capture the essence of the North Woods but also boost the state’s economy by creating new jobs. As George Neavoll, a former editor with the Portland Press Herald wrote: “Establishing a national park with the world-class attributes of a Moosehead Lake, soaring Mount Kineo, fabled Allagash River and primeval Debsconeag Lakes could also spur the economic revitalization of northern Maine. Millinocket, Greenville and Jackman would become gateways to a region rivaled only in Alaska. The foundering forest products industry would be supplemented with new jobs and new businesses created to serve a public drawn to some of the grander scenery on Earth.” Economic studies have already shown that the establishment of a national park in Maine’s North Woods would benefit the state’s and region’s economy.

While this idea has long been greeted with skepticism if not scorn in Maine, a public poll published this summer shows that the tide has turned in Maine and that:

•       89 percent of voting Maine residents have visited the North Woods and enjoy them for hiking, camping, fishing, and sightseeing;

•       78 percent would prefer that the Maine Woods be kept as a mixture of timber land and parks;

•       75 percent of the voters support setting aside 10–20 percent of the Maine Woods for a public park; and

•       77 percent support the creation of a new type of national park that is created in partnership with the state of Maine.

The time has now come for this homegrown endeavor to emerge from Mount Katahdin’s shadows, with a goal of launching this new park in time for the National Park System’s Centennial in 2016. It is clear this proposed park will need help from those beyond the state’s borders. As one may see in the map, vast areas outside of Baxter State Park that should be core elements of a park, are owned by corporate America. Therefore, we will need to specifically work with and encourage KeyCorp in Cleveland, John Hancock in Boston, Plum Creek in Seattle, and both Katahdin Timberlands and the Pingree Associates from Maine to work together with park champions, the State of Maine, the Department of the Interior and Congress to delineate and transfer sufficient land to create a great national park in Maine.

Indeed, in order to make this park happen, federal support will have to come into play, and as Karen Herold of Cumberland, Maine, recently wrote: “We will need to seek federal help to fund protection for a solution that embraces more public lands, and includes federal, state, public, and private participation. With a rational and open discussion, landowners, Maine government, interest groups, and the public can find a way to protect the North Woods.’ We agree with Karen, and hope that in Maine, as in other efforts to preserve the last of America’s great landscapes, willing owners can be brought together with federal support and local sentiment to create a great park. We too believe a national treasure deserves national support.

It seems a fitting goal that what might be the last great terrestrial park in the east, that could be added to the National Park System, should be done so in time for the Park Service’s 100th birthday. What a present! But if it is to be accomplished, the five years ahead are but a slip of time, considering the work that needs to be done. It will be necessary to determine the boundaries of the park, seek land transfers and gifts, and even make outright purchases from willing sellers that will complement what little public land now exists.

The time is at hand to move forward with this opportunity to preserve a great swath of Maine’s North Woods. If we don’t save this landscape now, we will awake one morning to find that the special places that Mainers and visitors cherish will have been irrevocably lost as distant corporate owners seeking to maximize their profits have quietly rezoned the woods for vacation homes and resorts. The window to save this last great landscape, replete with its beauty, wildlife, and historical heritage, is closing fast.

http://www.npca.org/northeast/pdf/Northeast_Field_Report.pdf

Maine Lawmakers Resolve to Oppose Creation of a National Park

06/17/2011   Reported By: Susan Sharon
With no advance notice and no discussion, members of the Maine House and Senate have overwhelmingly passed a joint resolution to the President, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Congress signaling their opposition to the creation of a national park in Maine’s North Woods. They also request that the federal government deny a park feasibility study. Although the resolution is not binding, park supporters say it sends a message about public support that may be difficult to counter.

This anti-national park resolution does not represent the views of most people of Maine. There has been a series of independent public opinion surveys in Maine over the last decade and a half. Every one has shown that a majority of Maine citizens favor the idea of a large national park or similar public preserve in the Maine Woods. Support is substantial and growing.

Because they could not counter this burgeoning public support with facts, the sponsors of the anti-park resolution had to stoop to undemocratic procedural manipulations in the Maine legislature. As Maine Public Radio pointed out, there was “no advance notice and no discussion” of the anti-park resolution. The sponsors are aware of the growing public support for the park idea. This was a desperate attempt to slow the momentum. The vote was held with no published notice at the very end of the legislative session. No document to review. No public hearings. No multiple votes as with a normal legislative bill to allow thoughtful consideration. The process was so rushed that even state senators who are open to the park idea ended up voting for the resolution in the confusion. In the Maine House, there was not even an opportunity for a vote; it went under the hammer. The sponsors knew that if this had been a fair and open process, there would have been major opposition from legislators and the public to the resolution.

One observer, in today’s Forecaster newspaper, asked the right questions: “Was Baxter State Park a good idea? Was Acadia National Park a good idea? Would a North Woods National Park be such a bad thing? What’s wrong with studying the feasibility of a national park? Defy the dirty tricksters in Augusta. Think about it.”

As has happened over and over in the history of national parks, local anti-park forces are fearful and defensive. They are hoping against hope that two defunct and closed paper mills in northern Maine will be sold and reopened. An anonymous group of Chinese investors is looking at that, but they insist on getting the mills for free, getting state and local tax breaks, getting more federal subsidies, getting union concessions, and having the public assume liability responsibility for the mill’s toxic landfill, which will cost an estimated $17 million or more. The Sun Journal newspaper said about this: “…the Maine Senate abandoned its capitalistic course by passing a bill authorizing the state to purchase the leaky Dolby Landfill, a problem private industry created that Maine’s taxpayers must now solve.”

The anti-park interests are afraid of allowing even a study of the park idea because they know that the study will show that a park would offer tremendous benefits to northern Maine. They are afraid that a park would threaten the industrialization of the Maine Woods by restoring the heart of the region. They are afraid of public lands, which would be shared, because they have grown up exploiting private lands. They are afraid that once people know the truth about these benefits, they will embrace a park in the Maine Woods. That is why they oppose the right of philanthropist Roxanne Quimby to donate 70,000 acres to the people of Maine and America to become a national park. Many of these are the same people who claim to defend private property rights — except for Roxanne Quimby.

National park opponents in Maine are like those in other regions where vast global economic forces have passed them by. They are trying in vain to cling to a Maine Woods that no longer exists. For decades, the Maine Woods was owned by a handful of families and companies that kept the land intact and provided local jobs. No longer. Since 1998, more than 10 million acres of the Maine Woods have been sold, most to transnational corporations and real-estate speculators. These landowners are:

-Fueling global climate change by cutting down the forest and converting it into short-lived products, such as paper and biomass, which almost immediately release their stored carbon.

-Harming native wildlife with real-estate developments, such as Plum Creek corporation’s sprawling proposal to develop an area of the wild Moosehead Lake region as large as the City of Portland, Maine — an area designated as critical habitat for the imperiled Canada lynx and other sensitive wildlife.

-Eroding wilderness values, by subdividing and developing wildland lakes and streams, building logging roads, erecting power lines and mountaintop energy projects, and expanding off-road motor vehicle access — including to the legendary Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

-Undermining local communities by closing mills, mechanizing jobs, and failing to economically diversify, all while degrading the natural values of the Maine Woods that could be the foundation of a sustainable economy. The two giant paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket, which once employed over 4,000 people, have closed and may never reopen, or may open only for a short time with massive public subsidies and a tiny fraction of the original work force.

Sadly, my fellow Mainers who oppose a new national park seem to have little to offer northern Mainers but continued economic decline. They have no meaningful solutions for local communities that need alternatives to replace lost timber and paper jobs. Rather than hope or ideas, they put forth disinformation, fear and opposition to positive change.

As a student of the history of national parks, I realize that this is the way it has been with almost every past national park campaign throughout U.S. history. Beloved national parks such as Grand Teton, Grand Canyon, Olympic, Redwood, Kenai Fjords, and even Acadia in Maine, faced bitter opposition from entrenched interests when they were first proposed. So did Maine’s iconic Baxter State Park. Today, even the one-time opponents of those popular parks acknowledge that they were mistaken.

As a native and lifelong Mainer, I believe the people of Maine deserve better. Fortunately, we have a choice. We can protect the heart of the Maine Woods as a beautiful national park and preserve. It will restore and protect the forest, keep the land open for public recreational access, and diversify an economy that is in desperate straits. Those who oppose this vision should either offer a better solution or stop trying to keep us from building a better future for northern Maine.

Jym St. Pierre

For accurate information about the proposed Maine Woods National Park & Preserve, see www.mainewoods.org.

http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineNewsArchive/tabid/181/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3475/ItemId/16842/Default.aspx

http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineNewsArchive/tabid/181/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3475/ItemId/16842/Default.aspx

Maine Lawmakers Resolve to Oppose Creation of a National Park
06/17/2011   Reported By: Susan Sharon
With no advance notice and no discussion, members of the Maine House and Senate have overwhelmingly passed a joint resolution to the President, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Congress signaling their opposition to the creation of a national park in Maine’s North Woods. They also request that the federal government deny a park feasibility study. Although the resolution is not binding, park supporters say it sends a message about public support that may be difficult to counter.

This anti-national park resolution does not represent the views of most people of Maine. There has been a series of independent public opinion surveys in Maine over the last decade and a half. Every one has shown that a majority of Maine citizens favor the idea of a large national park or similar public preserve in the Maine Woods. Support is substantial and growing.

Because they could not counter this burgeoning public support with facts, the sponsors of the anti-park resolution had to stoop to undemocratic procedural manipulations in the Maine legislature. As Maine Public Radio pointed out, there was “no advance notice and no discussion” of the anti-park resolution. The sponsors are aware of the growing public support for the park idea. This was a desperate attempt to slow the momentum. The vote was held with no published notice at the very end of the legislative session. No document to review. No public hearings. No multiple votes as with a normal legislative bill to allow thoughtful consideration. The process was so rushed that even state senators who are open to the park idea ended up voting for the resolution in the confusion. In the Maine House, there was not even an opportunity for a vote; it went under the hammer. The sponsors knew that if this had been a fair and open process, there would have been major opposition from legislators and the public to the resolution.

One observer, in today’s Forecaster newspaper, asked the right questions: “Was Baxter State Park a good idea? Was Acadia National Park a good idea? Would a North Woods National Park be such a bad thing? What’s wrong with studying the feasibility of a national park? Defy the dirty tricksters in Augusta. Think about it.”

As has happened over and over in the history of national parks, local anti-park forces are fearful and defensive. They are hoping against hope that two defunct and closed paper mills in northern Maine will be sold and reopened. An anonymous group of Chinese investors is looking at that, but they insist on getting the mills for free, getting state and local tax breaks, getting more federal subsidies, getting union concessions, and having the public assume liability responsibility for the mill’s toxic landfill, which will cost an estimated $17 million or more. The Sun Journal newspaper said about this: “…the Maine Senate abandoned its capitalistic course by passing a bill authorizing the state to purchase the leaky Dolby Landfill, a problem private industry created that Maine’s taxpayers must now solve.”

The anti-park interests are afraid of allowing even a study of the park idea because they know that the study will show that a park would offer tremendous benefits to northern Maine. They are afraid that a park would threaten the industrialization of the Maine Woods by restoring the heart of the region. They are afraid of public lands, which would be shared, because they have grown up exploiting private lands. They are afraid that once people know the truth about these benefits, they will embrace a park in the Maine Woods. That is why they oppose the right of philanthropist Roxanne Quimby to donate 70,000 acres to the people of Maine and America to become a national park. Many of these are the same people who claim to defend private property rights — except for Roxanne Quimby.

National park opponents in Maine are like those in other regions where vast global economic forces have passed them by. They are trying in vain to cling to a Maine Woods that no longer exists. For decades, the Maine Woods was owned by a handful of families and companies that kept the land intact and provided local jobs. No longer. Since 1998, more than 10 million acres of the Maine Woods have been sold, most to transnational corporations and real-estate speculators. These landowners are:

-Fueling global climate change by cutting down the forest and converting it into short-lived products, such as paper and biomass, which almost immediately release their stored carbon.

-Harming native wildlife with real-estate developments, such as Plum Creek corporation’s sprawling proposal to develop an area of the wild Moosehead Lake region as large as the City of Portland, Maine — an area designated as critical habitat for the imperiled Canada lynx and other sensitive wildlife.

-Eroding wilderness values, by subdividing and developing wildland lakes and streams, building logging roads, erecting power lines and mountaintop energy projects, and expanding off-road motor vehicle access — including to the legendary Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

-Undermining local communities by closing mills, mechanizing jobs, and failing to economically diversify, all while degrading the natural values of the Maine Woods that could be the foundation of a sustainable economy. The two giant paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket, which once employed over 4,000 people, have closed and may never reopen, or may open only for a short time with massive public subsidies and a tiny fraction of the original work force.

Sadly, my fellow Mainers who oppose a new national park seem to have little to offer northern Mainers but continued economic decline. They have no meaningful solutions for local communities that need alternatives to replace lost timber and paper jobs. Rather than hope or ideas, they put forth disinformation, fear and opposition to positive change.

As a student of the history of national parks, I realize that this is the way it has been with almost every past national park campaign throughout U.S. history. Beloved national parks such as Grand Teton, Grand Canyon, Olympic, Redwood, Kenai Fjords, and even Acadia in Maine, faced bitter opposition from entrenched interests when they were first proposed. So did Maine’s iconic Baxter State Park. Today, even the one-time opponents of those popular parks acknowledge that they were mistaken.

As a native and lifelong Mainer, I believe the people of Maine deserve better. Fortunately, we have a choice. We can protect the heart of the Maine Woods as a beautiful national park and preserve. It will restore and protect the forest, keep the land open for public recreational access, and diversify an economy that is in desperate straits. Those who oppose this vision should either offer a better solution or stop trying to keep us from building a better future for northern Maine.

Jym St. Pierre

For accurate information about the proposed Maine Woods National Park & Preserve, see www.mainewoods.org.

Nearly 20 years ago, after Restore: The North Woods unveiled its plan for a 3.2-million-acre Maine Woods National Park, Roxanne Quimby became an immediate fan.

“I’ve always loved the national parks,” she said during an extensive interview recently. “I visit them every chance I can.”

As the founder of Burt’s Bees, a nationally known company she founded in Maine and later moved to North Carolina before selling it in 2003, Quimby also saw the plan in business terms.

“At the time, you could have purchased all that land for $500 million,” she said. “That was also what we spent each year on Doritos. It made me think about how frivolously we treat our money.”

That observation neatly encapsulates what some see as contrary qualities in Quimby, who recently traveled to Millinocket to — for the first time — publicly present her vision for a national park in the north woods.

On the one hand, Quimby is widely viewed as a shrewd businesswoman who also knows how to make a deal when it comes to real estate.

On the other hand, she comes out of the California counter-culture of the 1960s and ’70s, and views private property rights with skepticism. She told a Yankee magazine interviewer in 2008, “To me, ownership and private property were the beginning of the end in this country. Once the Europeans came in, drawing lines and dividing things up, things started getting exploited and over-consumed. But a park takes away the whole issue of ownership. It’s off the table; we all own it and we all share it. It’s so democratic.”

It’s statements like that that drive some people to distraction. Quimby has steadily accumulated land in Maine over the past 10 years, but only for the purpose of giving it back to the public. The whole concept of public ownership is detestable to the forest products industry, and to many who live in the area where Quimby wants to site the national park. Yet the public as a whole seems to support her park idea. Polls consistently show majorities favoring the concept, with support strongest in southern Maine, but significant throughout the state.

Quimby herself sees no contradiction in what she says and does. Once she realized that Restore’s vision of a huge park was not going to happen any time soon, she went to work on her own.

“I asked myself what I could do, what I could contribute,” she said. “For me, this is what I can accomplish in a reasonable length of time.”

The plan

Quimby’s plan, presented to a packed house at the Northern Maine Timber Cruisers Clubhouse in Millinocket on May 4, calls for a 70,000-acre national park along the eastern border of Baxter State Park, the 204,000-acre wilderness preserve created by Gov. Percival Baxter and given to the state amid four decades of land acquisition after Baxter left office in 1925.

The triangular-shaped parcel envisioned as the new national park (see map) is mostly owned by Quimby, and fills the space between the park’s eastern boundary and the East Branch of the Penobscot River — a fabled, wild stream featured in the writings of Henry David Thoreau.

On the other side of the East Branch, the east side, Quimby proposes an 80,000-acre national recreation area, which would allow many “traditional” recreational uses, including hunting and snowmobiling, that Quimby would prefer not to see in the national park.

National parks generally don’t allow hunting or ATVs, and snowmobiling is limited. The recreation area is her offer to critics who see her as putting off limits land where they have long hunted, fished and snowmobiled, thanks to permission from previous owners.

George Smith, former executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, the state’s largest hunting and fishing organization, views it as an “extraordinary offer.”

He said, “I don’t think any Mainer has ever done anything like it, not even Percival Baxter. It’s just a remarkable thing, something I’ve never seen before and don’t expect to ever see again.”

“Extraordinary” is a word that comes up frequently in reviews of Quimby’s visit to Millinocket, as well. Jym St. Pierre, who has labored on behalf of the national park idea for two decades as Maine director of Restore, said the two-hour meeting showed Quimby “completely on top of her game.”

“I’ve seen her in many different contexts, and this was by far her best performance. The questioning was sometimes aggressive, but she handled everything they asked, and did it on her own terms. She was very direct, and very candid,” he said.

St. Pierre said he believes the meeting was a “watershed” in terms of progress toward a park. “Some of the criticism used to come from people who are passionate about landowner rights,” he said. “Well, she owns the land now.”

Who is Roxanne Quimby?

Gradually, perceptions of who Roxanne Quimby is and what she’s up to have begun to shift. At one time, she was seen as a reclusive, if not secretive, figure whose unconventional views about land ownership seemed that much more threatening to the status quo. She says now that was never the case.

“Until 2005, I was running my own business” — she stayed on after the sale — “and it took just about all my time,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I had to answer every charge that appeared in a Maine newspaper.”

Now that she lives here full time, she’s been able to give full attention to her work in Maine, she said.

Her interests are varied. In addition to the national park plan, she wants to donate 30,000 acres she owns northeast of Sebec Lake, near Dover-Foxcroft, to the state for a backcountry extension of Peaks-Kenny State Park, which now includes a camping area, beach and 839 acres.

Quimby said she had not yet spoken to Gov. Paul LePage or anyone else in the new administration about the acreage near Peaks-Kenny State Park, which borders land owned by the Penobscot Indian Nation — a culture in which Quimby has a strong interest.

And Quimby has spoken to the Appalachian Mountain Club about donating 7,000 acres she owns that is bisected by the federally protected Appalachian Trial, a parcel known as Big Wilson/Seven Ponds.

She’s also a major supporter of the arts, and is involved in several cultural organizations in Portland, where she lives. One of the sporting camps she recently acquired in the East Branch area will become a retreat for artists.

George Smith said he’s “disappointed” with the response of some sportsmen to Quimby’s new bid to gain public support for the park. “They’re fighting the same old battles, but she’s moved on.”

Smith has attended numerous meetings in which Quimby has spoken with critics of her plans, including sporting groups in the Millinocket area and Town Manager Gene Conlogue.

“She absolutely means what she says, and she’s far from inflexible,” he said.

Quimby hasn’t convinced everyone, however. One persistent critic, Paul Reynolds, publisher of the Northwoods Sporting Journal, described her as “vehemently anti-hunting” in a column published last fall. Reynolds said Quimby is a “shrewd, self-made businesswoman who knows how to get her way,” and said she “will not rest until she sees her wealth turned into a federalized national park.”

‘This time it seems different’

The largely favorable reception Quimby received at the May 4 Millinocket meeting would not have been possible without a complex land deal involving Quimby, the state and private owners that involved fallout from the state’s purchase of the Katahdin Lake addition to Baxter State Park.

Quimby had bought a large parcel near the town center of Millinocket and planned to put it off limits to snowmobiling and hunting, a move that produced a bevy of “Ban Roxanne” bumper stickers — a reference to the “Ban Clearcutting” slogan of two unsuccessful referendums in the 1990s.

Quimby ended up swapping her Millinocket acreage for land the state had acquired in the Wassataquoik Valley area, now the heart of the proposed national park. The swap not only restored full motorized recreational use of the Millinocket land, but it gave sportsmen much better access to more state-owned land to the south of Katahdin Lake that was meant to compensate for the loss of hunting privileges around the lake.

Quimby said she was willing to trade the Millinocket acreage primarily as a favor to the state, which was under heavy criticism from sportsmen after the Katahdin Lake purchase. She said she went above and beyond in this case.

“I put my $6 million up front, before anyone else had stepped forward (to facilitate the swap),” she said. The state asked for, and received from her, a six-month extension to complete the complex transactions, and another extension after that. The agreement was finally signed in December just before the Baldacci administration left office.

Also working in Quimby’s favor is the sudden economic prostration of the Millinocket area.

The “big mill” in Millinocket built by Great Northern — which essentially created “Magic City” in 1898 and was once the largest papermaking facility in the world — closed in 2008. Then, this spring, the East Millinocket mill, which had received additional investment and produced much of the newsprint for Maine newspapers, also closed. The towns built by paper companies were suddenly without an operating paper mill and prospects for reopening either seem dim.

St. Pierre, who spent time talking to townspeople on a recent trip, said, “This time it seems different. People really aren’t expecting the mills to start up again.” In fact, when Quimby announced her planned appearance in May, “Some people said, ‘Maybe she’s going to buy the mills,’” St. Pierre said.

The economy was much on the minds of those who attended the meeting. U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, who represents the 2nd District and spent most of his working life at the Millinocket mills, said, “Any town that depends on one industry, whether it’s Madawaska, Lincoln, Baileyville or Millinocket, has to be thinking about diversifying its economy. With one industry, you’re always vulnerable.”

Does that mean a national park to the north, with Millinocket the gateway, is looking like a better idea? Michaud is cautious.

“It’s still very early,” he said. Establishing a national park is a lengthy process, he noted, and, “We haven’t begun to look at the total package; we have not looked at any details.”

Proving its worth

The vehicle for doing that would be for Congress to authorize a feasibility study, and for that to happen, someone needs to sponsor a bill. When Restore was campaigning for a park in the 1990s, no representative or senator stepped forward; the Legislature actually passed a resolution opposing a national park.

Quimby has noticed a perceptible change in statements coming from Maine’s U.S. senators and representatives. “Before, it was just, ‘No.’ Now most of them say it’s an idea worth considering, or well-worth considering.”

Her meetings with U.S. Sen. Susan Collins suggested a test for the park. “She said that when her constituents tell her it’s a good idea, then she’ll be willing to sign on,” Quimby said.

Thus, the Millinocket offensive. Quimby said she accepts the notion that local people must support the park for it to become a reality. The next step will be a meeting in July with business owners from the area, which she said she’s convening at their request.

“They want an economic impact statement on what a park will mean for the area,” and she intends to provide it. Not that she thinks there’s much doubt that the impact will be positive.

“Acadia National Park brings in 2.5 million visitors a year and creates $160 million in spending for the local economy,” she said.

She hastened to add that a Maine woods park would not attract similar numbers of visitors or spending. In a sense, she said, critics have made the park proposal bigger than it actually would be.

Burt’s Bees, she said, “had $200 million in annual sales and a $50 million payroll. And this is less than that. It’s really more like a mid-sized business coming to town. It’s not this Darth Vader looming on the horizon.”

Quimby knows that a national park would require increased visitor access, and that would mean road building and motor vehicles in a remote area few people now see or travel through.

Still, the impacts could be minimized, she said.

“We’ve learned about transit in national parks,” such as the Grand Canyon. “We’ve learned about low-impact development and how to preserve landscapes.” Another way of looking at it is that it might “relieve the pressure on Acadia, if there was another national park people could visit.”

When people tell her that no new national parks have been created in the past 40 years, Quimby responds, “That must mean it’s time for another.” She points out that Acadia is the only national park in the Northeast, with the next nearest being Shenandoah in Virginia.

The size of the proposed park has also sparked comment. At 70,000 acres, it would be twice the size of Acadia, but one-third the size of Baxter. For a western park, it would be small, but in the East, it would be among the larger ones.

“I still love the vision of a 3.2-million-acre national park in Maine,” said Quimby, “but I know it’s not going to happen in my lifetime. This is what I can do now.” In her view, the fitting date for creation of the park would be 2016 — the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Park Service.

Making history?

George Smith has become, perhaps despite himself, an admirer of Roxanne Quimby.

“She’s tough, she’s fair, and she never goes back on her word,” he said.

Nevertheless, he doesn’t think a national park will come to pass.“There’s still too much going against it, too many obstacles,” he said.

Smith thinks Quimby should scale down her ambitions. He acknowledged that creating a national forest instead, which would allow timber harvesting, wouldn’t meet her goals, but there are other options, he said. “Maybe a Wild and Scenic River designation, like the Allagash. The East Branch is a wonderful place,” he said. On the other hand, the Allagash “doesn’t bring that many people to Maine anymore,” and increased visitation is one of Quimby’s goals.

Quimby seems determined that the park is her objective, and nothing else. She would like more support, however. “Some of the people you’d think would be speaking out are silent,” she said.

Maine’s largest environmental groups, for example, have long stayed out of the fray. Judy Berk, spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said, after checking with Lisa Pohlman, the group’s new executive director, that the NRCM “hasn’t taken a position on the park, so we have no comment.”

Ted Koffman, executive director of Maine Audubon, did offer a brief statement after conferring with staff. It reads, “Maine Audubon urges Congress to conduct a study of what a new national park could mean for Maine — both good and bad.”

In her long campaign for the park, Quimby has come to recognize the parallels with the origins of both Acadia and Baxter State Park, which she sees as typical of park-building in the East. “In the Western states, the federal government already owned the land, but in the East, someone had to acquire it.”

The story of Baxter and his efforts to build a wilderness park after the Legislature refused any appropriation for it is well-known. In the case of Acadia, it was George Dorr and the Rockefeller family who were the principal donors, and they also encountered local resistance to their plans.

But Quimby finds significant differences between her quest and the earlier campaigns.

Baxter’s struggles to acquire land were considerable, “but that was at the height of the paper economy, when it was super-charged,” she said. “The paper companies didn’t want to sell land because they saw it as their financial base.” By now, though, the value of land has eroded. “I’ve never had trouble buying any land I wanted,” Quimby said. “The only question was the price.”

And there was a patrician air to Baxter that she doesn’t share. “Men seem to have this thing about having places named for them,” she said. “That’s never been something I wanted for myself.”

And the founders of Acadia all came from inherited wealth, while she worked her way up, she points out. “I don’t know a lot of important people and I don’t travel in their social circles,” she said.

She may, though. Quimby was recently named to the National Park Foundation — an appointment that alarmed critics — and has met with the U.S. Park Service director, whose wife, she noted, is a native of Aroostook County.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, too, has been challenged by President Barack Obama to create a legacy in public lands comparable to Stewart Udall, who served under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. “I looked it up,” Quimby said. “There were 19 new parks created on his watch.”

To some observers, it’s the lack of discussion of a national park, rather than its alleged lack of viability, that’s the odd thing.

In a recent column, Maine Sportsman publisher Jon Lund said that while Gov. Angus King opposed the Maine woods park proposal while in office, when his term was over, “He set off with his family in a motor home, crisscrossing the country, visiting national parks.” King did not “visit places with industrial forest easements. Nor did he aim for state parks, which vastly outnumber national parks.”

National parks, Lund concludes, are the magnets for visitors.

Restore’s St. Pierre thinks the tide is turning on Quimby’s plan.

“At the time history is being made, you never quite know that it’s happening,” he said. But the Millinocket meeting, he said, may well have been that moment. “It’s finally begun to dawn on people that this is part of their future.”

Yellowstone, Gettysburg, the Statue of Liberty and Everglades are among the many national parks that we — as Americans — fund to celebrate our natural wonders and commemorate history for all to see. They only occupy one-thirteenth of one percent of the federal budget. That is a quite a bargain for a system of national parks we can all enjoy and be inspired by.

Unfortunately, Congress has been cutting the Park Service’s miniscule budget. It has to stop. Not only will this mean a reduction in staff — the rangers that greet us and help us plan our visits — but it also means the parks won’t be adequately maintained. This is not how we should treat our prized lands and sacred areas where we reflect on history.

Write, email, or call your congressional representatives and tell them not to cut the Park Service’s budget.

For lawmakers considering a state purchase of a landfill in hopes of spurring the purchase of paper mills in the Katahdin region, there are no easy answers. Will a state takeover of the landfill ensure the mills are purchased? No one knows for sure. If the mills are sold, will they continue to employ at least 450 people? This is far from certain. Continue reading

Take a Tour of the Park and view stunning pictures on our Flickr page.