A recent report commissioned for the National Park Service is urging support for seven interstate “recreation corridors” in New England — including three in Maine — as a way to reconnect people with the outdoors and spur economic development in riverfront and trailside communities.
The report is not calling for the creation of new national parks or large-scale acquisition of private land for conservation. Instead, the authors are seeking to build public and private support for the completion or expansion of canoe trails, multiple-use trails and other multistate projects that would benefit residents and draw tourists.
The project grew out of a New England Governor’s Conference initiative on regional recreation opportunities. In April 2011, the National Park Service provided funding to compile the initiative’s work into a final report.
The seven recreational corridors or pathways that are the focus of the report are:
• Androscoggin River in Maine and New Hampshire.
• Northern Forest Canoe Trail in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Quebec.
• Champlain Valley in Vermont and New York.
• Merrimack River in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
• Connecticut River in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire.
• Blackstone River Valley in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
• East Coast Greenway in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York.
“These visions were borne of public and private actions to restore the nation’s waters and renew its pathways, to connect people to the outdoors for both recreation and resource stewardship, to honor the nation’s outdoor heritage, to revitalize local economies and create jobs especially for youth, and to create a more sustainable future,” reads the report, titled “Connect People to the Outdoors in New England.”
The project’s lead investigator, Richard Barringer, said he already has spoken with senior officials within the Obama administration about the corridor projects. Barringer said the report’s focus on both public health and economic opportunities dovetails with the Obama administration’s “America’s Great Outdoors” initiative, which seeks to combat the national obesity epidemic by encouraging people to spend more time recreating outside.
And while both federal and state funding for recreation projects is likely limited because of budget constraints, Barringer said he and others are guardedly optimistic that some of the seven projects could move forward based on feedback he has received from federal officials. Many of the projects proposed in the report also would involve private funding.
“I have the sense that a lot of these things will come to pass,” said Barringer, a University of Southern Maine professor and former conservation commissioner in Maine.
In the case of the Androscoggin River, the report calls for improving access to the river in key downtown areas — including in Lewiston, Rumford and Gorham, N.H. — as well as completing pathways linking the river to other towns. The authors also recommend extending Brunswick’s bicycle and pedestrian pathway to Bath and to Lisbon as well as acquiring land or conservation easements on key parcels, such as from Bethel Village to the New Hampshire border.
Barringer said the Androscoggin project offers a good example of numerous small public and private groups having success working together. But the Androscoggin also has “incredible opportunities” now that the river is recovering from the days when it was a national poster child for industrial pollution.
Jonathan LaBonte, executive director of the Androscoggin Land Trust, said the recognition of how far the river has come and its potential means a lot to people who live in riverside communities such as Jay and Lewiston.
“Having this type of regional recognition of this river and the recreational opportunities for us is really a game changer,” LaBonte said.
The Northern Forest Canoe Trail, which stretches for 740 miles from New York State to Fort Kent, is gradually cultivating a national reputation among paddlers. But the report says better access in small communities all along the path would enhance the canoe trail’s economic value. The authors also recommend expanding the trail 200 miles beyond Fort Kent on the St. John River through Maine and New Brunswick to the Bay of Fundy.
Alan Stearns, a former deputy director of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands who has been involved with the canoe trail, argued that the paddling on the Northern Forest trail is superior to that in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. But the Boundary Waters are better marketed, better packaged and therefore are better known, he said.
Stearns, who was involved in the discussions that led to the report, said both the Northern Forest trail and the Androscoggin project have the potential to help numerous small communities in Maine. Those potential economic impacts are magnified when projects cross state boundaries because of collaboration between governments and private groups.
“I think the report did a good job explaining that rivers and recreation on rivers provides great potential for tourism jobs and environmental restoration all at the same time,” said Stearns, who recently was hired as executive director of the Royal River Conservation Trust.
The third project that includes Maine, the East Coast Greenway, is part of a larger effort to link communities from Florida to Maine via multiuse pathways. Examples in Maine include the Kennebec Rail Trail between Augusta and Gardiner and efforts to link trail or path systems in Portland to those in Kennebunk and even Portsmouth, N.H.
eastcoast greenway, ellsworth to machias/ and beyond including the island is oustanding, we need more of them, bring it from ellsworth falls to brewer and beyond ,this is where the money is, not in parks.and further more its for everyone to use not a select few,nor is anyone denied, hello roxy, are you listening?
More reflexive and self destructive rhetoric designed to return to the past but will only perpetuate the current misery into the foreseeable future.
The only “reflexive destructive rhetoric designed to return to the past” is from those like Quimby and Restore trying to impose presettlement Wilderness.
When the National Park Service and the preservationist lobby take taxpayer money and private property rights to “protect the viewshed” it is a National Park. The Appalachian Trail is notorious for that.
True dat
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WHat a bunch of elitist crap. We need this like we need another toxic waste site. Anytime the Southern Maine liberals are attached to something like this it is a bad idea. Barringer in cahoots with O’Bummer says it all.
The Feds take the rivers/corridors and make them their property: “(A)s well as acquiring land or conservation easements on key parcels, such as from Bethel Village to the New Hampshire border. . ” Just how will they acquire those key parcels and easements? Eminent domain perhaps?
It’s just a backdoor way to gain control. People come to Maine to do all of the things mentioned anyway. We don’t need Fed control of our rivers or any land that isn’t already controlled by them. Whatever the Feds touch, they ruin.
Haven’t we had enough problems with the National Park Service bullying landowners at the Appalachian Trail and Acadia? The National Park Service is trying to expand its empire through more control over more private property that it wants. Its trails and river corridors are National Parks, controlled in the same way by the same Federal bureaucracy. “River corridors” mean the land along the rivers.
All of the areas promoted for takeovers in this press release article have been targeted for decades, there is nothing new about it.
Pushing more of this nonsense is what you get in the name of government “studies” and “reports” on behalf of statist pressure group agendas. It’s no surprise to see more promotions of more government spending, controls and acquisition coming from the Obama administration.
You just don’t get to build a more diverse, rural small business economy without giving fair consideration to the positive, contributing role of expanding visitor opportunities, supported by beneficial investments in regional and state outdoor recreation. Some of the usual suspects will vehemently argue that forest products and tourism are incompatible in Maine rural economic development solutions. There is a body of community development research that suggests otherwise. So you can bury this new regional prospect in a blizzard of the usual rhetoric, or look at the evidence that perhaps there is something more to be gained in terms of jobs and business when we embrace both natural resource industries, forest products and tourism, in rural economic development solutions.
Government seizing more private property on behalf of the park lobby is not “economic rural development”.
That is great! As a lover of nature and the outdoors, I welcome this as some very positive news. I live on the opposite side of the country and have grown up hiking, camping, fishing, and contemplating. I have always thought that where I live affords the most beauty in this nation but I know now that there are other special places. For all to enjoy, I think, is a goal here. In order to restore and sustain, projects like this are a win-win for ALL life. Please check out my blog I have started for a class I am taking. It’s very basic, at this point. I try to chronicle the hikes I go on as well as my other loves. It is at http://valleyproject.wordpress.com. Thank you.
Sophomoric student activists pushing for more coercive ‘green utopias’ is not a win for either the victims who lose their property to these schemes or for the taxpayers who are endlessly drained for them.
elitist, green student crap, federal takeover, gain control, big brother is out to get you… man oh’ man… I think I’m going to have a seizure moment, whew, better get some meds on board before the feds haul me away and put me on the reservation… i love conspiracy theory as much as the next yahoo:):):):)
funny thing came up at a recent national park forum when the town manger of a np-gateway community indicated that that 60% of the revenue for the towns annual budget came from a “local sales tax on retail sales” driven by np visitors who purchased goods and services from the plethora of jobs generating, local small businesses in town…that 60% source brought some real property tax relief to many local folks….
oh, but I forgot, didn’t i… the rhetorical rusty nail in the economic development coffin about national parks driving out businesses and jobs, increasing tax burdens on all the locals…duhhh, wrong again, politically incorrect, when will i ever see the right-light.
apparently there are alternative points of view and information from communities who have gained much social economic value by diversifying the local economy through tourism…these realities could move the discussion beyond all the well hewn – conspiracy theory – reactionary models that seem to run counter to reasoned rural economic development solutions
gads, now someone is going to label me up as elitist for sure… have at it, water off an old ducks back you know…:):):):)
Do you have any knowledge at all of National Park Service eminent domain wiping out property owners, its harassment of industry, and its planning and funding of activists for greenline controls? Or do you just make things up about people’s “meds” because you can’t defend it? Has it occurred to you that others know more about this than you do with your utopian fantasy of big green government redistribution and interference as somehow creating productive economies rather than its record of obstructing and destroying them?
Meds, wait a minute, apparently you missed my sense of humor in the post…you know, brave new world stuff where they put old folks like me, who don’t conform – do not hue to anyone’s party line, in isolation out on the reservation, can’t be too freely thinking and changing things you know …
The 60% stands as evidence from Estes Park, Colorado, you can inquire of the town to separate fact from fiction about this reality if you so wish…
Others out there know more or less than me? Likely, either way, I don’t know…Anyone and everyone with a keyboard and functioning send key seems to be a self-proclaimed, journalistic expert in just about everything on any topic that shows up in the I.net sun…
The way I see it, I’ve lived some life – more to go, still learning lots from it, love it, have some sound information – I’ve thrown out the superficially and righteously opinionated, I’m willing to listen – hear other ideas, that don’t mean that “just because it’s said, then it follows that its true”.. as I see it, no one’s got a leg up on anyone, anymore…I know what I know – you know what you know. In my book that’s good enough and it puts us on the same page, regardless of likely holding different values-viewpoints-opinions…
So is this really an exchange of ideas to learn from , or is it the usual competitive assault and labeling battle to compete and prove defeat because you believe I am this or that or something else of questionable merit…I have little left for that kind of exchange.
You just can’t restore and build community and a better world with the I’net pack forever at your back, nipping and yapping at you about how wrong you and your ideas are, when all you are trying to do is a little good for a better world (which, yes, doing good, has unfortunately fallen into much disfavor in our current material culture fever)…I learned a valuable lesson a time ago and changed my dance around having to reign righteously supreme…Am I up holding this new dance here? Maybe, maybe not, I don’t really know. But I’m giving it my best shot because I want a better community and world than the current one where everyone seems to be at everyone’s throat on any one thing or another.
It’s little wonder that we have become so polarized, humans frozen in time. What can we build out of ice, the big human freeze down?
How’s that for way off the federal conspiracy topic? I have you to thank for prompting this lesson, and the excursion that lead me to knowing that indeed I want a better world than the one I see and hear about today. Thanks.
That some people in some areas economically thrive from tourism does not mean that the National Park Service created it — and overlooks what else it’s restrictions destroy.
That the National Park Service arrogantly uses eminent domain against private property owners is not “conspiracy”, it is historical fact, and thoroughly understandable as to why it must be when a government agency is given that kind of power in what was supposed to be a free society with the rights of the individual protected. If you want a better world, stay away from the National Park Service and don’t snipe at those who understand what the problems with it are.
For a good start in seeing what the mind set of the National Park Service is, watch the PBS Frontlines documentary For the Good of All http://www.landrights.org/VideoGoodOfAll.htm. Some of us knew a lot about this agency long before there were “send keys” to broadcast it.
I believe the Estes Park, Colorado, gateway to Rocky Mtn. National Park, provides a case example where the establishment of that NP has provided significant long-term economic benefit to not only Estes Park on the east, but also Grand Lake on the west (jobs, small businesses, increased tax revenues while providing local property tax relief) … I gather that you have huge concerns about the taking of private lands. I do too, like what the Keystone XL pipeline outfit tried to do to coerce farmers and ranchers in Nebraska to sell them the pipeline right of way, or else Keystone would take that ROW by eminent domain.
All along I had thought the sole eminent domain concern was, as you have said, the government. Well, apparently not, as this was a private sector pipeline firm holding the eminent domain sword over the heads of conservative farmers and ranchers who stood up and told them no, then self-organized and showed up the statehouse and said no way.
Since then the government via both Congress and the White House caved in and approved the K- XL pipeline. Now I see that as a real collusion of private-public interests, which enhances private sector powers of taking by eminent domain, now with the government at their back. This collusion concerns me deeply, because any greater public good, i.e., protection of the Ogalla aquifer which supports the farmers and ranchers who in turn feed us, that greater good is now bought out- squeezed out by private-public sector collusion.
My point is that eminent domain concerns are no longer simply centered on the usual flash point, the Federal Government. I actually thought that we easterners, who are fed by those farmers and ranchers, should have stood up, applauded and supported them for their stand against private takings by eminent domain, by an ever increasingly powerful private, industrial sector. Eminent domain is no longer the domain of just the Feds.
National Park Service restrictions are killing the small towns around parks like Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain NP. Retrogressive Wilderness restrictions restraining areas to presettlement conditions do not create an economy. The relatively few “tourism” jobs exploiting a lock on a government created “gateway” monopoly at everyone else’s expense are not a substitute for a productive economy in a free society.
Quimby’s delegates posing as local representatives of “the economy” from Estes Park and Grand Lake at Rocky Mountain NP are both politicians and Wilderness lobbyists and activists, and both lobbied to ban snowmobiling. One of them was appointed by Obama to the National Parks Advisory Board to promote National Parks in rural areas for the benefit of distant inhabitants of cities. She is one of the National park elitists making a small fortune speculating off a government-restricted real estate market in an otherwise poor area. Quimby misrepresented them.
Eminent domain authority is delegated to the pipeline companies (and other utilities) and enforced by by Federal law, not private ownership. Viros oppose pipelines because they oppose industry and energy, not eminent domain; they are opposed to private property rights in principle.
None of this is an excuse to impose National Park Service authority in Maine or “rangerrog’s” snide personal attacks about “conspiracy theories” and other people allegedly being on “meds”. He does not “just want a better world”; he is an apologist for Quimby and the National Parks Service takeover agenda.
I don’t agree with these assertions. “Snide personal attacks about conspiracy theories”, I don’t think so. Your most excellent re-labeling tactic is well hewn to devalue and dismiss anything that does not conform to your notions about what’s right – what’s wrong. Have at it, your are to be congratulated on employing highly effective dismissal tactics. I’m actually impressed and have learned some pointers from you.
To the point… I did a field-based small group case study on Estes Park a year ago and it is not the case that because of that NP there are few jobs and few small businesses in and around town, or that this NP has killed this small town. That assertion is simply not true, when you look at the thriving base of small businesses, jobs and employment, tax revenue and local property tax relief…..I am just as certain that you will go one more step one more time and do everything in your power to dismiss this too. Have at it with much glee. Carry on.
As far as my “meds” comment, once again, you totally misread/ misinterpreted my self-deprecating tongue-in-cheek humor, my reacting with humor to the federal seizure gambit in the initial post….”man oh’ man, I think I’m going to have a seizure moment, whew, I better
get some meds on board before the feds haul me away and put me on the
reservation”
Well, I guess this it it for me, end of thread end times. I got nothing left to say or listen to, nothing to prove or disprove. Have a happy day and a great life.
This is what “rangerrog” wrote in his initial post here in snide reference to those opposing Federal control:
rangerrog: “elitist, green student crap, federal takeover, gain control, big
brother is out to get you… man oh’ man… I think I’m going to have a
seizure moment, whew, better get some meds on board before the feds
haul me away and put me on the reservation… i love conspiracy theory
as much as the next yahoo:):):):) “
That is not serious discussion, nor was the attempt to change the subject from the National Park Service’s long history of arrogant abuse of private property owners to “pipelines” (a favorite ploy of Restore’s Michael Kellet), nor was the avoidance of the background of Quimby’s park lobby politicians from Colorado posing as ordinary local people with testimonials on behalf of the National Park Service.
I used to swim the Swift River in Roxbury Maine for the sense of wilderness and pristine waters. Now I see 460 foot GRID scale WIND turbines on the river bends……..stop the GRID scale WIND and focus on what Maine has to offer tourism……NATURE!!!!