Ever since a national park for the Maine woods was first proposed, I’ve kept my mouth shut. I’m not about to tell someone what to do with their land. But with the transfer to the federal government, more than 87,500 acres of the North Woods just became my land. And I get to have a say. So do you. But with that, we need to be educated to make a good decision. Many Mainers don’t know their options.
Having served as a ranger in state and national parks from Baxter to Yellowstone, I’ve seen a lot of options here and from away. Everyone is assuming national monument status will lead to a new national park. Not so. The donor is pushing in that direction, but now we really get a say as well. The feds, with our input, can make a national park, national forest, national wildlife refuge or move the land to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
But what’s the difference between all these agencies? In a nutshell, the National Park Service is directed to preserve land in an unimpaired way for the enjoyment of the people; the U.S. Forest Service has a mandate to conserve land for multiple uses; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is all about conserving, managing and restoring plants and animals; and the Bureau of Land Management, well, that’s usually termed the “land that nobody wanted,” to quote my University of Maine professor of parks and recreation. It seems that Mainers want to keep and use the land, so it would be in our best interests if the overseeing agency is either the park service or forest service, but which one?
Both agencies keep land in its natural state — no major developments, such as Wal-Mart parking lots, for instance. Both can have designated monuments, wilderness areas and scenic rivers to preserve really special places. The big difference is something called “multiple use.” The park service essentially preserves land in a more restrictive way and limits recreation, while the forest service conserves land but tries to “provide the greatest good to the greatest amount of people in the long run.” This quote is from Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the forest service.
Many times, a national park is a really special place — think of the Grand Canyon, Mammoth Cave and geysers of Yellowstone — and the national forest surrounds that land, acting as a buffer as well as a place for those to enjoy nature with less restrictions than parks. For example, national parks allow dogs on a 6-foot leash on some trails. In contrast, national forests always lets visitors walk dogs on a leash in high-traffic areas, and in other low-traffic areas dogs don’t have to be leashed at all. A national forest also offers harvesting contracts, camp leases and contracts for guides and outfitters.
Of course, we already have a great park in the area: 200,000 acres called Baxter State Park. This park already is preserved better than national parks, being wilderness of the most remote kind with no paved roads, no RVs, no electricity and no pets. It also has better funding through a dedicated trust fund independent of the governor or Legislature. They allow a small section for hunting and do a great job managing 30,000 acres for forestry “in the right, unspoiled way,” to quote Percival Baxter. Katahdin is and always has been the recreational draw to this land. It handles about 50,000 visitors per year, and it is usually maxed out. But that’s it. Katahdin is the special place around here. It’s where Henry David Thoreau was going on that hike through the North Woods.
Very few people go to the North Woods just for the woods. Even inside Baxter, campgrounds without access to Katahdin don’t fill during the peak season. Having worked the gate at Baxter, I know that visitors who were shut out of Katahdin may have had a great day on a different hike, but they didn’t drive two hours from Bangor to hike a trail that wasn’t on Katahdin. A million people do not come to these woods, and putting a national park label on the land won’t change that.
A realistic comparison would be to look at a woods-centered park or forest a few hours away from a metro area. The North Woods is about five hours from Boston. Maybe we would match up with the North Cascades National Park, a great 500,000-acre park just three hours from Seattle. I’ve hiked there; it’s a wonderful set of woods. Its annual visitation is about 25,000 visitors. Contrast this with a less restrictive, multiple-use national forest: the 16,000-acre Finger Lakes National Forest in Upstate New York that sees about 150,000 visits per year or the 400,000-acre Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont that sees more than 1 million visits per year. More options to recreate equals more people enjoying these woods.
I’ve heard a call to undo the monument. I don’t agree. Then what? Give it back? No way, the people of Maine want access to this land but for its traditional use. Historically, the land outside Baxter was paper company land, and they practiced forestry but also allowed hiking, camp leases, fishing, skiing, hunting, snowmobiling and more. Essentially, it was “multiple use.” This sounds just like the national forest I worked on as a dogsled musher in Wyoming. Locals would head off to the woods to camp for a few weeks and enjoy nature while stewarding the land. This land is a great resource, but not because it’s been held aside for the last 15 to 20 years. It’s because the loggers, paper companies and Mainers were using it — but not destroying it — for the last 200 years.
We now have a chance to preserve this land with the traditional, multiple uses that would help the community. A national forest is a perfect fit. While working for the park service, I noticed there weren’t a lot of local people who got park service jobs. When I worked in the Green Mountain National Forest, however, I was a rare out-of-stater working with all Vermonters, many with year-round jobs. We also worked closer with the local people because of the multiple uses that were occurring. It doesn’t have to be forestry, just whatever uses fit with the people in the area while still maintaining a forest. Harvest some fiddleheads or tap maples for syrup, sure. Set up a yurt in the winter and do dogsled tours, you bet. Save aside enough acres to protect that rare orchid, no problem. Everybody wins.
These 87,500 acres are great forest land, but it’s not special enough to make a national park. Katahdin is special, and it’s already well protected. A national forest is a win for everyone. The next step involves contacting Maine’s senators and representatives to let them know what the state wants. Go to the meetings — be heard. Now is the time to stop fighting each other and start moving forward together on a great resource for the state. Let this land be the North Woods we’ve always known and loved, a multiple-use area for all to enjoy. Make it the North Woods National Forest.
Heather Haskell graduated from the University of Maine in 1997 with a degree in recreation and park management. She spent 12 years working from Maine to Hawaii in state and federal agencies as a ranger, guide and recreation specialist.