Baxter and tradition

The conflict over the recent addition to Baxter State Park offers an opportunity for Maine to address uses there and on future tracts. However, unless the state is willing to include in its calculations the traditional uses of hunting and trapping, as well as new access questions, it will undermine long-term public support for its strategy to purchase more land.

Just over 80 percent of the 200,000-acre park is a wildlife sanctuary. The question is whether the recent purchase of 2,669 acres adjoining the park should be included in the sanctuary or left as former owner Great Northern had it, which allowed for traditional uses. A further question over the land, which includes two camps, is vehicular access.

The two sides on the hunting issue are clear enough — one wants unrestricted traditional uses on all purchased lands; the other, sanctuary in those same places. Both sides know that if they seek a solution between these positions, they will have to give something up, and no one likes to do that. Not surprisingly, a recent public meeting on the issue was heated.

A couple of points to consider. First, there is good reason to use this debate to establish a process for how land purchases will be used. That would shift the argument up front, before the land is purchased and Mainers have wondered what they bought. Secondly, both hunters and hikers benefit from have a percentage of lands left as sanctuaries — if nothing else, sanctuaries increase the quality of hunting elsewhere by supplying productive grounds for wildlife.

The question of bridge repair and road maintenance is a matter for the park authority to work out with leaseholders. Unless leases say otherwise, it would seem sensible that the owners of the land have a responsibility to see that tenants can gain access to their camps safely and in a reasonably painless way. If they needs cars to get there, then minimal maintenance of the road will be required for as long as the leases exist.

The park authority has a duty to respect local tradition — what would be called the indigenous culture if one were talking about a faraway country. Authority members can do that by finding broad areas for these traditions to continue in the latest addition to the park.