If only half of what the Department of Conservation says about Tim Caverly is true, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway needs a new manager.

If only half of what Caverly says about the department is true, the Allagash needs a new way of being managed.

Caverly was fired this week after 18 years as AWW manager, after 33 years with he department. His alleged transgressions — insubordination, mistreatment of employees and the like — were so serious that only outright termination, rather than demotion or transfer, would do.

To be sure, Caverly was controversial and outspoken. The charges brought by three women claiming workplace discrimination are troubling and certainly deserving of corrective, even disciplinary, action.

But there’s something to the position taking by Caverly and his supporters that he was made a scapegoat for the state’s failure to define exactly what the Allagash Wilderness Waterway is and for the department’s failure to decide how it should be run. He is, after all, the third manager the 92-mile scenic preserve has had in its 30-year history and the third to leave under duress. And the department’s deep concern about the discrimination charges would be easier to accept if the department hadn’t sided with Caverly in its own internal investigations.

The state created the AWW largely to forestall federal wilderness designation. The state assured the feds the Allagash would be protected as forever wild; the state then assured itself this wild thing wouldn’t go too far. The result has been a 30-year tug-of-war between wilderness advocates and day-use recreation enthusiasts.

Even worse — and this is where Caverly got left up bureaucracy creek without a paddle — it has never been clear to AWW managers or rangers whether the strict usage rules designed to satisfy federal watchdogs were to be enforced or winked at. Nowhere was this fuzziness more apparent than in the recent controversy over day-use access at John’s Bridge. Caverly, who always took the “wilderness” part of the AWW name seriously, perhaps to a fault, was utterly opposed. The rules, written and signed by his bosses, backed him up. His bosses, unfortunately, did not. When Caverly spoke out against John’s Bridge access at a public hearing on a new AWW management plan, he got a reprimand for his trouble.

If the mixed messages Caverly got from headquarters seem fishy, the timing of his termination stinks to high heaven. It’s been barely two months since Conservation officials told the Legislature that a bill calling for drastic changes in AWW structure wasn’t necessary; a management improvement plan for Caverly was in place and was working wonders. Now, just a week after the Legislature adjourns, Caverly is fired.

That new management plan takes effect next year — for the first time ever, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway will have a comprehensive operator’s manual. It will work only if the Department of Conservation and the new AWW manager start out on the same page.