Acadia’s green 45,000 acres

The Maine Woods, famous from Thoreau’s book of the same name, is the state’s commercial mother lode. In aggregate, this huge complement of mostly private timberlands occupies 17.7 million acres, 89 percent of Maine. The working forest is a crucial capital asset, underpinning the timber and paper industries that have driven the state’s economy for centuries. But for all its outputs, the forest is not nearly so economically productive, on a strictly per-acre basis, as the 45,000 acres of mostly undeveloped land and easements that make up Acadia National Park, where not a tree is harvested commercially.

It is total land volume that pays off, of course, $6.5 billion from commercial woodlands. But an arithmetic reduction is instructive. While each acre of private forest annually contributes $368 in direct and indirect benefits to Maine’s economy, publicly owned Acadia produces $3,400 per acre in sales of goods and services alone. The figure includes $1,200 in wages, or 4.7 percent of the average Maine income.

This is not to imply that just any 45,000-acre tract could be so generative. Or that if you stopped cutting it, a working forest would magically sprout cash. Rather, the idea is that exceptional places, thoughtfully and calculatedly set aside from the market system’s general reach, can themselves create and help sustain markets. Well- tended public lands can strengthen capitalism, especially in the immediate surroundings. So it is with Acadia.

Michigan State University professors Daniel Stynes and Dennis Propst, using work initiated by Ken Hornback, developed the “Money Generation Model,” for determining economic effects of national parks (www.prr.msu.edu/mgm2). Stynes and Propst estimated that in 2000, Acadia visitors spent $130 million in nearby towns for meals, room rentals, campsites, services, etc. This sum underwrote 2,300 jobs directly, and employed another 1,000 people supplying products or services to the primary businesses. Total value of primary and secondary sales was $155 million, and personal income was $55 million, creating significant tax effects.

Even with its intrinsic worth, the park is not the sole actor. The view from, say, Cadillac Mountain extends seaward beyond its boundaries. The ocean, a commons, thus subsidizes Acadia’s amenity value. Still, the park’s core real estate – location, location, location – is the working capital, a public asset producing private wealth.

Unfortunately, that asset is underfunded by 53 percent annually, according to Acadia’s Business Plan, a rigorous financial analysis certified by PricewaterhouseCoopers and published by the park, National Parks Conservation Association and Friends of Acadia. Within a larger effort benefiting all 386 national park units, Friends formed the Acadia Full Funding Coalition, in Maine, to increase this park’s yearly operating funds to $14 million through appropriations and park entry fees. That’s what is needed to keep Acadia unimpaired forever, the Park Service’s mission. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Reps. John Baldacci and Tom Allen have pledged strong support. Thanks to state Sen. Jill Goldthwait and others, the Maine Legislature recently passed a resolution urging the president and Congress to back the idea.

Private donations have an important, sharply focused role in park funding. Friends of Acadia’s goal is to supplement federal funds, not replace them. Contributors add a margin of excellence to resource protection beyond what government can do. This increases the park’s “book” value, benefiting all of Maine.

With full federal appropriations, entry fees that meet market standards, upped concession revenues, and laser-beam philanthropy of the kind Friends of Acadia has pioneered, park staff can manage future visitation and protect Acadia for the ages.

Question: What other 45,000-acre forested area, with 121 employees doing the work of 230, with half the budget needed to meet legal mandates, in a season barely six months long, and with all its vegetation left upright, gives Maine 3,300 jobs and $130 million in cash, year after year after year?

Answer: None. This rare and precious Acadia National Park – a “gem on a shoestring,” said the Portland Press Herald – deserves constant reinvestment.

Tiny Acadia is not exactly the Maine Woods of legend, but it is our national park, a capital asset if ever there was one. Maine owes a tremendous debt to all who bring a vital margin of excellence to this phenomenal place.

Ken Olson is president of Friends of Acadia, a nonprofit that has privately endowed Acadia National Park’s trails and carriage roads and helped fund Mount Desert Island’s propane-powered bus system. The organization’s Web page is friendsofacadia.org.