Proposed national park has no takers

No matter how well-intentioned you are, sometimes you will miss your mark. Although not seen except on some bloopers program, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones does not always hit his mark with his bull whip any more than Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs always hits the baseball out of the park. Your May 6 editorial, “Park and Drive,” makes some valuable points about the current state of affairs in northern and central Maine. Truly, we as community leaders in rural Maine cannot continue to expect to get different results from doing the same things. However, you miss your mark when you suggest that the best we could do to improve our situation is to contemplate the creation of a national park in northern Maine.

For more than a decade, a small band of national park proponents has sought the creation of a federally controlled national park where no one seems to want it to be, including the National Park Service. On April 26, 2001, the 120th Maine Legislature adopted a joint resolution opposing both the creation of a national park or even a feasibility study for a national park.

In response to the resolution, Fran P. Mainella, director for the National Park Service, wrote to the clerk of the Maine House on Jan. 2, 2002, that “The National Park Service and the Department of the Interior are not proposing any studies of potential new parks, pending progress in addressing the backlog of needs for maintenance and repairs in the existing units of the system.” Sound advice considering that recent reports show Maine’s own Acadia National Park – one of the most visited national parks in the country – is underfunded by as much as $7.3 million a year. If you cannot pay for what you have now, you shouldn’t be looking to take on more obligations.

The fact that 100 or so celebrities have endorsed this park proposal should not take away from the fact that those who live here do not want it and are concerned with the detrimental impact it would have on our economy, community and way of life. All four members of our congressional delegation stand opposed to the proposed park and its feasibility, and our governor is on record as being opposed to a national park in northern Maine. Fortunately, our elected officials tend to listen to those who vote them into office each year, not those they watch on the big screen.

The notion that those who would be locally affected by a national park and are opposed to it are too emotional to participate in a rational debate on the park proposal truly silences local opinion. Of course local residents who would lose their jobs in the wood products industry are going to be emotionally charged in their opposition to a national park. But give them their say: these local residents are voting members of the public who pay taxes just like the glamorous people of Hollywood. How would some of these legendary actors feel if Hollywood were closed down to movie production and made a national monument to the film industry?

For the record, community and business leaders in northern and central Maine – the same section of ground proposed to become a national park – are working and have been working for years on trying to improve our local economy. Obviously, the problems persist, which only means that more work needs to be done. There is an image out there that locals in northern Piscataquis, Somerset and Penobscot counties (and small parts of Aroostook) are blocking any effort to conserve the Maine woods for the future in order to “save” every last stick of pulpwood or stud wood for the mills in our area. Nothing could be further from the truth.

From major conservation easement deals such as the proposed West Branch project to cooperative, sophisticated tourism development efforts such as the Maine Highlands, communities throughout the North Woods region are working together to protect and to benefit from our natural resource treasures. Perhaps our celebrity friends would be willing to help in some of these efforts to promote a diverse, natural resource-based economy – efforts which don’t cost jobs or recreational opportunities but rather enhance both – if they were to be made aware of these initiatives.

Efforts are under way to create high wage jobs utilizing advanced technology in rural Maine. Governor Baldacci has proposed a series of tax-free Pine Tree Enterprise Zones which would offer unprecedented incentives for new investment in certain manufacturing sectors in underserved rural areas. In Greenville, we are working with the University of Maine and many others to develop a business incubator center for the wood composites field. From bridges to retaining walls to piers, the field of wood composites is expanding rapidly to meet the need for cost-efficient materials in a variety of regulated construction trades.

The world-leading research center for wood composites is at the University of Maine, and Greenville’s incubator will be the point of commercialization for many of these new ideas. The markets created will result in new businesses which will offer new jobs at more competitive wages than we see currently in the service-related sectors.

Do we need to have a national park to accomplish these desired improvements? No – the best parts of a park already exist in its absence, and would be diminished should it be created. Do we need to conserve our natural resources for both traditional and future industry and recreation? Yes. Are we already doing this, through existing state of Maine public lands, Baxter State Park, the federally controlled Appalachian Trail, and hundreds of thousands of acres of land protected by conservation easement? Absolutely! Of the proposed national park region, currently 52.9 percent of that area is already protected from development.

Should more land be protected, and if so, how? Governor Baldacci is seeking to answer that question by calling for a natural resources symposium this fall to discuss the current state of the North Maine Woods. This effort could determine what the capacity is for growth in the woods products field and the capacity for continued conservation, and determine where these two efforts dovetail. In other words, let’s see how many trees should be cut and how many trees should be saved to maximize our benefit as a region which balances tourism with wood products manufacturing.

Studies of the North Maine Woods, its people and its economy should be done to better plan for the future. But let’s not do so through the lens of a proposed national park which we know no one wants. Instead, let’s look at what is working here and what works elsewhere in the northern forest which we might learn from and implement, without destroying the place many of us call home.

John Simko is president of the Maine Woods Coalition and the town manager of Greenville.