Hundreds join at COA to mark Earth Day

BAR HARBOR – There was an almost carnival atmosphere on the campus of College of the Atlantic Saturday.

Children romped across the slightly greening grounds in a flood of sunshine. Some painted cardboard butterfly wings while others made instruments out of recycled materials or had their faces painted in preparation for the parade through the campus.

There was an air of celebration as the college marked the 2007 observance of Earth Day.

“Earth Day represents what the college stands for: the ideals and goals of sustainability and conservation,” said third-year student Carmen Phillips of Ocean City, Md., as she took a break from her face-painting duties. “It’s a way of bringing the community together and a way for people [to be] exposed to new ideas. And, obviously, it’s a celebration.”

The theme for Earth Day this year was “a celebration in renewing community,” and, according to Earth Day coordinator Sarah Short, a second-year student from Seattle, this year’s celebration offered an opportunity to share the ideals that drive the college.

“With our degree in human ecology, we all care about the Earth in one way or another,” Short said. “This is a way to come together and share our ways of caring for the Earth.”

For the past few years, the college has invited the whole island community to participate in the Earth Day events.

That was apparent in the local and state organizations concerned with the environment that had booths and made presentations during the day, and in the number of people who attended the event. While many were part of the college community, residents from all over the island and beyond came to participate.

The keynote speaker was 1974 graduate Cathy Johnson, North Woods project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, who discussed the dramatic shift in ownership of Maine’s northern woods. That shift, she said, now threatens the largest undeveloped tract of forestland east of the Mississippi River.

Johnson said that development remains the biggest threat to the North Woods, but as ownership has shifted from paper companies to primarily investment-based companies, the need to make a profit on the real estate investment is driving an interest in other moneymaking activities on that land.

Those activities include heavy harvesting, extraction of water for bottled water, road fees, gravel mining, energy production and the establishment of exclusive recreation areas.

Although large developments such as the Plum Creek proposal for the Moosehead Lake region threaten the North Woods, Johnson said, much smaller development proposals are slowly carving up the undeveloped tract of forestland, creating what she called “wilderness sprawl.”

“We’re losing the undeveloped woodland, one house at a time,” she said.

Although there have been some large land purchases for conservation, the piecemeal approach to conserving the forestlands would not necessarily preserve the unbroken tract of woods, she said.

“It’s a case where if we protect a piece here and a piece there, we may not end up with the whole,” Johnson said.

Johnson noted that the latest version of Plum Creek’s plan for developing 975 house lots plus two resort complexes in the Moosehead Lake region is due to be released this week. NRCM has received some hints as to what will be included in that plan, she said.

“Their press release said they will move off some of the remote areas, and we support that,” she said. “But the clues we’re receiving indicated that a lot of the development will still be in places that are completely inappropriate.”

Johnson urged people to oppose the Plum Creek development by attending one public hearing to speak in support of protecting the Maine North Woods, write one letter to the editor of a newspaper advocating protecting the forestland, and to talk to a friend and encourage them to go to the hearing and write their own letter, in order to double the impact.