I continue to be amazed by the audacity and arrogance of RESTORE: the North Woods, the Massachusetts-based group which wants to create a national park from Maine’s working forests.

I read and reread the front-page Bangor Daily News story of July 10 about Roxanne Quimby’s quest to buy land in hopes of accomplishing that goal and each time I reread it, I became more and more disturbed. I find it ironic that a woman with her experience would be deliberately working to eliminate our remaining high-paying forest products and paper industry jobs. These jobs have been feeding and clothing rural Maine families for generations.

As the article states, Quimby came to Maine in the 1970s because it was the only place she could buy land for $3,000. She began filling little jars with cream and making beeswax candles after losing her three part-time waitressing jobs. Doing business in Maine was difficult (a lesson the Maine Legislature hasn’t learned yet), so after North Carolina provided business incentives she moved south and prospered. Now, she has returned to the Maine many of us have enjoyed for generations.

Roxanne Quimby’s road to success is one we can admire and respect. This is the type of success story America was built on. Unfortunately, she couldn’t achieve that success by remaining in Maine – a story all too familiar to most of us.

Despite that experience, Quimby is not returning to Maine to improve the business climate. Instead, she is returning with the goal of eliminating the longest existing industry in Maine – forest products. Her pursuit, if successful, will cost hundreds of Mainers their livelihoods. There are families who have worked in the forests and mills for generations. That will be taken away from them. What will they do for a living? How will they feed their families, keep their homes? Where will they go?

With her experiences, I would think Quimby would have a better understanding of the trials and tribulations which burden rural Maine families and would have a clear perspective of the effects of her words and actions.

To become a wealthy businesswoman, she had to work very hard. With the following quotes, it appears she has forgotten how hard it is to live and work in Piscataquis County. The comments in parenthesis are mine.

“I lived there a long time. (Twenty years.) I ran a business there. (Which had to move to make her wealthy.) The economy there is in shambles and has been for 100 years. There’s not a lot to damage up there. (Pride Manufacturing, Guilford of Maine, trucking outfits, loggers and many union jobs have built an economy filling Maine’s working families for years.) I don’t see how a park can hurt.”

Herein lies the problem. She and others like her just don’t get it. For far too long now, the rural Maine way of life has been under attack by those people who have made their fortunes elsewhere or have jobs in urban centers and want to become park rangers to save us backwoods folks from our own self-destruction.

It’s time we fight back and educate those people about the true value of our beloved environment – the environment we grew up in, hiked in, fished and hunted in, skied in, and yes, made a living in.

When Quimby says, “What I am asking for is respectful use of the property,” she insults our parents and their parents by accusing them of not respecting our precious natural resources – something Maine landowners are well known for.

Forest management is an art. To have a healthy forest, it needs to be cultivated and properly harvested. Protected forests with “no road” or “no access” policies are a danger to the health of the forest and the environment. Old-growth forests without proper harvest are tinderboxes ready to ignite. If we ignore this fact, not only have we missed an opportunity to benefit from the economic value but when forest fires occur, dangerous toxins will be released into the air we breathe.

Quimby and her Massachusetts- and Washington-based environmental protectionist groups have little to no respect for Maine people who are working very hard each day to preserve and protect our respected environment – an environment we have maintained for hundreds of years, an environment they have moved to precisely because we have done so well preserving it.

Dick Campbell is a candidate for Maine’s 2nd District Congressional seat and a former Maine State Assistant House Republican Leader.