Jym St. Pierre, who posted above, was one of the Wilderness Society lobbyists behind the NPCA Federal park takeover agenda in Maine that failed miserably when it was rejected by the people affected by it decades ago and ever since.  He has since made a "career" out of continuing his extreme promotions through the radical "Restore" organiziation split off from the Wilderness Society by St. Pierre and Kellet after the NPCA failure. 

St. Pierre is known in Maine as the radical fringe and is not taken seriously as anything but a nuisance and a threat.  He does not want a "study" -- there have already been endless studies and investigations resulting in the rejection of his agenda -- he wants an NPS-controlled promotion and planning exercise for a preconceived "outcome" in the name of a "study" as an end-run around the people who own the property he wants the governmnet to take.  Normal people do not need any further investigation to already know what is wrong with such a cynical political manipulation.

The activist pressure groups have done everything they can to destabilize the economy, drive out industry, and destroy private property rights in a constant stream of harassment.  Normal people are fed up with this nonsense.  There is no "burgeoning support" for St. Pierre, who is out on the fringes of the fringe, only his tired political hype and wishful thinking in deceptive promotions misleading even other activists.  Even his characterization of Acadia in Maine is a deceptive whitewash.

St. Pierre doesn't have a "solution" to anything, least of all "the economy", only outside extremist money paying him so doesn't have to work for a living as he engages in endless harassment and rationalizations for a fanatically preconceived agenda that has nothing to do with "the economy" and never did.  He wants other people's private property he has targeted for a takeover by the Federal government and an anti-democratic replacement of representative government -- which he shrieks is a "dirty trickster" for ignoring him -- with heavy-handed NPS bureaucracy.  He is indeed the "poster boy" for the National Park agenda for Maine.

The feds will not be "taking over" anything.  That may have been the case in the past, but would never happen today.  If this were to happen it would be from donations and willing sellers.

Anonymous, you're quite articulate and obviously very passionate and willing to fight for your position in this matter. Why not tell us who you are as Mr. St. Pierre has? Like it or not, anonymous attacks don't carry much weight in rhetorical battles.

Ryan on June 21, 2011 - 8:15am: "The feds will not be 'taking over' anything. That may have been the case in the past, but would never happen today. If this were to happen it would be from donations and willing sellers."

Of course they take it over.  Land declared by Congress as a new National Park means that the land will in fact be controlled as a "nationally significant" park and not what it was, whether anyone else likes it or not.  That is the whole political point of declaring land to be a Federal park.  "Nationally significant" means that local people and their rights don't matter anymore.

Ryan has no basis for and no authority to make promises such as "that would never happen today", neither does anyone else, and there is no reason to believe such baseless, self-contradictory promises.  The takeover is only a matter of how and when -- eminent domain, blocking access, economic strangulation, Greenline land use prohibitions, the replacement of representative government with NPS heavy handed bureaucracy, and the availability of more LWCF money over time -- they know how to create what they call "willing sellers".  NPS and NPCA do not want inholdings and always want to expand and control the land outside a park.  A National Park means it will be a National Park and not what it was.  It can't mean anything else.  There is always pressure to remove property owners.

Deceptive media spin making promises that NPS won't remove property owners is done to lull people into going along with a political takeover until it is too late to stop it.  The advocates and NPS have no intention of keeping such promises.  The propaganda technique of making such promises has a very long history.  NPS and its apologists always say in new park campaigns that people won't be forced out.  Specifically they used it at Acadia in Maine in the 1980s and people know it; the abuse -- and the denials -- are still going on.  "It would never happen today"? -- what a joke, it still is.  The park advocates do nothing to help the victims; they got what they wanted and don't care; they are busy trying to take over new areas.

Read the horrifying account of Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains during the New Deal as one of the earliest such abominations of population displacement on record.  NPS admits to this one -- it was a "long time ago" so they think it's safe to acknowledge as something "that doesn't happen any more".  It's a diversion from the rest of the history.  They get away with extreme actions by counting on people not believing that extreme abuse can occur in this country.  It does.

As ony a few other examples of NPS counting on making promises it has no intention of keeping and then removing people once the park was created, they did at Cuyahago in the 1970s and 80s, documented on PBS Frontline; they did it at Cape Cod half a century ago and came back in the 1990s to clean out people still in their homes;  they did it at the Minuteman park -- supposedly commemorating the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord -- as the first park carved out of a predominately settled area beginning in 1959 and continuing past 2000 with very few left (yes they really did that in the name of commemorating the American Revolution).  NPS and politicians made false promises and continue to deny their own history.

This habitual abuse inherent in a Federal takeover has left a long trail of bitterness that has a lot to do with why major new parks are resisted by people who don't want to be displaced and controlled by the Federal government.

Contrary to St. Pierre, the controversy over his promotions is not because Maine people don't know enough and need an NPS "study" to tell them; they know too much, much more than he wants them to know.  That is why he does push polls with people who don't know while demonizing "industry", and is why the radical NPCA agenda for Maine went down in flames as politically dead years ago and is why it has been rejected in every form, in whole or in part, ever since. 

Sensible people following this can see that it is the NPCA agenda that has been cynically "political" and full of "dirty tricksters" (to use St. Pierre's words) for decades as activists like St. Pierre behave worse than harassing stalkers. It is not, contrary to the inflammatory smear promoted by Federal park takeover promoters, the Maine Senate which is somehow deviously "political".  The Maine Senate openly, overwhelmingly, and routinely rejected the so-called "feasibility study" that the activists want to use as a promotional and planning tool to revive their dead takeover in Maine.  The resolution had been introduced well before the vote and the entire topic has been discussed for decades.

Anom,
Of course the feds will "control" it once it become a park, that's the point.  The land will not be taken, just can't happen, I promise you.
As for past examples you cite, that is why I said it has happened in the past.  Many of our public lands exisit because of ill-informed decisions.  However, the times were different and things like emminat domain would be damn near impossible to pull of in the 21st century in the U.S.
I can't say for sure, but in many cases you cite, I would bet that the people that are still getting "kicked out" of parks signed a life time lease or had an agreement with the NPS upon conversion of the park.  I know of several examples of folks being paid fair market value for their propertyt and then being able to stay on it a set amount of time (life-time leases, 100 years leases, etc.).  They made an agreement with the NPS.  Not to mention many of these folks were compensated for their property and allowed to stay...sounds like a sweet deal to me.
You act like the NPS is some horrible organization.  It has its flaws like any other, but I feel it does way more good than bad.  The NPS is FAR from the evil entitiy you are making them out to be.  Remember, parks not only provide recreation, but sources of clean air and water as well as habitat for animals that would otherwise be in danger of extintion from human incursions into their homes.  Just sayin...

Ryan is still making promises he has no business asserting.  No one faced with NPS abuse can stop it by claiming "Ryan promised you wouldn't do this". 

These same empty promises have been made routiney as part of the promotion for new parks for many decades.  Read the promises in the 1920s in the record at the Smoky Mountains.  The 1920s used to be the modern 'present', and people then naively believed the abuse wasn't possible anymore in this country in their modern times, just as we told to believe it today.  There is nothing new about these empty reassurances; they are just as false now as they have been all along. Raw government power is raw government power in any age.  People are still exploited for innocently believing that extreme abuse can't happen until it is too late; that is how the power seekers get away with it.

We have heard the "this time it's different" scam over and over and over in Maine for different variations on the same agenda, just as the people at the Columbia Gorge, Cuyahoga, and areas targeted all over the country for decades heard it.  It included Acadia in Maine where people are still subject to condemnation for using their own property anywhere in the acquisition boundary.

That includes people who had been promised that their property was not part of the acquisition plans but for which NPS later "adjusted" the boundary to pull them in.  The Acadia citizens advisory commission voted to protect these people, with a change in the law if necessary -- the park pressure groups blocked it, threatening to re-open the legislation for another expansion.

This is not the 1920s.  It is now.  The point is that not only does this abuse occur, there is nothing you can do about it when the Federal government has taken over.  NPS has no accountability to anyone.  It doesn't care.  Local people don't matter, only the mission of the expanding bureaucratic empire operating under the full power of the Fedreal government.  This is why it matters, in principle and in practice, that government power be limited.  There is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship, it is only a matter of time before people are shafted.

The park and wilderness activists will say anything to cajole people into letting their guard down, using false promises they have no intention of keeping; it is, after all, a political campaign.  Falling for the scam is nothing other than the commonly cited 'definition of insanity' as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  It's Lucy promising to hold the football and Charlie Brown believing that this time she must mean it, surely she wouldn't expect to get away with it again -- but we are not Charlie Brown.  The fact is that the activists want the land and Federal control and they will do whatever they have to to get it.  They don't care what their victims think.

Notice how St. Pierre weasels with promises that people could 'keep existing homes'.  He has no authority to say that, but notice also how much it leaves out:  What if you want to expand your home?  What if you haven't built your home on your own land yet, struggling for years to get to the point where you can?  What if you expect a local free economy in order to survive?  What if you don't want to live under the boot of the NPS bureaucracy?

This weaseling "existing homes" version of the empty promise is not new either.  It is exactly how people were misled at Cape Cod half a century ago when they objected to NPS coming in to take over.  No one noticed at first how much had been left out of the soothing assurances.  Then people had their land taken from them.  Many homes have been allowed to remain only because NPS lacked the money to take them -- NPCA is trying to "fix" that with the scheme of making LWCF funding for acquisition a guaranteed entitlement not subject to Congressional appropriations.  "Existing homes" was redefined in the legislation with a retroactive date, resulting in outright condemnation of "existing homes" -- including homes that had in fact been approved and built before the manipulated retroactive date.

People did not make "agreements" to rent their own homes back from the government at Cape Cod, Minuteman, or anywhere else.  They were forced to under threat of condemnation if they didn't.  How would you like to be told you have to sell your home to the government; that you have to decide in advance exactly how many years or decades you will be a tenant, which you will pay for in advance; that you will continue to pay property taxes on it; that if it needs a new roof or boiler you will have to pay for it, knowing that it belongs to the government and won't be used for long anyway; and that the community around you will be decaying because NPS is eliminating it? 

This is exactly what the "leaseback" scheme is.  This coercion is not a "sweet deal".  Neither Ryan nor anyone else has any right to impose it on anyone, with or without adding insult to injury claiming it is a "sweet deal".  That is not for him to decide as a rationalization for the coercion.

It is morally reprehensible to do this to people.  Yet that is the "choice" NPS and its apologists claim to "offer".  It is not theirs to offer at all.  No one would voluntarily submit to it.  And yes, many elderly people years later who stayed as tenants because they loved their homes so much have been and are being thrown out, with NPS denying "extending" their leases because it doesn't have to. 

NPS doesn't care and it doesn't have to care -- human rights is not their "mission".  Neither do the park apologists care, they do nothing to help these people while making the same spurious "promises" and soothing reassurances so they can get more control over more people in more areas.  These are typically the same activists who when caught in a moment of honesty will openly admit that they think people should be sacrificed to their wilderness agenda, with no apologies for any of the past abuse or what they intend to do in the future.  They put preservationsim above human rights as a matter of principle.  There is only one outcome from that mentality whey they allowed to get their way.

Although Mr. Anonymous, who has posted above, won’t reveal his name, his true identity is obvious to those of us who have followed his long, anti-government crusade. He has repeated the same flimsy claims – almost verbatim — for more than 20 years. If he had the courage to acknowledge his real name, readers of National Park Traveler could Google him, read his past rambling diatribes on right-wing websites, and see that he is obsessed with a wide array of imagined threats and conspiracies.

Like other anti-government extremists, Mr. Anonymous takes a little grain of truth and turns it into a vast government plot. For example, he is fixated on the use of eminent domain by the National Park Service to acquire land for parks. However, the National Park Service has never used eminent domain extensively. On the other hand, this power has been commonly used by federal, state, and local governments to make way for freeways, reservoirs, pipelines, power corridors, mines, and other major industrial developments.

There are a handful of examples where there may be legitimate concerns about the use of eminent domain by the National Park Service. However, almost all of them happened many decades ago. Mr. Anonymous has repeated — and exaggerated — these same few examples over and over. He has no specific examples since the 1970s, because the National Park Service has rarely used eminent domain since then.

Most of Mr. Anonymous’ arguments are based on broad generalizations, anecdotal claims, and undocumented allegations of continuing abuses. For example, there is no evidence whatsoever to support his claim that national parks cause “economic strangulation.” In fact, there is ample evidence that the opposite is true — that local communities get significant economic benefits from national parks. The most prosperous area of Wyoming is the area surrounding Yellowstone National Park. The most prosperous area of northern Maine is the area surrounding Acadia National Park. This is the pattern across the country. Mr. Anonymous is either ignorant of these facts or — more likely — he is blinded by his ideology.

Mr. Anonymous’ claim that the proposed Maine Woods National Park would be a “government takeover” is equally baseless. He argues that with a national park, “local people and their rights don't matter anymore.” In fact, most of the Maine Woods is not owed by “local people.” The region has been controlled by giant corporations, wealthy families, and real estate speculators since the late 1700s. The largest landowner in Maine today — with more than 1.2 million acres — is J.D. Irving Ltd. of New Brunswick, Canada, a privately held conglomerate run by three brothers who are worth $3.9 billion. Of course, Mr. Anonymous knows this, but apparently he considers fabulously rich transnational conglomerates to be just “local people.”

Public acquisition of some of Maine’s industrial timberlands as a national park would mean that local people, and all Mainers, would finally regain control of these lands. The park proposal is not a government initiative — it is a grassroots citizen initiative. Advocates are not calling for eminent domain, but instead for the acquisition of land for the park from willing sellers. This is quite feasible. Since 1998, more than 10 million acres of unpopulated industrial timberland in the Maine Woods have been sold — including most of the proposed national park. Roxanne Quimby has acquired all of the land that she seeks to donate for a national park from willing sellers. The National Park Service is not threatening to take her land — she is generously offering her property to the public for a national park.

Mr. Anonymous avoids mentioning this or any other inconvenient truths that do not conform to his extreme ideology. The only reason his comments deserve a reply is that some people might believe that his disinformation is true. The reality — confirmed by years of public opinion surveys — is that the majority of people in Maine support the creation of a Maine Woods National Park and would support a study of its feasibility. Anti-government crusaders such as Mr. Anonymous are terrified of such a study, because they know that once people get the facts and the opportunity to speak out, they will support the creation of a Maine Woods National Park. That is why I am confident that it is going to happen.

Well, Kurt, at least it's pretty well proven through this discussion that your headline isn't hyperbole.