You are here

Politics Raise A Potential Roadblock to Creation Of A "Maine Woods National Park and Preserve"

Share

Politics are being played that could impede efforts to create a Maine North Woods National Park.

In a move that astounded proponents of a "Maine Woods National Park and Preserve," the Maine Legislature has passed a resolution opposing a feasibility study into the creation of such a park.

On June 15, Maine Senate President Kevin Raye introduced a resolution, SP 519, which opposes even a feasibility study to evaluate the benefits and costs of creating a national park in the Maine Woods. The Senate voted the same day 31 to 3 to pass this resolution.

There was no meaningful notice, no public hearing, no opportunity to present any information in response to this sneak attack. The Maine House of Representatives went along without a roll call vote.

It’s not too late!

The resolution is expected to come up for another vote in each house very soon. If you live in Maine, please call now and urge your elected representatives to oppose this undemocratic action.

You can leave a message at:

Maine Senate switchboard: 800-423-6900

Maine House of Representatives switchboard: 800-423-2900

  
Partly in reaction to that move, the park's proponents launched a new website to promote such an addition to the National Park System. On that site you can find details on the 3.2 million acre site proposed for Maine's Moosehead-Katahdin region.

There's a map that shows where the park would be located, a fact sheet that lists the resource and economic benefits of such a park and which touches on potential funding mechanisms that could bring it to life, and details on recreational possibilities and wildlife resources.

There's also a 23-page Maine Woods brochure that provides further details on the proposal that you can download in PDF form, and a petition you can sign in support of the potential park.

Comments

Re Michael KellettWhat a parallel universe you and your like live in.  I am respectful to a point but with Medicare on line to cease to exist in 13 years ALL of the liberal BS is just that.  There's a reality out there and the parallel universe will have a very hard row to hoe.  Well, they'll be on to the next scam or at best, delusion, but it will end BADLY if given the power.  It will be interesting.  Mr. Reality here.  I remain hopeful, lol!


Dear Hopeful,
I would be glad to respond, but I can't figure out what you're talking about.


There's to much talk Mr. Kellett.  The country is in the ----- and all that's left is to flush.  You want the Chinese to finance another National Park?  That's real good thinking.  I long for the days AFTER 911 when we had some sense of reality, humbling and purpose.  There's a correction coming and hope we make it before it makes us and that won't be pretty but probably deserved.  I love breakthroughs and I am hopeful, Mr. Kellett.  I know I've broadened the conversation but felt it needed it. (Editor's note: this comment has been edited slightly.)


Re: Mr. KelletteJust seems to me and others that there are very significant challenges to the country that must be faced and breakthroughs achieved. Some help to that end would be appreciated.  The debt issue and how we look at spending is one VERY LARGE consideration.  I reside in one of our most significant parks and am blessed by it everyday.  I worship in it but don't worship it as my God, if I can add that.Respectfully


Hi Hopeful,

I think you're saying that you would like to see new national parks, but we can't afford them. I respectfully disagree.

- Even if the deficit were an immediate, looming crisis (an assumption that I do not share), national parks have a tiny impact on the overall budget. The entire National Park Service budget is only one-thirteenth of one percent of the federal budget.

- Land acquisition is not a significant cost for most new national parks, because they are generally designated on existing public lands. It is a potential cost for the proposed 3.2-million-acre Maine Woods National Park. However, Roxanne Quimby has offered to donate the 70,000 acres she owns. This would completely eliminate acquisition costs for this smaller proposed Maine Woods park.

- The operating costs of a new national park would be minimal. For example, 86,000-acre Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas received $2.7 million in operational funding to accommodate 197,000 visitors in fiscal year 2008. This amounts to $13 per visitor. If the proposed 70,000-acre Maine Woods park were to receive $13 per visitor for 200,000 visitors (an optimistic number), that would only translate to a $2.6 million annual appropriation — this certainly would not have any serious impact on the federal budget.

- National parks provide major economic benefits to local communities across the country. The creation of a Maine Woods National Park would be a low-cost federal program to provide badly needed jobs and economic stimulus to Millinocket and other northern Maine towns near the proposed park.

So the assumption that we cannot afford new national parks is just not true. To the contrary, I would argue that we cannot afford to not create new national parks to protect America’s great natural landscapes and historic treasures. It is not a cost, it is an investment for this and future generations.


Mr. Kellett:Sorry, tired of the words.  Guess I don't have much hope for you, lol!  OK, I have a little.  NPS as it is, isn't the glorious savior of all things dear that you like to portray.  

 


Michael Kellet is a former New England head of the Wilderness Society, which collaborated with NPCA and other such organizations behind the backs of Maine people and then launched a national PR campaign to overrun the state:  they pushded for Federal "Greenline" controls and national parks, taking over private property throughout about two thirds, or 10 million acres, of Maine. 

Kellet subsequently started the radical Massachusetts organization "Restore" with St. Pierre and other national activists such as Brock Evans (infamous for his "take it all" speech) when the NPCA plan for five huge new national parks taking over millions of acres of private property in Maine failed. 

Kellet's continued promotion of the 3 million acre target in the heart of Maine, through his radical but well-funded splinter group, likewise continued to fail because Maine people will not subject themselves to his coercive 'utopian' plans for Federal control on behalf of wilderness.  The plan died because people did not and do not want it.  (The recent Maine Senate resolution opposing it is similar to a resolution in 2001 and many more at lower levels of government.) There continue to be a lot of problems in Maine with oppressive regulations on behalf of preservationism at the expense of private property rights and the economy, but Restore and its Federal takeover plan has remained on the extreme fringe.

Kellet is not interested in "the economy".  His interest is only as a rationalization for his preconcieved wilderness political goal to, according to Restore in an early statement, "preserve, and defend the natural ecological integrity of the North Woods Ecoregion of the United States and Canada through citizen activism". The "North Woods Ecoregion", according to Restore, extends from Wisconsin to New Jersey and Pennsylvania and north through New England to four Canadian provinces.  Restore "believe[s] that there is no better place to begin the restoration of the earth" -- through Federal control, which is the only power big enough to do it.  They are radical environmentalist, preserationist activists, not advocates of human prosperity and "the economy".

For the earier, 'smaller' scale version of the "north woods" consisting of 26 million acres of mostly private property in northern New England, Kellet has said he wants most of it to be in "the public domain" -- and so does Roxanne Quimby, who regards a 70,000 acre start as only a "seed" for the 3 million acre wilderness park, which is in turn only the beginning of what they want to "restore the earth" in the larger "ecoregion" and beyond.  They oppose private ownership on principle.

There is no excuse for the agenda to eliminate private industry, but the vast lands for which they want to obliterate private property rights obviously ensnares property owners far beyond a "few corporations" that Kellet continues to demonize and which we are told not to worry about.

This radical agenda is not coming from people who are concerned with "the economy" or who know anything about it.  They are radical anti-property rights, anti-industry. anti-political freedom, and anti-capitalist, seeking to "restore the earth" through massive controls over everyone.

There is no way to impose their 'vision' under a system of political freedom in which the rights of individuals in a free economy are protected.  That fact continues to serve as an inconvenient fact for Kellet, who does push polling on empty slogans and appeals to scenic imagery, not the consequences for real people under a fundamental change in the nature of government.  This controversy is not about the scenery.

Along with NPS, Kellet in particular continues to deny NPS's own history of eminent domain and heavy handedness in general in its long record of reprehensible abuse towards private land owners and others not deemed to be part of the NPS "mission" over land it controls or wants to control.

If Kellet won't admit -- as for example in his false statement that "the National Park Service has never used eminent domain extensively" -- that the abuse has in fact been extensive, then one can only wonder how many more people have to be shafted in how many places before he cares. 

He doesn't care because individual people are of no concern to his ideological agenda.  Protecting the rights of individuals is not the aim of Federal "eco-protection" imposed on people in the name of "national significance".  These promotions are not for the benefit of local people, whose rights are to be obliterated even while Kellet tells us it is all good for us in his coercive utopia.

And how "recent" do how many cases of condemnation have to be before we are allowed to denounce them as they deserve to be, especially since park activists regard what they did in the past as justified and necessary for their supposed "greater good"?  That endorsement of the abuse as a matter of principle tells you all you have to know about the characer of these people: they continue to condone NPS abuse on principle as "necessary" while telling us that they should not be accountable for it or feared in the future because it happened in the past, i.e., because it happened.
 
The practical consequences for the future are that they want more such "greater good" in more areas.  The number of condemnations dropped off in the 1980s -- but did not stop -- when the Reagan administration cut funding for it, not because NPS and the activists changed their minds about condemnation and depopulation.  On the contrary, they expected to resume the carnage of the 1960s and 1970s under the 1988 NPCA/NPS "National Park System Plan", targeting people in hundreds of areas all over the country, after Reagan left office.   They were stopped because they have a record.   Political controls over acquisition funding contains the abuse but does not stop it.  (NPCA wants to "fix" this with a guaranteed annual acquisition funding entitlement kept out of the hands of Congressional approval.)

Instead of acknowledging what NPS does to people, Kellet claims that there have been only "a handful [sic] of examples where there may [sic] be legitimate concerns about the use of eminent domain by the National Park Service".  This whitewash of the intentional abuse pursued on principle, is stunning.

A "handful"?  "May be a legitimate concern"?  That's all?  How many moe "examples" does he think are not a "legitimate concern"?  It appears that these activists' only "concern" over condemnation is that people found out about their record, which gave them the bad reputation they deserve, making it harder to repeat the abuse, which they now seek to evade by telling us it was only in the "past", i.e., happened, so they should be given more power and money to go after more people.

Kellet and other NPS apologists will not acknowledge either the extent or the severity of their own history and cannot be trusted with more power over more people in more areas.  They want power because they want to use it in their "ecosytem restoration" vision.  They want Federal power because they know that people will not submit to it voluntarily. 

The communities around Acadia in Maine specifically mentioned by Kellet (which contrary to Kellet is not in "northern Maine" and where the national park has its own history of still ongoing abuse), depend on a private economy, most of which has nothing to do with the park.  Some businesses do depend on tourism, which would exist without NPS (and most people could certainly do without the congestion it brings).  The National Park Service did not create Cadillac Mountain or "the economy".

Likewise, there is already tourism and public recreation throughout much of the Maine woods, including both state parks and private timberland.  Wilderness enforcement is the opposite of a human economy and does not add to it, it only adds Federal prohibitions found throughout the National Park system such as the constant drive to elimiate motorized recreation and drive out "concessions".  The pressure group activists are doing what they can to harass and drive out private industry from Maine.  These are not people to trust for their advice on "the economy" served up as rationalization for a wilderness agenda.

That some people do in fact economically benefit from a takeover of others' land is not a justification for it, including claiming to do so in the name of "the economy" in the manner of the rationalization in the infamous Kelo takings in urban Connecticut.  It is also not an excuse for dictating "tourism" (meaning for the wilderness activists primarily wilderness hikers in "roadles areas") as the only allowed economic activity in a form of government central planning imposed for "ecosystem restoration" in the name of "the economy".  If the nation had had to depended on NPS for an "economy", the country would never have been settled -- or allowed to.

This is written in direct response to Kellet's specific arguments and evasions.  Kellet's libelous mischaracterization of me as engaging in "rambling diatribes on right-wing websites" where he imagines that I am "obsessed with a wide array of imagined threats and conspiracies" and other accusations are the personal smear he intended them to be.  He is looking for someone to attack as an ad-hominen diversion from the discussion of his own agenda. 

Individuals who only want to peaceably and productively live their own lives are fed up with these full-time activists and pressure groups.  They use outside money to incessantly agitate for radical political agendas openly intending to use Federal control claimed to be for our own good and then personally smear anyone who speaks out against them. 

Sensible people with a legitimate interest in parks and nature can see that there is good reason why Kellet's agenda in Maine was rejected almost 25 years ago and still is.  The record of the National Park Service and the openly stated agenda from groups like NPCA and Restore make it very clear that this controversy has nothing to do with alleged "rightwing conspiracies" and everything to do with what the well-heeled pressure groups are doing in interfering in and threatening people's lives through incessant harassment and agitation.


Re: Anon
Well said!!!  Elections have consequences and the incremental destruction of individual freedoms (the strength of this country) has reached a tipping point, I believe.  The Trojan horse of environmental wording has, for decades, been a rouse as Mr. Kellett demonstrates so well.  There is something missing, a deep personal unhappiness, that drives some the way they use all forms of deception.  Maybe it's like the 77 virgins that some believe they receive when they reach their goal that spurs those like Kellett on.  I'm not sure but it is very dark and destructive effort.  I remain, hopeful (and engaged)!  Thank you again, Anonymous, for your clear view of this reality learned from experience.


Add comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

The Essential RVing Guide

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.