12/5/98
sovrov@nemaine.com
In 1999 nothing less than the control of the state of Maine's
natural resources is at stake. The Natural Resources Council of
Maine is kicking off the activity with their "1998
Environmental Congress," on December 5 in Topsham, with
national activists as speakers to organize the grassroots, the
local neighborhoods, to support their enviro agenda.
In January the legislative thrust will begin. At the federal
level Senator Leahy is expected to put forth his latest version
of the Northern Forest Stewardship Act (1999). In 1998 he
extracted from the 1998 version (S-546) the Northeastern States
Research Cooperative and attached it to another bill which
passed. The planning part of this can now be used to expend
federal funds to: preserve certain areas, do silviculture
studies, generally muck around in the North Woods, and using
these studies to justify federal easements and/or purchase of
"special" areas.
The Northern Forest Alliance, some 34 state and national enviro
groups, is girding and planning for the largest ever organized
attempt to intervene in the North Woods. The Alliance is coming
together to support the acquisition of 3.2 million acres for the
National Park, originally proposed by RESTORE. They will also
support the 1999 Stewardship Act and a myriad of smaller state
and federal legislative pieces to segregate land, slow down
harvesting, establish burdensome specific and technical
harvesting regulations. They will expand their influence through
water quality standards, watershed control. At the national level
the enviros have begun pushing for "massive" federal
lands and shifting multiple-use federal lands into restricted-use
or "no-use" categories under the assumption that the
Republican Party and the property rights movement are at best a
paper tiger. The GOP failed on almost all environmental reform in
the 104th and 105th Congress and nothing was accomplished on
property rights.
Now with an almost non-existent GOP margin, with Al Gore on the
horizon, the enviros are setting their sights for total victory.
The enviros are following Brock Evans 1991 advice on the Northern
Forests, "Take it all. Take it all back."
The December 25th Anniversary issue of Backpacker
magazine calls for nine new National Parks. The largest is the
3.2 million acre Park in Maine, which if completed, would be the
largest Park in the contiguous 48 States. The editorial says,
"In Maine... the proposed Maine Woods National Park has more
support than ever, and huge tracts of land that fall within the
proposed boundaries -- literally millions of acres are for sale.
Its time to right the wrong that occurred in 1937, when Maine
Governor Percival Baxter nixed the idea of a Katahdin National
Park, establishing a much smaller Baxter State Park
instead."
The article goes on to say, "Most of the Maine Woods have
long been in the stewardship of the timber companies, which have
kept millions of acres free of towns and highways, but open to
logging. In the past twenty years, ownership of hundreds of
thousands of acres has been transferred from small, locally owned
timber companies to a few large corporations. According to
conservation group RESTORE, the corporations are busy clear
cutting the forests, spraying toxic pesticides and building
extensive logging road networks --- essentially wreaking an
environmental havoc."
This latter phrase is of course the tired old enviro cliche of
dire forestry. It is not true. Modern timber companies operate on
a 100 year plan of sustainable yield forestry.
Backpacker continues, "Plans call for buying giant chunks of
land and restoring those areas damaged by clear cutting. Because
the Maine timber industry has been in a downward spiral, some
large tracts are already on the market. RESTORE estimates that if
all the land were purchased at market value it would cost $500 to
$900 million, less than the cost of a B-2 bomber. RESTORE
gathered more than 50,000 signatures in a petition drive, in
hopes Congress would see the need to authorize a Park Service
suitability study of the 3.2 million acre proposal."
This park activity and propaganda will, over time, begin to seem
reasonable and rational. The theme of establishing a solid
economy based upon tourism will also be used as a Park justifier.
In yet another land grab the Clinton Adminstration's Heritage
River Initiative has not gone away. The Penobscot River and its
8500 square mile watershed is still in danger and must be kept
under a watchful eye.
The State enviro organizations may thrust another forestry
Referendum upon us in another effort to wrest control from
landowners and timber companies. The Chief Forester's
"measures of sustainability," required by last
year's‚ LD 2286, will be submitted to the Maine Legislature
in January. Water quality standards proposed by the state
Forestry Advisory Task Force will also appear in the Legislative
cycle.
Two Clinton Administration programs have reached Maine. Through
HUD and the EPA they are being "studied," (read
implemented), via the State Planning Office (SPO). The programs
are Global Warming and Sustainable Development. The SPO Global
Warming Task Force has produced an interim report that raised
many eyebrows. The Task Force is working through monthly meetings
to produce a final report to guide Maine's future when and if
there is such a thing as Global Warming.
The sustainability program is being pursued by the SPO and the
ECO/ECO Forum. They have just completed a series of public
meetings under the guise of "Smart Growth for our
Communities." But the real purpose, hidden under the public
relations nom de plume, is to control community growth, control
natural resource use, and control population sprawl for their
purposes (stated in the Sustainable America Report from the
President's Commission on Sustainable Development), not yours.
All of the above coming activity, in one way or another, to one
degree or another, threatens your freedom, your rights, your
livelihood. Think about it.