BDN photo/ Gabor Degre President Barack Obama signed into law the creation of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument on Wednesday, Aug. 24 beginning a new chapter in the history of a region in Maine that had been dominated by the forest products industry for more than a century.
The executive order assigns the 87,563 acres formerly owned by Burt’s Bees entrepreneur Roxanne Quimby to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Park Service. It allows “hunting by the public on the parcels east of the East Branch of the Penobscot River” plus snowmobiling in certain areas and orders that a management plan be created, “with full public involvement,” in three years.
Fulfilling a promise made by National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis, park service workers were in Millinocket on Thursday at 200 Penobscot Ave., and visitors to the monument were welcomed immediately. Another office, closer to the monument and in Patten, will open shortly, according to leading park proponent Lucas St. Clair, Quimby’s son.
BDN photo/ Gabor Degre Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited the monument lands on Saturday, and as many as five public meetings, or listening sessions, are scheduled to start by Sept. 12 in the Katahdin region, park service officials said. Visitors can enter the park through its main entry off Route 11, which will be called the Katahdin Woods and Waters Scenic Byway, onto Swift Brook Road, and from the north via Route 159 and Grand Lake Road, according to the monument page at NPS.gov.
Obama’s announcement is the culmination of about four years of strenuous effort by St. Clair, who took over the campaign after Quimby’s initial effort faltered. It was for him typically a seven-days-per-week workload featuring hundreds of meetings and thousands of phone calls and emails. St. Clair hopes the designation will calm the political turbulence the campaign engendered, he said.
BDN photo/ Gabor Degre “It has been an all-consuming process. The biggest benefit is a decision has been made. We are no longer debating about whether it will happen. We can work together in a very different capacity now because we know what we are working on,” St. Clair said Wednesday. “That attitude is so exciting to me. Now we can talk about how we can make sure that” all the monument’s neighbors benefit from it.
Not everyone was pleased with the announcement. Three leading monument opponents, Republicans U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin and Gov. Paul LePage, had sharply divergent reactions to the executive order. Collins and Poliquin pledged to work with monument officials despite their opposition. LePage was bitter, saying that if “average Mainers don’t realize by now that the political system is rigged against them by wealthy, self-serving liberals from away, this is a serious wake-up call.”
“President Obama is once again taking unilateral action against the will of the people, this time the citizens of rural Maine,” LePage said in a statement. “The Legislature passed a resolution opposing a national monument in the North Woods, members of Maine’s congressional delegation opposed it and local citizens voted against it repeatedly. Despite this lack of support, the Quimby family used high-paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C., to go around the people of Maine and have President Obama use his authority to designate this area a national monument.”
St. Clair spokesman David Farmer said in response to LePage that “it is unfortunate that the governor is not interested in making this opportunity a success.”
The executive order praises the Quimby lands as being rich in culture, natural beauty and “significant biodiversity.” Describing the view the land affords as awe-inspiring, the order recites a history familiar to most Mainers including the visits of Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Roosevelt and John James Audubon of Audubon Society fame.
“Since the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago, these waterways and associated resources — the scenery, geology, flora and fauna, night skies and more — have attracted people to this area,” the nine-page executive order states. “Native Americans still cherish these resources. Lumberjacks, river drivers and timber owners have earned their livings here. Artists, authors, scientists, conservationists, recreationists and others have drawn knowledge and inspiration from this landscape.”
The executive order cites as one of the land’s greatest features something monument opponents will find ironic: Its proximity to Baxter State Park and view of Mount Katahdin. Monument foes derided the land as being essentially valueless without that viewshed.
The announcement of the signing was released by the White House at 10:30 a.m. It is the 25th executive order Obama has issued to create a monument since 2011. The monument is the nation’s 151st since 1906, according to a National Park Service listing. Of the nation’s 59 national parks, 36 began as monuments, including Acadia National Park.
Only Congress can create national parks, but presidents, under the American Antiquities Act of 1906, can create monuments simply by writing an order.
Tim Hudson of Bangor, a 49-year park service employee, has been named superintendent of the monument, Farmer said. Hudson has an unlisted telephone number and could not be reached for comment.
Located east of Baxter, the monument is expected to increase employment in the Katahdin region, where two paper mills have shuttered since 2008. The closures represent a direct loss of about 430 manufacturing jobs. The last mill, in East Millinocket, closed in 2014.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, who revitalized the Quimby proposal in February 2015 when Millinocket officials announced that he sought their conditions for supporting a national park, said he has always been “concerned first and foremost with the economic well-being of the Katahdin region.”
“The question for me has been whether a designation would be a net benefit to the region and the state and also be compatible with the existing forest products industry as well as our long-held, and deeply cherished, tradition of open land use in Maine,” King, I-Maine, said in a statement. “The benefits of the designation will far outweigh any detriment and — on balance — will be a significant benefit to Maine and the region.”
