F R O M   T H E   C R O W E ’ S   N E S T

Let’s “Act” On That



September was a big month for Antiquities Acts in New England. Simultaneously, on Sept. 14, a monument was designated in Maine near Baxter State Park and another 130 miles off Cape Cod.

Aside from the obvious geographic differences—mountainous forest versus 3,000 feet below sea level—the two are very different. Some residents will miss the former paper company owners allowing them to hunt on the land. But the paper industry in Maine is after cheap imports. Digital being in many ways the new paper has likely effected paper markets. Change isn't always good, isn't always bad, but it always is.

It's estimated the planet will need a trillion more trees just to begin balancing atmospheric CO2. Massive clear-cuts and ships full of exported North Woods chipped biomass is Maine's extraction industry past. Those mills are gone and that private land was going to be sold. Whoever the new owners, they would not get the same tax breaks and not likely grant hunting rights. Consider the alternatives and start with Foxwoods Casino-type, mega-sprawl tourism.

The Sea Monument on Georges Bank is something else. That was a public, common resource actively used by fishermen for hundreds of years. It was already overseen by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, managed by two federal fisheries agencies and about to have a fourth layer added with the Northeast Ocean Policy. Those generational fishermen were not privy to what tax-exempt ENGOs were conjuring behind closed doors with their common marine asset.

Something needs to be done to better conserve marine life and fisheries. Chopping up chunks of the bottom and putting GPS fences around them isn't it. One difference between these land and marine monuments is the motives of the promoters. Roxanne Quimby, much like Percival Baxter before her, appears to have had a similar singular and extraordinary goal—to give a large part of the wealth she spent her life ably earning to leave the public and nature with a gift uniquely Maine in the collective mind of the state and the nation. Wilderness.

The sea monument, on the other hand, was what appears to be jury-rigging by a gaggle of suboptimal, special-interest lawyers shilling for ENGO membership donations, politicking around with someone else's common wealth. New England fishing is an industry of small, family businesses. It supports real, historic, economically alive and culturally significant communities. Let’s “Act” on that!