A beaver pond in the Maine Woods
Doing Big Deals in Maine
by Jym St. Pierre
There have been sales of papermills and large land holdings in Maine before. In fact, since the mid-1980s, on average one major ownership has been sold every other year. But there has not been an avalanche of large land sales in Maine like the last half of 1998 and the first half of 1999 since...well, probably not since Maine was still a district owned by Massachusetts a couple of centuries ago. In the past year the pace of big sales in Maine has been dizzying. Some of them are sincerely good. Some of them are not all they are cracked up to be. Here is a guide to help you sort the seeds from the weeds.
Let's Make a Lot of Deals
In June, 1998 South African Pulp & Paper Industries (Sappi) kicked off the liquidation sale of thousands of square miles of forestlands in Maine by putting its more than 900,000 acres in the state on the market. By October 6, Sappi had negotiated to sell its entire land holdings to Plum Creek Timber Co. for $180 million. At the same time, Sappi agreed to sell no-development shoreland easements on Moosehead and Flagstaff Lakes and the Kennebec River to the State. But that part of the deal soon fell through. Plum Creek is based in Seattle, Washington. The company has been on an aggressive land buying spree for the past ten years, scooping up large holdings in Montana, Washington, Idaho, Louisiana and Arkansas. With the purchase of Sappi's Maine lands Plum Creek became the fifth largest private timberland owner in the United States.
In September, 1998, Robbins Lumber Co. confirmed that it desperately wanted to sell to the government a few hundred acres of islands and shorelands and development rights on the rest of its 22,000 acres of forestland in eastern Maine. The Robbins say they will have to subdivide a lot of the land if they are not paid millions of dollars. Their scheme is working. In February, the US Forest Service said they are making this their top priority in the Northeast with a million dollar allocation this year and millions more expected to follow. In March, the Land for Maine's Future Board made the Robbins property their highest pick out of 53 candidate properties. Some folks, such as retired woodsman Bill Butler, believe the islands the Robbins want to sell probably already belong to the people of Maine, under an old statute. In any case, the islands and shorelands are beautiful and deserve to be in full public ownership, but the pressure to get paid for easements on the backlands comes close to extortion of the public.
On October 21, Bowater, parent corporation of Great Northern Paper,
announced it would sell nearly a million acres to J.D. Irving,
Ltd. of New Brunswick for $216 million. Great Northern had been
the largest landowner in Maine for as long as anyone could remember.
No more. By the time the deal closed in March, Irving, which already
owned more than a half million acres in the state, had become
king of the hill. Irving has also snagged some other big assets.
The wealthy family-owned company acquired Great Northern's large
Pinkham Lumber mill in Ashland as part of the purchase from Bowater.
Irving separately bought the mammoth Highland Lumber white pine
mill in Dixfield. In a public relations coup the Canadian conglomerate
also persuaded Chuck Gadzik, former State Forestry Director, to
go back through the industry-government revolving door to head
up Irving's operations in Maine.
On November 2, Bowater announced another mega sale. This time
656,000 acres were being sold to McDonald Investment Co., of Birmingham,
Alabama, for $155 million. McDonald Investment is owned by a secretive
family with a diversified financial portfolio including land holdings
in New Hampshire, New York, Florida, the Carolinas and Ontario.
Wagner Forest Management of Lyme, NH, brokered the deal and will
manage the new McDonald lands under the legal name Great Northwoods,
LLC.
On December 15, The Nature Conservancy announced the purchase
of 185,000 acres in the St. John watershed from International
Paper Company for $35.1 million. Finally, conservationists had
reason to cheer. Newspapers across the country ran headlines such
as "Group to Preserve Remote Wilderness." The TNC purchase
is extraordinary. It encompasses 40 miles of the longest free-flowing
river left in the eastern U.S. The organization deserves huge
credit for such a bold stroke. Indeed, Kent Wommack, executive
director of the Maine Chapter of TNC, has been awarded the 1999
Down East Environmental Award for his leadership on the project.
Nevertheless, there are shadows. The Conservancy plans to treat
the St. John properties differently than its "preserve"
lands. It expects to retain some of the St. John acres as wilderness,
but other portions will be managed as working forest, with extractive
and motorized activities (logging, hunting, trapping, snowmobiling,
etc.). And it hopes to trade or sell much of the land to facilitate
conservation of other lands along the St. John River. As with
the McDonald purchase, Wagner Forest Management helped arrange
the deal and will manage the timber.
On March 3, Pingree Associates, the largest family ownership in
Maine, announced they had struck an arrangement with the New England
Forestry Foundation to sell no-development easements on three-quarters
of their nearly million acres. NEEF has two years to raise $30
million to buy the development rights on 754,673 acres of Pingree
lands in northern and western Maine. They say they intend to get
the money from private sources, but they will not rule out that
some may come from public funding. News stories and editorials
across America have touted this as the largest conservation easement
in the history of the United States, perhaps the world. Unquestionably
there are superlative aspects to the proposal. There is enormous
value in protecting from development more than 2,200 miles of
water frontage, the shorelines of more than 100 lakes and ponds,
scores of sensitive plant sites, and half a dozen bald eagle and
peregrine falcon nests. However, there is much more to the story
than has been told.
In mid-March another substantial land sale hit the news. The buyers
were again Alabama investors and Wagner Forest Management again
engineered the purchase. The transaction involved more than 90,000
acres in western Maine formerly owned by the Stowell family through
Highland Lumber Co., a subsidiary of their United Timber Corp.
Highland Lumber sold the land for an undisclosed sum as part of
a bankruptcy settlement.
On March 25, Plum Creek Timber Co. announced its intent to sell
to the State for $5.2 million more than 65 miles of shoreland
from the 905,000 acres it just picked up. The deal is a complicated,
multi-party trade and sale, but it involves essentially the same
lands the State was supposed to buy easements on last fall from
Sappi, plus another 4,000 acres on Mount Abram near the Appalachian
Trail and some frontage on the Kennebec River at the Forks. What
does Plum Creek get? It gets some sorely needed good publicity,
it gets to unload shoreland that is tough to manage because of
state regulations, it earns more than a seven-fold return over
the purchase price paid just six months ago, and it increases
its land base in Maine by about 7,500 acres.
On March 25, American Tissue Corp. said it is buying the Crown
Vantage pulp and paper mills in Berlin and Gorham, NH, for $45
million. The mills draw fiber from western Maine as well as from
New Hampshire and Vermont.
On April 13, Sappi, the South African owner of the old S.D. Warren
paper mill in Westbrook announced it was closing the pulp mill
there and shutting down a paper machine. That meant the loss in
late June of 315 of the 810 jobs at the facility. Sappi had already
sold all of its 905,000 acres of forestland in Maine last fall
to Plum Creek Timber Company.
On April 26, Georgia-Pacific Corp. announced it was going to sell its 446,000 acres in Maine to unnamed investors for an undisclosed sum. The news of the sale of G-P's Maine lands came just two weeks after the company said it would sell its 390,000 acres in New Brunswick to the provincial government there for $41 million. The G-P lands straddling the international border include most of the St. Croix watershed. However, New Brunswick, unlike Maine, recognizes the value of large public lands. Approximately half of the province of New Brunswick is already in public ownership, nearly eight million acres compared to less than six percent of the state of Maine. Finally, in late June, Maine Times revealed that the buyers of Georgia-Pacific's Maine lands are Yale University's pension fund and McDonald Investment Company of Alabama. The price was about $55 million or only $125/acre. The low price reflects the poor tree stocking condition of the lands due to excessive logging. These land sales leave the future uncertain for G-P's three mills in Maine, a pulp and papermill, a stud mill, and a composite board plant. The company says the mills are "doing really well" and will not be dumped like the land. Perhaps.
On May 19, Bowater abruptly announced its intention to sell all
of its Great Northern Paper properties in Maine to Inexcon, a
small company based in Quebec that specializes in rescuing businesses
on the brink. GNP qualified. After more than a year of failing
to attract a buyer, Bowater was within weeks of shutting down
the GNP mill in Millinocket. Inexcon plans to buy not only the
papermill in Millinocket but also the mill in East Millinocket,
and Great Northern's huge hydropower system and remaining forest
lands here totaling close to 380,000 acres. According to research
by The Katahdin Times, Inexcon Papers is a new company incorporated
in April just a week before its two principals, Joseph Kass and
Lambert Bedard, arrived in Millinocket to kick the tires of the
Bowater assets. Inexcon owns no mills and employs no papermakers,
but Kass and Bedard claim to have more than 60 years of combined
experience in the paper industry.
Bowater had been cooperating with a group of its mill employees
who were trying to put together financing to buy, at first, just
the Millinocket mill, then, by the beginning of May, all of the
GNP real estate. How desperate Bowater was to sell its Maine holdings
is demonstrated by how suddenly it suspended negotiations over
the worker ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) proposal, and
how quickly Bowater agreed to sell to a couple of guys from Canada
who say they have financial backing to buy and restructure Great
Northern Paper. During the summer the sale nearly fell through
when many of the unionized mill workers voted to not go along
with concessions Inexcon insisted were essential to make the deal
financially workable. By mid-August the unions and Inexcon had
come to terms and the sale was closed, though no one would reveal
the $250 million purchase money came from or whether some or all
of the lands will be resold.
The three sales by Bowater this year to Irving, McDonald and Inexcon
come at the very moment in history when Great Northern is marking
its centennial anniversary. But the old Great Northern Paper is
long gone. The end began in 1970 when the company merged with
Nekoosa Edwards Paper of Wisconsin to create Great Northern Nekoosa.
In 1990, Georgia-Pacific took over Great Northern Nekoosa in a
hostile purchase, then sold off the Maine properties in 1991 to
Bowater of South Carolina. So after 100 years of papermaking,
thirty years of neglect, multiple owners over the past decade,
and the complete disintegration of the Great Northern kingdom
this year, the 100th birthday party is not a very joyous time
for those who knew the old Great Northern. Moreover, besides the
concessions in worker benefits Inexcon has already won, it will
not follow through with modernization of the East Millinocket
mill. And it is calculating how many jobs will not be needed in
the new incarnation of the company.
On June 29, Mead Corp. said it planned to shut down four uncoated
paper machines at its Rumford mill by the end of the year. That
will slash its workforce of 1,400 in the state by 200 jobs. Mead
is shifting production of security papers from Maine to Ohio.
The company said it is cutting back here because the machines
are very old and it wants to focus on making coated papers.
On August 11, nearly a week ahead of the bid deadline, International
Paper Co. announced the sale of its remaining 245,000 acres in
northern Maine to Clayton Lake Woodlands LLC, whose principals
are a couple of logging companies, Pelletier & Pelletier of
Fort Kent and Logging and Lumber (a subsidiary of Materiel Blanchet
of Quebec). The deal involved all or part of thirteen townships,
including full ownership in nine and partial ownership in four.
The lands surround more than ten miles of the Allagash Wilderness
Waterway, which is managed by the State as part of the National
Wild & Scenic River System. Sadly, none of the lands will
go into public ownership to improve protection of the Allagash.
Instead the already heavily logged lands will be further logged.
A lot of the wood will go to the Blanchet sawmill just over the
border in Quebec. The purchase price was not disclosed, but speculation
is the logging companies that partnered to buy the quarter million
acres paid much less $200 per acre because of the poor stocking
on the lands.
Those are the actual blue light special land and mill sales over
the past year. There has also been at least one virtual sale.
On the March 8 television program Law & Order one of the bad
guys was supposed to be negotiating a deal to sell family timberlands
to the State of Maine. The large land sales in the Maine Woods
have even made it into the script lines of American prime time
TV, the most universal of cultural icons at the trailing edge
of the millennium. Whatever happens on network television the
real estate Sale of the Century in Maine may not be over yet.
Funding Buyers for a Buyers Market
The unprecedented land sales in the Maine Woods have presented a tremendous opportunity for private buyers. And plenty have taken advantage. But the blowout sales have left the public mostly on the sidelines.
Many conservationists have contributed millions of dollars to
direct land acquisition and they deserve terrific credit. The
Nature Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, Maine Wilderness Watershed
Trust, North Woods Wilderness Trust, Sweet Water Trust, Trust
for Appalachian Trail Lands and other private conservation groups
and generous individuals have given wildlands philanthropy a new
lease on life in Maine. Still, there are some troubling questions.
Nor can we fairly expect the private sector to do it all for us.
Where are our state and national governments in protecting the
public interests at risks?
The State of Maine has little money of its own and a hostile attitude
toward federal acquisitions. It also has been demonstrating a
powerful confusion over whether wilderness is repulsive or attractive.
Gov. Angus King insists that "I'm not going to devastate
the economy of northern Maine for some extreme notion of wilderness."
However, his Maine Office of Tourism recently published a glossy
brochure that advertises "Most of the state remains as pristine
as a primal forest."
The beat of ambivalence over public lands has been pounded out
in the Legislature as well. This year there were bills ranging
from a cap on the amount of public lands, to bonds of up to $120
million in new state land funding, and everything in-between.
Gov. King proposed a $50 million bond in new Land for Maine's
Future money, to be matched by $25 million in private funding.
The legislature went along with that, putting it on the ballot
for a vote on November 2.
Meanwhile, the federal government is anxious to get into the act.
Last year the Clinton Administration identified the Northern Forest
region as one of only three Focus Ecosystem regions nationwide
for 1999. That brought national attention but not much cash to
our neck of the woods.
For Fiscal Year 2000, the Administration proposed a pair of relevant
programs. A Lands Legacy Initiative would appropriate $442 million
next year for federal acquisitions including about $50 million
to acquire national lands in New England-New York. Another $150
million would be for matching grants to states and $50 million
for forest legacy easement grants to states. The Clinton-Gore
Smart Growth/Livable Communities Initiative would make close to
$600 million dollars available for preserving farmland, suburban
green spaces and local parklands as well as incentives to control
sprawl. Of course, those are proposals mostly to boost Al Gore's
presidential campaign.
Congress has already taken back control of appropriations for
land conservation. Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and Senator Mary Landrieu
(D-LA) introduced a bill, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act,
to fully fund the languishing Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The catch is that there would be huge incentives to increase off-shore
oil drilling in their coastal states. Rep. George Miller (D-CA)
and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) have a better proposal, the Resources
2000 bill, which would provide permanent annual funding of $2.3
billion without the drilling incentives. The Miller bill is H.R.
798; the Boxer bill is S. 446. By October the Congress and the
President are supposed to have worked out their political budget
deal. Stay tuned.
What does it all mean?
There are a number of important questions and significant conclusions
that can be teased out the recent and ongoing big land sales,
easement deals and power struggles in Maine over land.
First, why is this happening? Forest historian David C. Smith
of the University of Maine prospectively answered that question
ten years ago: Lowered prices, southern competition, the shift
to non-wovens and plastics, the problems posed by recreational
uses, state and inheritance taxes, wider and more remote ownerships,
and quarterly dividends all have as their greatest energy the
need to maximize profits; and in the short run, that appears to
require divestment and reinvestment elsewhere.
Second, who are the new kingpins? The old lords of the great northern
kingdom have been overthrown. In the new pecking order of major
land ownerships the industrial paper corporations are still big
players on the whole. However, there have been some fundamental
shifts in the traditional ownership patterns.
For one thing, the type of ownership mix has changed. Institutional
owners are coming on strong. Some are family groups who have made
a killing in the bull market of the 1980-90s and are looking to
diversify their investment portfolios by adding cheap real estate.
Some are insurance companies and pension firms looking for a reasonable,
if not spectacular, return on investments so they can make regular
payments to their clients.
For another thing, the mix of ownership sizes has changed. Maine
had a very small number of very large owners and a very large
number of very small owners. The breakup of several of the big
guys has led to a number of new medium sized owners in the hundreds
of thousands of acres range.
With ownership of 1.6 million acres, the giant Canadian conglomerate
J.D. Irving has succeeded in its long standing objective of being
the biggest land owner in the state of Maine. Forbes says, through
a web of privately held companies, the Irvings already "control
an empire that dominates Atlantic Canada's commerce." The
magazine estimates their net worth to be $4 billion. Now the Irvings
can continue to use their powerful regional market positions in
forest products, papermaking and packaging, shipbuilding, trucking,
oil shipping and refining, gasoline sales and restaurants to pursue
their expansions into the lucrative East Coast markets and beyond.
Less obvious is the fact that a dark horse has moved up fast from
the back of the pack. Wagner Forest Management of Lyme, NH, has
been finding people to put up money to buy big pieces of forestland,
which Wagner manages as sort of a family of forestry mutual funds.
Wagner now oversees millions of acres in Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont, New York and Ontario. In Maine that includes approximately
1.8 million acres: McDonald Investment's 656,000 acres, Georgia-Pacific's
446,000 acres, Hancock Timber's 380,000 acres, The Nature Conservancy's
185,000 acres, the 91,000 acres of bankrupt United Timber properties
sold to a trio of Alabaman investors, plus, smaller ownerships
totaling thousands more acres. Wagner has quietly maneuvered into
first place in extent of lands controlled in the state.
Hank Swan, patriarch of Wagner, has sold the company to his management
team, but he continues to speak for the firm. They employ about
70, including 40 foresters, and plan to hire more. So that they
can focus on forestry, Wagner also plans to spin off lands for
its clients which are "better suited for other uses, including
development," according to Swan. That probably means they
plan to start marketing shorelands that will bring top dollar.
Nor is it likely Wagner is done arranging land purchases in Maine
or other parts of the Northern Forest.
Wagner stirred up a hornets nest in the north woods this summer
by putting the 656,000 acres bought by McDonald Investment Company
this year from Bowater under the recreational management of North
Maine Woods, Inc. NMW established a revamped gate system. New
resident day use fees and higher camping fees for everyone angered
a lot of visitors who lashed out. Leaseholders had to pay higher
access fees and several businesses located behind the gates saw
business drop by as much as 50 percent early in the season. The
Maine Leaseholders Association threatened to sue. The restaurant
at Pittston Farm said it may close. A force representing the Millinocket
Fin & Feather Club showed up at one gate to practice some
semi-civil disobedience. After the NMW attendant broke down in
tears, the Fin & Feather guys left. Following the first couple
of weekends under the new system, one NMW checkpoint attendant
said "We should have gotten combat pay."
Third, what is the public getting? So far, not much public land
permanently preserved. There are three possible public interest
buyers--our national government, our state government, and private
conservation interests. To date there have been no big federal
acquisitions in the Maine Woods during the landslide of land sales.
The power structure--Governor Angus King, the Maine congressional
delegation, key legislators, the forest industry, the hunting,
trapping and snowmobiling special interest lobbies, private property
extremists, and some conservation groups--have joined to block
any federal acquisitions. A CNN news report in January that the
Clinton Administration planned to spend tens of millions of dollars
on federal purchases in northern Maine was wrong. And the debate
in Congress about increasing funding for conservation acquisitions,
at least as it pertains to the Maine Woods, has focused not on
federal purchases, but on revving up grants to the states in the
wake of zero funding on that side of the equation the past four
years.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the campaign supporting creation of a new Maine Woods National Park and Preserve continues to gain momentum. More than 75,000 citizens have signed petitions calling for a full public study of the park idea. Scores of businesses have signed on. Dozens of state, regional and national conservation groups are coalescing around the idea. Sierra Club, for instance, has made the Maine Woods National Park and Preserve one of its top six national wildland priorities. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said "Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded as self-evident." The Maine Woods National Park campaign is already in the second stage and well on the way to the third.
While the feds are being held at arms length, the State is missing
opportunity after opportunity to acquire wildlands. Governor King
had a handshake arrangement with Sappi to purchase development
rights on a few shorelands. That fell apart over a disagreement
on price. Now the Governor has an understanding with Plum Creek
that Maine will buy beauty strips along Moosehead and Flagstaff
Lakes and the Kennebec West Outlet for $5.2 million. But the State
cannot and will not acquire public lands to protect the values
at risk on a landscape scale. The State is also working to help
fund the acquisition of easements on the Robbins brothers' forestlands
at Nicatous Lake. Aside from those projects, the State has been
a bystander watching the massive wildland sales whiz by. Little
change in that is likely even if a substantial Land for Maine's
Future bond is approved by the voters this fall. Most of that
money is expected to go to projects in southern Maine.
In the absence, then, of major federal or state action, the private
conservation groups have had to step up to the plate. The Nature
Conservancy's purchase of 185,000 acres from International Paper
in the St. John watershed is the biggest conservation project
completed to date. The Trust for Public Land, the Trust for Appalachian
Trail Lands and several other groups are involved with the Plum
Creek deal. The Forest Society of Maine is choreographing the
Robbins' easement. The New England Forestry Foundation is beating
the bushes to raise tens of millions to buy the Pingree development
rights. Some of these are deals are much deeper green than others,
but they all beg the question of how long we can expect to rely
on the private sector to do the public's business.
Fourth, what is the right balance of public and private lands
for Maine? There is no definitive quantitative answer. State of
the art science points to the need for much more permanently protected
and connected land. State of the debate opinions range from no
public lands to as much as possible. For now, the Maine Economic
Growth Council, the Land Acquisition Priorities Advisory Committee
and the mainstream conservation groups have settled on aiming
to double the amount of public land in Maine by 2020. More progressive
thinkers realize we need at least twice as much as that.
Fifth, is protection of a few "strategic" lands good
enough? Many argue if we bring more shorelands and high value
recreation spots into full fee public ownership or at least acquire
development rights in such areas, we can save the most important
public values without taking lands out of forest production, and
often without taking them off the tax rolls. Others say we need
to be protecting on a landscape scale, that wildlands are a rarity
and a bargain not to be passed up at the current wholesale prices,
and that the long-term ecological services and economic values
of public lands typically provide a higher return to the public
than private lands.
Actually, we need both. It is helpful for the State to focus its
limited resources on carefully targeted special areas to provide
some interim protection. However, we cannot afford to keep our
national partner on the sidelines. Without tapping the resources
of our national government we cannot finish the job. The acquisition
by of shorelands from Plum Creek, for instance, is certainly better
than the beauty strip easements the State was going to get from
Sappi. But we need to not forget that the other 898,000 acres
Plum Creek owns in Maine include a lot of significant areas, such
as lands on the west shore of Moosehead, which are going to remain
vulnerable. Acquiring a few beauty strips does not preserve biodiversity
across the landscape. It is only a downpayment on the larger task.
Sixth, are no-development easements the panacea they are being
portrayed as? No. Conservation easements were pioneered for use
on relatively small, high value properties, such as coastal islands.
And for years most were donated to public agencies and public
interest groups. Such easements are not a good instrument to ensure
sustainable forestry, they are not usually designed to preserve
ecosystem integrity, and they could quickly drain the public and
philanthropic coffers. Conservation easements are an important
tool, but there is great potential for misusing them. It is like
appropriate technology. If you need to drive a nail, don't grab
a screwdriver.
The proposed Pingree easements, a case in point, raise many serious
issues. Most of their land is so remote it would not likely be
under development pressure for a long time. But the Pingree Associates
are arranging a dream deal. They will get paid to not develop
land most of which would not have been developed anyway. They
get to keep all the other use rights, so they can log the land
indefinitely and the easements would not prevent overcutting.
Public access would not be guaranteed and nothing would change
concerning protection of wildlife habitat or preservation of biodiversity.
The New England Forestry Foundation has revealed that they "will
be exploring selling some of the easement rights to utility companies
that burn fossil fuels as a way to offset the carbon they are
releasing into the atmosphere." That could set a horrific
precedent if polluting companies can get global climate change
credits for "protecting" forestland that is not fully
protected.
Meanwhile, the fate of the lands not covered by the easements
hangs in the balance. Steve Schley, president of Pingree Associates,
has told the Land Use Regulation Commission they "don't have
any plans for development" of the 187,000 acres of uneasement
lands. However, there have apparently been private discussions
between the Pingrees and LURC staff about using the easements
as an offset to get permission for more intensive development
than would be allowed otherwise on the uneasement lands. In short,
we have plenty of private working forest. We need public wilderness.
The Pingree easement deal is neither public nor wilderness.
People should be skeptical also of proposals like that being pushed
by the Robbins brothers to sell to the public easements covering
large upland areas. Indeed, there is a huge irony in the Robbins
turning to the government for relief. This is the same Robbins
family who helped lead the charge to kill the Ban Clearcutting
referendum a few years ago, who allied with Mary Adams to kill
even the modest Forest Compact in two statewide votes, who fronted
for the paper companies to kill the reasonable four-point forestry
plan in the legislature last year, who led the hard-liners in
ousting the moderates and taking over the leadership of the Maine
Forest Products Council, and who endlessly whine about getting
the government off their backs. According to the newsletter of
the Maine Forest Products Council, the industry lobby group which
Jim Robbins chaired until last spring, "he has reservations
about spending millions of [dollars of] taxpayer's money to transform
large expanses of productive timberlands into non-tax-paying pubic
lands." He conveniently ignores the fact that most state
and federal lands make payments in lieu of taxes. He also seems
to have no qualms about trying to coerce the public into paying
him millions of dollars to compensate him for his land speculations.
At least the Pingrees are going to try to avoid taking public
funding for their easements.
What questions are not being asked?
Yes, there has been some public discourse about the causes of the big land sales, whether the public should have funding to be a bidder, what the roles should be of the different levels of government, how much public land we need, and the value of easements versus full public ownership. However, there has been little debate about the underlying social, economic and environmental costs and benefits of working forests compared to wilderness. There has been little debate about whether it is in the long-term public interest for Maine to perpetuate policies that ensure the state will remain a third world economy with an over-reliance on resource extraction and half the real property controlled by absentee, corporate managers driven by the vagaries of the global market. There has been little debate about why so many Canadian woods workers are employed in Maine and whether there is a forestry future for traditional forestry towns like Allagash, Ashland and Millinocket.
Until we confront some of these fundamental enigmas most of the
public discussion will focus on the issues at the margin. At the
margin is certainly where the anti-environmental movement wants
to keep the debate.
The Sale of the Century continues in Maine. While some good conservation
gains are being made, with one or two exceptions, they are small
or inadequate or misleading compared to the need and the opportunity.
The private landowners and the State can and want to preserve
some beauty strips backed by vast areas of working forest. They
cannot and will not protect big public wilderness, which more
than anything is what we need in the Maine Woods. The people of
America can and will have to do that. As the advantages of the
old system evaporate, more and more people are recognizing the
benefits of restoring to public ownership much more of the Maine
Woods, such as the Moosehead-Katahdin region.
© 1999 Jym St. Pierre
Jym St. Pierre is Maine Director of RESTORE: The North Woods,
9 Union Street, Hallowell, ME 04347, 207-626-5635, jym@restore.org.
8/17/99
