Will Obama Step Into Divisive Land Squabble in Maine?
The canopy of Maine's North Woods Zack Frank / Shutterstock.com
The president has the authority to designate national monuments with the stroke of his pen. But will he do so in the Pine Tree State?
A land-use debate has been raging for years in the North Woods of Maine. Should 100,000 acres of land adjacent to Baxter State Park be donated by private landowners interested in the federal government creating a future national park or a national monument?
In September, Route Fifty profiled the North Woods quandary. A future national park, which would boost tourism in an economic depressed region, is supported by a variety of interests, including the Bangor City Council, the Katahdin Region Chamber of Commerce, the Natural Resources Council of Maine and The Wilderness Society. And polling shows strong support across the state for a national park or federal monument.
But it’s not universal support. Local polling also shows that in economically depressed towns adjacent to the proposed park there’s continued skepticism. Gov. Paul LePage is firmly against any move to transfer jurisdiction over the land to the federal government, framing it as a local control issue. In a letter to the White House in April, the Republican governor cited local opposition and the prospect of federal rules that would limit activities like “hunting, trapping, fishing, snowmobiling and using ATVs.”
The Obama administration, meanwhile, hasn’t signaled its views on the proposal for a national park in northern Maine. But through administrative action, President Obama could simply use his executive authority under the nearly 110-year-old Antiquities Act to take a step in the direction of a future North Woods national park by declaring the land a national monument.
Nearly every president since Theodore Roosevelt has used the Antiquities Act to designate land or special sites as national monuments. Acadia National Park in Maine started out as a national monument in 1916 after President Woodrow Wilson used his powers under the act.
And members of Maine’s congressional delegation know that Obama could very likely do the same with the North Woods land, just as he has done with 17 other national monument designations since taking office in 2009.
As the Portland Press-Herald wrote this weekend:
The push to create a national park or monument in northern Maine took an odd twist last week when three members of Maine’s congressional delegation sent a letter to Obama expressing both “serious reservations and significant concerns” about a proposed monument designation. But in their letter to Obama, Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and Rep. Bruce Poliquin did not oppose the designation—although Poliquin, who represents the 2nd District, has done so himself—and laid out nine conditions the administration should include if it created a national monument.
In the letter from Collins, King and Poliquin to the president, the congressional lawmakers stressed that in any potential North Woods national monument designation should preserve traditional recreational activities like hunting, fishing, camping and use of snowmobiles and also “respect private property rights” and avoid the use of eminent domain to bring land under federal control, according to the Press-Herald.
While that letter might lay out a roadmap for a future national monument designation in the North Woods, it is unlikely to win any support from the entrenched local opposition, which includes the Maine Forest Products Council, the Maine Snowmobiling Association and Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine.
Stay tuned …
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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