Dyke Hendrickson, Maine Today, shares his thoughts on whether the Allagash River in Northern Maine is threatened as was labeled by American Rivers last week.

Tom Remington

The other day I brought you a story about some groups wishing to turn northern Maine into a giant national park and or make millions of acres of land designated at National Heritage Areas. Friend and fellow writer, David Crews, pointed me to this video I thought would be appropriate to share with you.

Tom Remington

In today’s Bangor Daily News, OpEd writer Rollin Thurlow, president of the Allagash Alliance Group, says that he has a different explanation as to why the drop in usage of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway is three times that of any of the other two big parks, Acadia and Baxter. And what is his alternate view?

In the last six years, the usage of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area has had only a decrease of less than 9 percent, to 127,000. The number of long-term hikers on the Appalachian Trail has remained steady. The rugged Northern Forest Canoe Trail has opened from New York through northern New England and into Canada, and the Maine Woods Forever organization has opened the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail. The public is still seeking wilderness and extended canoe trips. If these hardy wilderness-based activities are attracting the public, why are they not coming to the Allagash Wilderness Waterway?

Mr. Thurlow asks a great question and goes on to make argument as to why he feels the way he does. I’m not here to dispute Mr. Thurlow’s opinion, although I may not agree with all of it. What I would like to do is offer an explanation that I’m sure he has thought of and probably neither of us have the resources to prove.

In Thurslow’s piece, he shares with readers about expanded opportunities for outdoor and wilderness seekers as you can see from the above taken from the OpEd. I’m willing to wager that the “type” of user who would use the AWW also would use the Appalachian Trail, The Northern Forest Canoe Trail, etc. I’m also willing to wager, and this isn’t something I’m pulling out of my hat, the number of people who are using such areas isn’t on the increase. At best it is holding steady but more than likely on the decline. We should also point out that probably the typical user to Acadia isn’t a typical user to the Allagash.

The ski industry nationwide has been faced with a similar dilemma for some time. There are only so many skiers and the industry struggled to find a way to increase those users. Their only saving grace has been the evolution of snowboarding. The problem the industry faced is that all ski areas were competing for the same group of skiers. What would Maine look like if it added one more major ski resort? Might I suggest that not only are the three parks, Allagash, Acadia and Baxter, competing for the same shrinking group of users, they are now competing with other outdoor opportunities such as the Northern Forest Canoe Trail.

Granted that might not fully explain a threefold drop compared to the other parks but I don’t think Thurlow can completely blame the management of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway as such. If we are going to do that, then we should be comparing apples with apples and oranges with oranges. An experience on the AWW is far from similar to one at Acadia or Baxter for that matter.

There’s also a certain amount of math realization that should be taken into consideration. First off, there are far more visitors each year to Acadia than to the Allagash. At one time, and I don’t know if this is still true, Acadia was the most visited national park in American. In 2005, Acadia National Park received 2,051,484 recreational visits. Baxter had some 58,000 visitors in 2006. I don’t have numbers for the Allagash but I can assure you it is far less than either of these two.

A 20% drop in numbers when we are talking over 2 million is a lot of people, some 400,000 plus. 20% of 58,000 is 11,600 and whatever AWW numbers look like. The point is, the smaller the number of visitors to a park, the easier it is to show sharper drops when dealing strictly in percentages. If Maine added another similar national park, would Acadia’s numbers drop drastically?

One would have to, in fairness, try to determine how many total user types there are for places like the AWW, Northern Forest, etc. Then look to see how those numbers compare to which places they went.

Mr. Thurlow probably has a strong argument about management of the Allagash but he can’t completely blame the drop on them no more than those park managers can blame ipods, MTV and computer games. Nationwide trends have to be considered as do all aspects, including what I have spoken about – the increase in user opportunities compared to the same or fewer people to use them. That in and of itself will create a significant drop when only comparing one park, like AWW.

Tom Remington

The talk all around the country of late has been about the preliminary results of a survey done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicating that participation in fishing and hunting nationwide continues to decline. Fishing is down around 13% and hunting 4% but in Maine, fishing license sales have increased over the same 10-year period and hunting license sales have have gone up and down but overall have held steady.

Ken Bailey at Village Soup, says that when you compare the trends of hunting and fishing in Maine with participation at our three biggest parks, Baxter, Allagash and Acadia, Maine’s hunting and fishing trends are doing quite well.

During recent years the number of people using the Allagash dropped by nearly 70 percent, visitor use at Acadia dropped 23 percent, and the number of people trekking into Baxter State Park is 25 percent lower than a decade ago.

If taken in perspective, the drop in hunting and fishing seems small. The total number of anglers has dropped around 13 percent since 2001, and the number of hunters is down 4 percent during that same period.

It is my understanding from a report done last year about visits to our parks nationwide, the trends in Maine mirrored the national trends. Looking at the glass as being half full instead of half empty, when you keep things in perspective as Bailey points out, the lifestyle changes are such that going outdoors is not a high priority.

If nationwide downward trends in hunting and fishing are only running 4% and 13% respectively, compared to park visitor declines, I would have to agree with Ken that perhaps we should be looking at this as a success story and not a gloomy forecast.

The key now is to figure out how we are going to get our citizens back out into the outdoors to enjoy what previous generations have worked so hard to make available to their kids and grandkids.

Ken Bailey suggests that it is time for all groups, hunters, fishermen, hikers and tree huggers to sit down and figure that out.

We can all sit around and moan about the shrinking outdoor usage, especially among our younger generation, or we can do something about it. It’s time for hunters, anglers, trappers, hikers and so-called tree huggers to sit down together and find a solution to this lack of interest in our outdoors.

If the number of outdoor participants declines, we as a state and nation lose the broad-based interest and dedication to protect our wild lands and our traditional activities. If no one hunts, why worry about the animals. If few people use our state and national parks, why spend more money to keep them open and to make improvements. If no one cares …

Maybe he’s right. Perhaps it is time.

Tom Remington

According to what Kevin Miller of the Bangor Daily News is saying, people visiting Maine’s three biggest parks, Baxter, Acadia and the Allagash, is shrinking and in some cases a considerable amount. So, is this a bad thing or a good thing? The answer to that might come depending upon who you talk to.

Here’s the estimates of the reductions in visits from Miller’s article.

The number of people using the Allagash declined nearly 70 percent between 1999 and 2005. Much of that drop is attributable to fewer day users of the wilderness waterway — a situation that has sparked several recent political and legal battles. But the number of total paid camping days slid roughly 33 percent during that period.

Visitation at Acadia dropped 23 percent between 1996 and 2006.

And while the number of people making the trek into Baxter appears to be inching back up or plateauing, last year’s figures were still 25 percent lower than a decade ago.

Some will get upset over these numbers but should we be? Isn’t this exactly what most Mainers want? Don’t we want the Allagash Wilderness Waterway to remain wild and Baxter to be limited to access?

These two parks are much more difficult to access than Acadia and the decline in visits seem to be in line with the ease of access. That should answer one question as to why.

Last July, I reported that attendance to these same parks was in a tailspin. I told of recent reports explaining why.

So what is the problem? A recent study funded by the Nature Conservancy states that the national trend is due mostly to Internet and other technological gadgets that seem to occupy the majority of people’s time these days.

In this recent article, representatives of the parks still lament that they are competing with the electronic world and changing trends.

Acadia’s Steele said he has witnessed this disconnect between young people and nature firsthand, such as the recent youth playing video games while on a boat trip with his family around the park’s islands or others he has seen listening to iPods while touring scenic carriage trails.

“We are competing for their attention even when we get them here, and that’s new,” Steele said.

Instead of complaining about the fact, perhaps it’s time to do something about it. So what are we doing about it?

First you have to come to terms that there is a certain percentage of people in this state who would be quite happy should those number of visitors to places like the Allagash drop to near zero. On the flip side of that, you have those who would just as soon turn the AWW into the Saco River. If you’re not familiar with that, it is a constant flow of partying canoeists all summer long.

Somewhere in the middle is where we are supposed to be I guess.

Gov. Baldacci began a program this year called, “Take It Outside“. This program is designed to educate kids to the benefits of being outside. Good idea but is it enough? Is that alone going to change the tide? Obviously it won’t nationwide. It may have some effect on Maine kids.

Steele (Acadia Park) said he and other park managers around the nation also realize that they must do a better job incorporating technology into the park experience.

One current example is an electronic scavenger hunt of Acadia using handheld GPS units that teaches participants about the park’s geology. And in the future, visitors to the summit of Cadillac Mountain may be able to use their cell phones to dial into an interpretive message, Steele said.

Maybe this is another good idea but I still think we might be missing the boat. When people go to these places or think about going there, are they doing so in search of education or entertainment? Baxter officials say they are thinking about making it so when hikers reach the summit of Katahdin they can call a number on their cell phone and listen to a prerecorded message.

And this is incentive for someone to drive several hours to a remote wilderness area, hike for several more hours over some very challenging terrain, in order to use their cell phone? What happened to wilderness experience?

Percival Baxter evidently wanted only word of mouth advertising for Baxter Park. Do you think he had an idea? Listen to what Jensen Bissell of Baxter said.

In 2006, the number of summer visitors rose to more than 58,000 after a six-year slide, and early indications are that trend will continue this year, Bissell said. The current foot traffic through the park is also more manageable than levels seen in the early- to mid-1990s, when 80,000-plus annual visitors were taking a toll on trails and park facilities.

“So there are some silver linings to this,” Bissell said. “Now, at these levels, we feel like we are catching up on trail maintenance and park maintenance.”

We so often bring back Percival Baxter’s dreams in order to do things like the purchase of the Katahdin Lake parcel but seem to forget other parts of his wishes. Baxter’s dream was for the park to be forever wild for the Maine people. That’s why he said to only spread the word about the park by mouth. The park should be full of Maine people.

So what has the park become? A destination for a handful of nonresident people willing to pay to use the park. Bissell said that when traffic to the park was at its peak, they couldn’t keep up with maintenance and damage to trails, etc. was at an all-time high.

Many of these same things can be applied to the Allagash. The major stumbling block about the Allagash is its remoteness, at least as far as keeping up numbers. Much of the political battle over the Allagash is about use and access not about keeping the number of visitors up.

We need also to look at another set of interesting figures that Miller brings out in his article and that’s about visits to all the other state parks in Maine.

Maine officials, meanwhile, said not all of the trends are negative when it comes to state parks.

While camping figures remain down, day use of Maine’s state parks has consistently fluctuated between 1.8 million and 2.3 million annual visitors since 1997. The DOC’s Townsend said weather plays a huge role in turnout, but she said the trend indicates that many people continue to regard state parks as options for a quick getaway that’s close to home.

Since Baxter, Allagash and Acadia are geared toward drawing out of state visitors and indications are that day use of other parks is still good, then it is quite simply a matter of out of state visitors don’t want to use our parks. Why? Outhouses are good enough anymore? Sleeping in a tent, on the ground in a mosquito infested area, not going to cut it anymore? Where can I plug in my laptop? Will my Blackberry work at Baxter or Allagash?

Remember, just recently Maine announced that traffic on the Maine Turnpike was very good, especially over the Labor Day holiday. So, if people are coming into Maine via the turnpike and they are not going to the Allagash, Baxter, Acadia and our other state parks, where are they going and what are they doing?

If Maine is to compete for those tourist dollars, they have to figure this out. I’m not sure there are really enough people in Maine that want any of those tourist dollars. Maybe they like it just the way it is.

Tom Remington

The title of this post are the words of Carey Kish, outdoors nut and writer for MaineToday.com. As he’s heading out the door for a weekend of rafting on the Kennebec River, Kish gets his licks in about the statement made by a federal magistrate concerning the lawsuit filed against Maine to discontinue access to the Allagash River.

“It certainly seems apparent that the Allagash is no longer ‘a wild, scenic river, generally inaccessible except by trail,’ if it ever was such a river, as it now has eleven motor vehicle access points and six permanent watercourse crossings,”

Read more about the fate of the Allagash River lawsuit here.

Read more of Carey Kish here.

Tom Remington

A lawsuit filed against the state of Maine by two people from Maine, Charles Fitzgerald of Atkinson and Kenneth Kline of Bar Harbor, has been moved for dismissal by a federal magistrate.

“It certainly seems apparent that the Allagash is no longer ‘a wild, scenic river, generally inaccessible except by trail,’ if it ever was such a river, as it now has eleven motor vehicle access points and six permanent watercourse crossings,”

Read more.

Tom Remington

George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, in his weekly article in the Kennebec Journal says that having too much access to fun places isn’t a good thing and it’s ruining it. Read what he has to say and you decide.

Tom Remington

Maine governor John Baldacci, along with Olympic gold medal winners Joan Benoit-Samuelson and Seth Wescott, announced a new initiative geared to get kids outdoors more.

“Sometimes we need to lead our kids outdoors,” Baldacci said in a statement. “We need to get them away from the iPod and video and text messaging and just get them out to smell the beautiful air and enjoy the beautiful resources we have.”

Kevin Miller, Bangor Daily News, has more on the story.

Tom Remington

Over the last couple of years, the Canada lynx reproductive rates have not been very good and Maine biologists aren’t sure why. Kevin Miller for the Bangor Daily News talks with Maine biologist Jennifer Vashon and also discusses the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plans to revisit the lynx habitat in Maine for consideration of protection.

Tom Remington

A 21-member task force assembled by Gov. John Baldacci, whose commission is to oversee and make recommendations on how best to manage Maine’s public lands, held its first meeting on Wednesday.

According the Boston Globe, the Maine Department of Conservation Commissioner, Patrick McGowan, spent time highlighting all the lands available for outdoor recreation. He expressed concern that too few people in Maine are aware of how much land the state owns for public access. He quoted 950,000-plus acres. He also said more people need to see his presentation.

“I think this presentation needs to be seen by a lot of people in the state of Maine so they can see what they own,” he said. “This is publicly owned land.”

Is it? I’ll have to double check the figures but I believe the people of Maine own somewhere around half that amount. The rest is held through wildlife easements, etc.

There are some real areas of public lands that have been bones of contention among different Maine outdoor groups and justifiably so. When the scam that cost the Maine people over 7,000 acres of public lands in order to buy the Katahdin Lake parcel that remains open only to exclusive users, it angered a lot of people. We still have no land to compensate for that loss.

Management of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway has always been a thorn in the side of so many and nothing at least in the near future indicates that it will change.

And most recently when the Appalachian Mountain Club bought up the 37,000 acres of the former Katahdin Iron Works using public money and then closed 10,000 of it to snowmobiling after it promised it wouldn’t do that. Now the AMC is asking that more land be closed to bear hunting. Public money should never be used to buy land and then exclude certain users.

It will be an interesting chemistry to observe as 21 people, representing a wide array of areas, all vie for their interests in public lands. As much as I would like to see something constructive come from this, I’m not holding my breath. There are just too many special interest groups in Maine and too many of those care only about themselves and are not interested in sharing space. Watch out!

Tom Remington

As per the recommendations of the Allagash Working Group to form an advisory council, Maine Gov. John Baldacci yesterday announced the seven members of that council.

The purpose of the Council is to aid in the long-term governance, management and oversight structure for the Waterway and bring stability, peace and prestige to its management.

The members are: Don Nicoll, public member; Anthony Hourihan, of Irving who will represent private landowners whose property abuts the river; Don Hudson, of the Chenwonki Foundation who will represent wilderness recreation interests; Dick Walters, of Trout Unlimited who represents fisheries and wildlife conservation interests; Don Cyr of the Mt. Carmel Historical Society who will represent cultural and historic preservation interests; and Janet McMahon, an ecologist with experience in natural resources planning and management.

The seventh member of the Council, which will represent the National Park Service, has not been named.

Tom Remington