If there’s ever one thing any state fish and game department needs is good public relations and for the survival of that entity it is imperative that any fish and game have the utmost of quality public relations with the sportsmen who fund their department. While the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife does many good things, they certainly have produced some lousy imagery, particularly when it comes to dealing with a whitetail deer management crisis. It is a crisis you know.

No fish and game department can be everything to everybody, nor can they satisfactorily answer everyone’s questions and concerns. But that shouldn’t stop them from trying. Maine does, however, have a deer management crisis on their hands and too often it appears the only ones who think so are the sportsmen and a few citizens who are finding out there’s a problem.

Public relations is all about image and perception. It really may not even be about facts. It is simply a matter of how the public see their fish and game department. When too many see their fish and game department in a negative light, people at the department should be scrambling around to “photoshop” that image. After all, Maine does have a whitetail deer management crisis on their hands.

Maine sportsmen began complaining about the shrinking deer herd several years ago. I know this to be a fact because my email box contained several emails from hunters telling me about the problem and wanting to know if I knew anything that MDIFW was doing about it. I wasn’t aware of the problem and to be honest with you, I kind of blew it off myself. Shame on me.

But the grumblings grew louder and then the data began supporting what the sportsmen were yelling about. Where have the deer all gone? That became the question and it remains the question until sportsmen are satisfied with an answer. It appears we’ll get no more or better answers anytime in the near future.

MDIFW had a scape goat. They quickly blamed the problem on two consecutive severe winters with deep snow packs. Convenient, yes, but sportsmen weren’t buying that as the sole reason the Northern and Eastern Maine deer herds were shrinking rapidly. The blame quickly shifted to landowners who were cutting down trees that comprise all the winter deer yards. Again, sportsmen weren’t buying that as the sole reason for a shrinking deer herd. Many, myself included, yelled and screamed about predation from coyotes/wolf hybrids, bobcats and black bears, but sportsmen didn’t accept that excuse as the sole reason. After all, there is a whitetail deer management crisis in Maine.

Unofficially, Maine accepted the tri-fecta of snow, logging and predation as the problem. None of this has stopped the questions and nobody seems to be able to satisfy the sportsmen or citizens with any real solutions. Instead, sportsmen feel they have gotten the runaround and they’ve been witness to some pretty bizarre public relations stunts that have only fueled the flames of distrust while discoloring the image.

Back in December, when the fall deer hunting season was fresh in hunters’ minds, some serious complaining began. Much of that was directed at coyotes with hunters demanding that MDIFW do something about the problem. Not only did the demands fall on deaf ears but at the time Travis Barrett, one of MDIFW’s PR guys and a blogger, responded to complaints by saying essentially that coyote predation on deer wasn’t fish and games’ problem and that if hunters didn’t like it, they could go kill themselves all the coyote they wanted.

I even said at the time that Barrett’s comments were probably truthful but as I have just said in this article, image isn’t necessarily about facts. It’s all about perception and readers saw this aloof response as uncaring, even unconcerned. After all, Maine has a whitetail deer management crisis on their hands.

Maine citizens entered the fray. In Otisfield, residents gathered in February bringing in officials from town, county and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Residents wanted questions answered about what was going to be done about coyotes killing and harassing livestock and family pets. Essentially the response they got was to learn to live with it; a complete and utter public relations disaster.

Nobody at MDIFW stepped to the front to own the problem and work on improving a declining image. A simple, “We understand! We agree! We have a crisis! We are working on it!”, would have gone a long way but I didn’t hear that. I heard more of the same – bad winters, poor habitat. Knock, knock! Maine has a whitetail deer management crisis on their hands.

The rhetoric and bantering continued. Groups began to organize. Petitions were signed demanding the governor do something. In short, sportsmen wanted answers. They weren’t getting them. Hello! Maine does have a deer management crisis on their hands.

Then a bomb drops. George Smith, Executive Director for the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, announces that he and Sen. David Trahan have discovered that Gardner Land Company cut down one of Maine’s prized winter deer yards on land they acquired from the controversial Baxter Land Swap.

There were a lot of accusations made and information shared putting MDIFW square in the middle of yet another controversy, another public relations image calamity. According to Smith, Gardner was prohibited from cutting the winter deer yard as part of the Baxter Land Swap agreement. Smith also wrote that MDIFW knew about the cutting and did nothing to stop it.

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife needed to do something. Their image was suffering. With a deer management crisis on MDIFW’s hand, someone needed to step forward. They needed to reassure the sportsmen and Maine citizens that everything was under control. Instead, Commissioner Martin opts to rebut George Smith‘s “bomb drop” about Gardner Land Company cutting down the forest.

Instead of refuting all the accusations that have left many sportsmen and citizens fuming at what appears to be (image, perception) poor management and blatant incompetence, Martin manages only to tell people the deer winter yards they cut weren’t any good anyway. And in his words, he said that Gardner Land Company didn’t do anything that “IF&W wouldn’t have proposed on its own”. How reassuring! With a deer herd in Northern and Eastern Maine on the verge of extinction, one would be led to believe that an organization that continuously blames loss of habitat as one of the major causes, would see cutting any deer wintering yard as a bad thing. After all, Maine does have a whitetail deer management crisis on their hands.

Still searching for answers and leadership, Maine’s sportsmen and much of its citizenry seem more like the Israelites after Moses led them out of bondage, wandering aimlessly in the desert. As George Smith and Harry Vanderweide, the Maine Sportsman, prepare for Maine’s largest outdoor sports show, like Moses, they assure their followers that representatives of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will participate in a Q&A session so they can get their questions answered.

Billed as the “Save Our Deer Day“, it was planned that both George Smith and Harry Vanderweide would asked the tough questions of MDIFW experts and also take questions from the audience. Errrrrr, MDIFW has pulled the plug and will not participate. Yo!! Anybody at all at home in there!! Maine DOES have a whitetail deer management crisis on its hands. The mirror is cracked, the image is upside down and doesn’t even resemble the original picture.

Witness a public relations disaster! What’s up with all this? Is MDIFW guilty on all charges? Or are we just looking at a lame duck wildlife commissioner? The Commissioner’s position is an appointed one by the governor. Gov. John Baldacci is a lame duck and so is his commissioner. Is this what we are seeing?

The perceived image has become so skewed and soured that what is happening is very typical. People are left to draw their own conclusions and to keep pounding away with the questions. We are left wondering what to believe, who to listen to and who to follow.

In the meantime, I think I heard a little mouse someplace squeaking that Maine has a serious whitetail deer management crisis on their hands.

Tom Remington

My blood is actually boiling at the moment. I can feel it, as my ears crackle and pop. I’m trying to control my breathing but I find it difficult. Why? I just finished reading George Smith’s article, “Maine’s Deer Wintering Areas”, published in Down East Magazine.

As the article began, I got irritated because Smith said he was going to go after the Gardner Logging Company for cutting down deer wintering habitat. As most of you probably know, I am a very strong advocate for property rights. As a matter of fact I have been yelled at and accused from several directions of selling out hunting and fishing in favor of land owners. I thought this was one of those landowner attacks by another outdoor sporting group.

But as I read on is when my blood boiled. To refresh readers’ memories for a minute, the Baxter Land Swap involved the State of Maine obtaining ownership of the Katahdin Lake parcel adjacent to Baxter State Park. To get that land, of which was mostly owned by the Gardners, it involved a series of land swaps that left the Gardners holding many hundreds of acres more of prime land than Maine was getting in return. In short, the deal was inequitable.

According to Smith, on at least one of those large parcels of land, sits 350 acres in T2R4 that is home to a very large deer wintering yard. As a part of the stipulations of the land swap, Gardner was supposed to protect that yard.

The lands, which were going to the Gardner family’s logging company (the owner of the Katahdin Lake parcel), were encumbered with several key provisions.

Section Two, Part 6, of the legislative Resolve requires the Gardners to enter into “an agreement with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to continue management of winter habitat for white-tailed deer on those lots that is consistent with the management agreement between DIF&W and the Department of Conservation in effect on March 30, 2006 and that the agreement will remain in effect as long as the grantee owns the lots.”

It seems an effort by George Smith and Senator David Trahan has revealed a violation of that agreement.

An investigation by Senator Trahan and myself proved, to us, that this has not been done. In fact, according to DOC’s very credible long-time wildlife biologist, Joe Wiley, the deer wintering habitat that was to be protected has instead been harvested and no longer provides winter shelter for deer.

This is not a case of a landowner being strong-armed by government to tie up its lands. The Gardners signed an agreement or did they. If such an agreement was signed, they knew full well that when they made the land swap deal with the state and all other participants, it required the protection of this deer wintering area. If there was an agreement, they willfully violated that trust and should be prosecuted for that behavior.

But there’s still a ton of unanswered questions. Smith and Trahan dug up past emails that showed that Wiley and other biologists at the Department of Conservation(DOC) and Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) told their superiors, Pat McGowan and Danny Martin respectively, the yarding area was being cut. Nothing was done. Smith points out also that Karen Tilberg, who at the time of the Baxter Land Swap was working for DOC and very much involved in the swap, was notified by email of the Gardner’s cutting. Tilberg is one of Gov. Baldacci’s top aides now and was working in that capacity at the time of the notification. Did she notify the Governor?

But it seems the disregard for what the Gardners were doing is even more blatant if you can believe it.

The harvesting in the deeryards on those lots – which began only days after the Gardners obtained ownership – was not an accident. The Gardners even notified DIF&W, in writing, that they were going to cut the deeryards.

Heads need to roll! I’m sorry but this reeks of total corruption as did the entire Baxter Land Swap. In instances where it may not be corrupt, then it is a simple matter of not doing one’s job. Dots need to be connected. Was there ever an agreement made between Gardner and MDIFW concerning the deer yards? If not, why? When did Gardner notify MDIFW that they were going to cut the deer yards? When did the employees notify their superiors that the yards were being cut? Why didn’t Pat McGowan and Danny Martin do something about this or how much did they do to try to stop it? Was the Governor ever notified and if so why not?

The Gardners violated a legal contract from what I can see and the DOC and MDIFW, as well as one of Baldacci’s top aides, fell down on the job. Just how much of this goes back to the original Baxter Land Swap? Is this all part of a behind the scenes deal making that DOC, MDIFW and Baldacci would turn a blind eye to the Gardners cutting of the deer yards if they would finalize the deal? Perhaps Gardner was enticed into signing the deal if he was told they wouldn’t seek a binding agreement about the deer yards. Looking back on everything and seeing what has transpired, I think these are questions that need some serious answers.

Thank you George Smith and Sen. David Trahan for your hard work on this.

Tom Remington

Governor Baldacci Applauds Land Deal

December 10, 2007

AUGUSTA – Governor John E. Baldacci joined Millinocket and state officials this morning to applaud a deal that will mean more predictable land use in the Katahdin region for the future.

In the deal, the State has signed an option to acquire 11,500 acres of land in the Katahdin region from a corporation owned by Roxanne Quimby. The state must raise $3 million within two years to purchase the land. Additionally, Quimby has purchased the 8,900-acre Wassatquoik Valley from Gardiner Lands for $6.1 million. Quimby has granted deeded access to the public for specific purposes, such as pedestrian hiking and snowmobiling along specified trails on some of her various properties. Quimby has also committed to further dialog regarding ATV trails on the land.

“For the people of Maine and for those who come to Maine to enjoy our outdoors, this agreement creates more certainty for trails, recreation and hunting,” Governor Baldacci said. “For the option period, lands optioned will be open to hunting and motorized recreation.”

Governor Baldacci applauded the collaboration between the town, State and private sector to reach a deal that achieved everyone’s goals. Millinocket Town Manager Gene Conlogue, Gardiner Lands, Roxanne Quimby, Trust for Public Land, the Bureau of Public Lands, the Department of Conservation and Commissioner Patrick McGowan all worked cooperatively to achieve the end result.

“This simply couldn’t have happened without the Trust for Public Land,” the Governor said. “Their contribution of negotiators and lawyers and interim financing was absolutely necessary, absolutely valuable. We all brought to the State a shared vision, and with that vision, the details then were able to be negotiated in a way that everyone wins, especially the people of Maine who have enjoyed and now will continue to enjoy recreational pursuits in this part of the state.”

1. Absolutely, will someone come clean and explain to the people of Maine just what “more predictable land use” means!

2. If this deal is anything like the Baxter Land Swap deal, the people of Maine will probably never learn exactly what the “option to acquire” is. By that I mean we will never be told about the restrictions, covenants, etc. Those will be conveniently swept under the rug – typical of the MDOC and the Baldacci administration.

3. Ms. Quimby, our hero. She has granted deeded access to the public. Oh, yeah, don’t pay too close attention to those other three words – “for specific purposes”. How long before any Maine residents are allowed to know what those specific purposes are? Is this like the Baxter Land Deal? In other words, we still haven’t found out.

4. And once again, Gov. Baldacci bows down to Roxanne Quimby and painted a picture of hope by saying that she has “committed to further dialog”. That’s promising isn’t it.

5. These are Baldacci’s words, “agreement creates more certainty for trails, recreation and hunting”. More certainty? If this isn’t political double speak, I don’t know what is. Is this kind of like telling the man condemned to death not to worry, he will be hung with a brand new rope? More certainty? What a clever use of words to cover up the truth behind Baldacci’s companion in land scams. God, I feel better now! Well, at least I’ve created more certainty in how I feel.

6. For the option period the land will be open. Oh really! Once again, would someone please explain to the people of Maine exactly how open that land will be? Please. Try it once Baldacci before you leave office!

7. Hurray for John Baldacci. His tiny little world shows him that this process and the agreements reached “achieved everyone’s goals. Sorry Governor but I think you might have omitted one tiny group here that might actually have some importance in the state of Maine – THE PEOPLE! Oh, yeah, this is politics at its best. It’s never about the people. It’s about who owes who what and for how much. All the nasty little players that have been involved in this since many years ago when they began secretly hashing out a deal for Katahdin lands behind the backs of Mainer, are still involved and it looks like they all got what they wanted.

Makes you wonder though. I heard via the grapevine that the DOC Commissioner, Patrick McGowan is lining up his ducks to make a run for governor after Baldacci leaves. Are any of these efforts working toward that end for McGowan? Just asking!

8. In this last highlighted part, Baldacci is trying to convince us all that everything will be better than it was before the land deals. Like his road to nowhere, he is promising that Mainers will continue to have recreational opportunities. But once again, you and I will never know the many restrictions that will come from that land deal……now will we.

I’m sorry to readers if I come off here harsh and real sour grapes but there is absolutely no reason that any sane Maine resident should believe that there is anyone or anything believable or trustworthy in this whole deal. It began with the Baxter land swap and continues today and who do you think is right smack dab in the middle of it all? Roxanne Quimby, John Baldacci and Pat McGowan.

Until someone can prove to me that this entire land deal, beginning with the Katahdin lake purchase, wasn’t orchestrated by this trio, I cannot and will not support using public dollars for anymore sweet land deals.

For those who might think this is good, I’ve got some swamp land in Florida I’d like to sell.

Tom Remington

The first picture, taken from in front of the Katahdin Lake sporting camps, is a stunning scene of the frozen lake with Mt. Katahdin rising up to the blue sky in the background. Where once snowmobilers had a chance to experience this, it is now a thing of the past. State money was used through the sale of some of its finest woodlands to purchase this land. While gorgeous property, it is a shame that public money had to be used in a back door fashion to buy up land that now has severely restricted access.

The next photo was taken somewhere within the Balm of Gilead, with a view looking onto Mt. Katahdin.

The third picture shows two snowmobilers parked beside Sandy Stream with Mt. Katahdin in the background.

The last in this series is a great view of Mt. Katahdin taken from the Kellogg Road, which is now gated.

Tom Remington

Those pictures with a brief description, were sent to me by reader Steve Lane of Millinocket, Maine. Yesterday, he sent the below photograph to better show how, contrary to what some have said that these lands aren’t hunted and contain poor deer and moose habitat, this land closure will affect him in the future.

This bull moose was taken by permittee and sub-permittee, Barbara and Frank Stratton. According to Lane, the moose was shot about 4 miles inside the gate shown in a previous photo and shown again below. Lane describes the moose habitat in that area this way.

The growth up in that area is about chest high now…..prime moose habitat for the next few years.

Below, shows the gate Lane is referring to that blocks access to Quimby’s land on the Kellogg Mountain Road.

Tom Remington

Last year the state of Maine secretly negotiated a land swap deal that would give the state a 6,000-acre piece of land that included Lake Katahdin near Baxter State Park. Part of the deal divided the land into two segments. The lower segment included Katahdin Lake and about 4,000 acres which was made part of Baxter State Park and has very limited access. The northern parcel of about 2,000 acres is now being managed by the Maine Department of Conservation and is open to everyone – although now that Quimby has further blocked access, Mainers now have no real way to get to that land, used by some for hunting.

That deal angered many of us who were willing to look beyond the pretty piece of land and see the lopsided swap arrangement, the limited access and the many problems that would face Maine residents owning land next to Quimby. Also at issue was whether or not Quimby was involved in those secret negotiations that some of us believed would result in more land closures and virtually no access to land owned by the state. Much of Quimby’s land is around the Baxter Park and Katahdin Lake parcels. Although denied by those involved, many of us thought that the MDOC and Quimby secretly negotiated land deals, all of which still remain unrevealed to the citizens of Maine.

Over the weekend, I received photographs from reader Steve Lane and a brief message that read as follows:

Well…..its official. Roxanne Quimby has blocked access to her land in the Katahdin Region. Here are the photos I took today when I tried to take my daughter to some of our traditional hunting spots.

The first picture, as Steve captioned it, is of the gate blocking the Kellogg Mountain Road.

The second picture shows the Sandy Stream access road now closed by water bars and huge boulders.

The third picture reveals signs limiting access to her “Nature Sanctuary”.

Tom Remington

AEA Investors, the current owners of Burt’s Bees, has retained investment bank Goldman Sachs in order to help facilitate the sale of the company. It is being estimated that this sale could fetch as much as $1 billion dollars.

So, do the math and calculate the potential, without of course knowing any of the details of a payout for Quimby. A 20% share of $1 billion dollars is a lot of cabbage and could also buy up a lot more of Maine’s lands continuing to shut out more and more people, further limiting the available land for recreation.

Mind boggling and a bit too scary.

Tom Remington

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

This really is nothing more than continued repercussions from the controversial and underhanded dealings by the Baldacci administration in acquiring the Katahdin Lake parcel of land to add to Baxter State Park.

Busque has not supported the land swap, nor does he advocate the land grabbing and closing of lands by Roxanne Quimby. The comments that he made came recently at a town council meeting in which they were discussing the recent purchase of land by Quimby, land evidently owned by Haynes.

He then accused Haynes of having “totally stripped the parcel of land there [of trees]. It should never have happened and he used our tax dollars to do it, to strip it, rape it, and sold it to somebody who will never allow access or management of it again.”

Haynes said in his letter that these and other comments from the past are slanderous to his company. Town officials say the councilor has a right to speak his mind but agree that perhaps his methods aren’t conducive to good relations with landowners. Busque has no plans to apologize.

Haynes made the point that he and his company “….comply with all rules and regulations which apply to our industry and employ foresters to supervise our forestry activities,”. This is probably true but that doesn’t always set well with many outdoor sportsmen, like Busque who consider stripping land not good land management.

Obviously Busque is entitled to his opinion and can say as he wishes. The people will decide in the next election whether they think he is serving their best interest. Haynes, as well as other landowners like Gardner and Quimby, have a right to use their land as they see fit. That shouldn’t mean that when they decide to do things to their land that can be perceived as radical, the public isn’t going to speak out against such actions, especially in the Millinocket area where people and businesses seek their livelihoods from the land and forests surrounding their community. When people like Roxanne Quimby move in, buy up several thousand acres of land and shut out the public that has been using those lands, people will become angry.

As I said before, this goes back to the very beginnings of Baldacci’s decision to undertake this land swap behind closed doors. Many feel, and I am one of them, that many land deals were negotiated well ahead of any dealings that directly involved the lands involved in the Baxter land swap. It may very well be that between our own Department of Conservation, Gardner Land Co., Roxanne Quimby and H.C. Haynes Co. many back door land deals were made that we will never know about. I think some of those “deals” are now showing up – meaning this latest purchase of land by Quimby from Haynes.

So, what lands are next to fall into the hands of land preservationists, further shutting out recreational access to Mainers? I said a long time ago, it would take several months, perhaps years, before we would begin to see all of the underhanded results of Baldacci’s secret negotiations. And this is only one of them.

Tom Remington

All the while, it appears that Gardner Land Co. has agreed to a purchase price of $6.1 million for the 8,000 acres known as the Valley Lands which was part of an option hammered out in the controversial Baxter land swap deal. The problem comes from the time frame that Gardner has given the Trust for Public Lands to raise the money to buy it.

This is just another continuing mess the state got us into when it secretly negotiated the land swapping fiasco to acquire the Katahdin Lake parcel which now the state owns and has limited access. I am still waiting for someone to answer the question as to what happened to the $5.5 million the state got when it sold 7,400 acres of public lands in order to get the Katahdin Lake deal? We were told that that money would be used to buy that 8,000 acre piece now up for sale for $6.1 million.

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

Tom Remington