Should we vote Yes on halting Central Maine Power’s new corridor through Maine’s North Woods? Before I share my opinion, allow me to introduce myself for those who may not know me.
*Photo courtesy of Jeremy Grant*
My name is Jonathan Hayes. I studied Wildlife Biology at the University of Maine and Conservation Management at Antioch University. I am a former US Marine. I hunt and fish. I have spent the past twenty-five years exploring and writing about Maine’s North Woods. This past winter I completed a 281-mile expedition across the North Woods.
The North Woods is the largest unprotected forest in the contiguous 48 states.
The fact that we still have it at all is thanks in large part to the large timber companies of the past — like Great Northern Paper — that once owned vast swathes of it. To be clear, this did not preserve the North Woods as a true wilderness, but it did prevent the kind of development that has occurred everywhere else along the eastern seaboard. That protection, however, has largely disappeared. With the massive decline in consumer demand for paper and wood products, many mills in Maine have shuttered and many more are holding on by a thread. Land that was once owned by a handful of companies has been fragmented into the hands of hundreds of private owners and small businesses.
What this means is that the North Woods is being developed piece by piece — here a little, there a little. And if we don’t take action soon, there will be no North Woods legacy to hand down to our grandchildren.
Mainers must now look beyond our logging heritage and find a new reason to cherish our forests. Logging will and should continue. But the North Woods represents the last opportunity for us, as a nation, to create a sanctuary for the unique flora and fauna of the East — something like the great and cherished wild places of the West.
I understand that timber is still big business in Maine, and I am thankful for it. But even national forests across the country are harvested, and the timber industry is not what it once was — and continues to decline.
A mature, old-growth forest could provide new and diverse revenues to Mainers: to hunting guides with new species to pursue, to recreational guides taking adventurers out into the wild, to hotels, lodges, inns, and restaurants. The list goes on.
It’s true that much of the Maine Woods is little more than thick brush — like an awkward adolescent. But small strips like the Allagash Wilderness Waterway remind us of how truly majestic Maine’s North Woods could be, if allowed to mature and serve as habitat for the charismatic animals that once called Maine home.
I have heard the sad argument from fellow Mainers that the North Woods has no beauty worth preserving — nothing like the national preserves of the West. Those who say such things have never looked, through the eyes of faith and hope, at what an old-growth primeval East Coast forest could become.
It is for this reason that I ask you to vote YES on the Citizens’ Ballot Initiative, Question 1 — not merely for what Maine’s North Woods are today, but for what they could be, if we would only allow them to restore their natural glory.
