State of Maine

Land Use Regulation Commission

Pre-filed Testimony

Of George Smith, Executive Director

Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine

205 Church Hill Road, Augusta, ME 04330

The Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine (SAM) offers its support to the Plum Creek Timber Company plan for conservation and development on its lands in the north woods in the Moosehead Lake region.  The Plum Creek plan is balanced, with a recognition that this area needs predictability and progress.

At SAM, we have been pleased with the positive relationship we have enjoyed with Plum Creek since it arrived in Maine.

The major issues and concerns of SAM members and the greater community of sportsmen that we represent are 1) the impact of proposed development on hunting, fishing and trapping, and valuable wildlife habitat including deer wintering and fish spawning areas; and 2) the impact of proposed conservation on traditional uses.

The change in zoning will satisfy demonstrated need in the community or area and will have no undue adverse impact on existing uses or resources or is more appropriate for the protection and management of existing uses and resources within the affected area.

Wildlife Habitat

In the Moosehead Lake region of Maine, deer and fish populations have suffered a steady decline over the years, driving sportsmen away and leaving the local economies in tatters.  What was once a primary destination for Maine and nonresident sportsmen is no longer even on the radar for most sportsmen.  It’s almost criminal to have allowed our largest lake and most storied northwoods destination to sink so low.

Examples of this decline in hunting and fishing effort include the following:

• The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife uses a measurement called “angler/days” to measure fishing pressure - one angler fishing one day.  Over a single decade, angler days on Moosehead Lake decreased by two thirds.  You simply can’t maintain a fishing economy in the face of that trend, and many sporting camps in that area would have gone out of business if snowmobiling hadn’t expanded at just the right time to keep them afloat.

• One year, Northeast Journal, an outdoor recreation-themed television program, set up their cameras at the new boat launch in Rockwood, during the peak spring fishing season, to interview anglers.  The crew sat there all day and saw no one fishing Moosehead Lake.  Finally, an angler boated to the launch.  A nonresident, he was steaming mad.  He’d been told Moosehead Lake was a hot fishing destination and he’d fished all day without catching a thing.  He would not be coming back.  That didn’t make for a very favorable TV show.

• I’ve talked with many sporting camp owners since the 2006 deer season ended.  The news was dreadful.  One camp reported 91 hunters, no deer.  Another had four dozen hunters, no deer. Another had 108 hunters, six deer. 

There are many reasons for these problems: lack of deer wintering habitat, predation by coyotes, poor fisheries management, illegal introductions of competing species of fish, and a too-small constituency to draw the attention and resources of the state to address these problems. 

The change in zoning will protect diverse, abundant and unique high-value natural resources and features

Protection and Development of Nature-Based Tourism Resources

While there is no way the Plum Creek plan can make it all better, I have been impressed with their work to date.  I believe Plum Creek’s continued presence in Maine will bring positive impacts on our wildlife resources and recreational opportunities.  In addition, the Plum Creek plan offers the promise of vast tracts of permanently protected lands and a much-needed influx of population to the region.

I have witnessed Plum Creek’s commitment to hunting, fishing and fish and game resources in Montana.  In fact, Jonathon Carter and I traveled together to Montana to do some field research on the company and its practices, when Plum Creek began to buy property in Maine.

Plum Creek is in the forefront on fisheries management and habitat protection issues on their land holdings in Montana.  If the conservation and development plan is approved by LURC, I expect Plum Creek will be taking a greater role in our effort to restore the Moosehead Lake region’s fisheries and wildlife, and expand hunting and fishing opportunities there.  Indeed, the plan itself will deliver renewed energy and opportunities that are needed if we are to bring back the fishing and hunting that once defined the region.

Given Maine’s primary reputation for native salmonids, and the unique place we hold in having nearly all of our country’s remaining unspoiled native eastern brook trout, Plum Creek’s protection strategy for remote ponds and undeveloped shorelines is a key component giving us hope that this precious resource will be here fifty and a hundred years from now.  This is one of the most exciting parts of the plan for SAM.  Many of the 60 pristine ponds that will be protected forever in the Plum Creek plan contain native and wild brook trout.

The recent deer wintering area cooperative agreement between Plum Creek and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will help the state expand critical deer populations.  This is an important step taken by the company to address stakeholder concerns.  It should be noted that because of this new agreement, which establishes a number of innovative new precedents, we can be confident that the plan before you will not adversely affect whitetail deer.

Obviously, these efforts to protect and enhance our fisheries and wildlife resources cannot be a one-way street.  SAM believes Plum Creek deserves to be recognized for its efforts, and rewarded.  We want them to stay in Maine.  We want their help to reach our goals for their lands. 

Conservation Framework

We have examined the conservation elements of this plan, and the Conservation Framework, and find the language to be satisfactory, albeit somewhat vague in some areas.  The inclusion of the Conservation Framework as part of the overall package of the Plum Creek plan ensures that the proposal will not have an undue adverse impact on traditional uses in the region.

Having worked on the issues surrounding conservation easements for ten years - as a member of the Forest Legacy Committee and the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund Board, at the legislature and state agencies, and directly with landowners - I understand the difficulties of creating language that will stand the tests of time.  Regardless of how well we do, good faith will be required as we move forward in order to achieve the goals of all parties.

Easement language is critically important to sportsmen.  Restricted access is often the method chosen to reduce or eliminate uses like hunting, and we have looked for assurances in the easement, and from the easement owners and the landowners.  We believe they fully intend to deliver on all their promises.  Given the longstanding tradition of easy access to the lakes, rivers, streams, and lands that are encompassed by this project, this “principle value” will continue within the area covered under the Plum Creek plan. 

We do have one concern that we hope will be addressed in this process.  The designation of a significant portion of the lands in the Conservation Framework – specifically those lands that are going to the Appalachian Mountain Club – include a large “ecoreserve.”  This could eliminate some of the primary recreational activities currently enjoyed on those lands, including riding snowmobiles and ATVs, trapping, and accessing the property by motor vehicle for the purpose of hunting. We are very concerned about losing access and these activities in that area which has always been popular with sportsmen.  We also question whether the resources required for ecoreserve status are present in this area.

We have been unable to determine answers to some key questions, and we hope this process will give us an opportunity to pose the following questions on behalf of sportsmen to Plum Creek and the owners of the conservation easements about these issues:

• Will the easements result in less access and use by sportsmen, both motorized and nonmotorized?  For example, will the “ecoreserves” continue the current practice of prohibiting snowmobile use and motorized access? 

• What specifically are the resources that require this area to be designated an ecoreserve with commensurate restrictions on uses?

• What are the potential losses to sportsmen from both the fee and easement purchases by The Nature Conservancy and Appalachian Mountain Club?  Will bear baiting be banned?  Hunting in tree stands?

We have major concerns about the loss of some uses and motorized access to these lands, which are currently open, very accessible, and welcoming to all hunters, trappers, and anglers.

Nature of Uses and Activities within Proposed Development Zones

The development proposed in the Plum Creek plan will help restore the character of the region to the days when Greenville was the center of Maine’s outdoor industry and experiences.  The resorts incorporated in this plan will help attract sportsmen to the region.

A spectacular resort could create the sort of demand that will allow other lodges in the area to substantially increase their rates - particularly if the recreational opportunities (like fishing) are improved to match the facilities.  We hope the new attention on the Greenville area will be the catalyst to restoration of its once-thriving fishery.  From 1993 to 2005, Maine lost nearly 30,000 nonresident anglers, representing a minimum economic loss of $15 million. 

When I was a kid, we used to travel to Moosehead often, usually going all the way to Seboomook where my aunt and uncle had a camp.  The fishing was terrific.  Hotels were everywhere.  The region was booming.  As the fishery diminished, I stopped coming, as did thousands of other anglers.  I haven’t fished Moosehead Lake for two decades.  There are a lot better places to fish in Maine and elsewhere.

These days, sportsmen spend big bucks traveling to hunt and fish.  I have been privileged to visit some of North America’s finest lodges, mostly on fishing expeditions, and I can report first hand that sportsmen flock to these places and the more amenities the better.  Most of us Baby Boomers don’t do tents any longer.  After a day of hunting or fishing, we want a hot shower, gourmet meal, and comfortable bed.

In Canada, the provinces really understand this dynamic of their economy.  They offer a tremendous amount of help – including marketing - to their lodges and guides. For example, the province of Quebec, where I love to fish, has a booth at our State of Maine Sportsman’s Show in Augusta promoting the province’s lodges and guides, and they also place a representative in another booth to assist the Cree Indians in booking trips to their lodges.  The province of Quebec is also one of the major sponsors of the Northeast Journal outdoor television show, produced by a Maine company and seen on the New England Sports Network (NESN).

One lodge in Alaska that my wife and I visited a few years ago now charges $7,500 per week for five days of fishing.  Right now, no place in Maine can even come close to that price.  In fact, most of the lodges in the nearby Canadian provinces and other rural states can demand much higher prices than their counterparts in Maine – not because their lodges or environments are better, but because they have much better hunting and fishing.

In Maine, we’re no longer a destination state for sportsmen.  And our lodges and guides are completely on their own.  Many are struggling.  A major new resort in this region will lift all ships and bring a new focus to the entire region that will benefit every sporting camp and guide. 

I have fished some of North America’s best rivers, and I can tell you, Maine’s rivers are just as spectacular, but we don’t have the quality and quantity of fish that you get in other places.  But we could.  And I am hoping that Plum Creek’s resort - and other development plans - will be the catalyst we’ve needed to bring that region’s fisheries up to what they could be by bringing new people, new energy, and a new focus to that region’s recreational activities and resources.

For more than a century, Maine sportsmen have enjoyed the privilege of owning hunting, trapping and fishing camps in the north woods.  Over the last decade, nearly two million acres have been placed in conservation ownership (fee or easement), eliminating the opportunity for small privately owned camps.  SAM welcomes the possibility that this project will make available new opportunities for sportsmen to pursue their dreams of owning camps in the north woods.  The Plum Creek plan will provide some of those opportunities, and Plum Creek should be encouraged to do so.

Plum Creek has some of the very best recreational property in the state, and offering a small bit of that property to sportsmen and others will bring many positive benefits to the region along with a contingent of new property owners who will value and help us protect and enhance wildlife habitat and the surrounding environment.  This new constituency of land and camp owners will be a welcome addition to our efforts in that regard.

We have examined the size and configuration of lots, to make sure that land is not “wasted” through the sale of large lots to buyers who really only want a small lot, leaving the remaining land unavailable for traditional activities from hunting to tree harvesting.  We believe the plan to be a sensible division of the lands to be developed, without those large 40 acre lots that once threatened the entire north woods.

The change in zoning will support diverse and abundant recreational opportunities, particularly for primitive pursuits.  The change in zoning will preserve natural character values, including the uniqueness of a vast forested area that is largely undeveloped and remote from population centers

Much of the debate over the Plum Creek plan is about differing visions for the north woods.  Some desire a vast inaccessible uncut forest.  Others a national park (less accessible, more expensive to access, and not good for sportsmen because there is no hunting in national parks). 

LURC and the people of Maine have a different vision - a north woods with a balance of conservation and development, mostly private ownership, shared by all recreationists, producing fiber for our mills, serving Maine’s economy and Maine’s future.

SAM shares that vision with you.

Most of us have been loudly arguing the merits of “wilderness” for years in Maine, and the only conclusion I can reach is that it remains in the eye of the beholder.  Maine doesn’t have real wilderness, by my definition - and I have been in the real wilderness in Alaska and Quebec and Labrador - and can report that they have motors, ATVs, chain saws, and all the comforts of home.

Maine’s best opportunity is to maintain a vast forested area, salt it with nice lodges and camps, offer plenty of access (while keeping in mind that “remoteness” is important although hard to define), and strictly protect the resources (including fish).  I think Plum Creek’s plan does this.

Those who argue that the Moosehead Lake region must be road less, uncut, and available to only the hardiest few are wrong.  That is the wrong answer for Greenville, the wrong answer for Maine, and the wrong answer for every Mainer who now enjoys the great north woods.

Conclusions

SAM offers its support to this plan for conservation and development in the north woods surrounding Greenville.  The plan is balanced, with a recognition that this area needs predictability and progress.

From this complicated and difficult process, Greenville, Rockwood, Moosehead Lake, and the greater north woods, may be able to return to the promise and prosperity of the days when sportsmen flocked to the area, fish and game were plentiful, and life was “as it should be.”

Date: _________________________

Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine

_____________________________

George A. Smith, Executive Director