To the Editor:
The LePage administration is proposing to merge Maine’s Bureau of Public Lands with the Maine Forest Service, in order to further its goal of increasing timber harvests on our public lands.
This is a terrible idea.
The Bureau of Public Lands manages many thousands of public lands acres for a variety of uses, including timber harvesting, public recreation, wildlife habitat, and ecological values.
Major public parcels include the Bigelow Preserve on Flagstaff Lake, the Nahmakanta lands southeast of Baxter Park, and the Mahoosuc Range in western Maine. The Appalachian Trail runs through all three.
Other public lands include several townships around the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, the Kennebec Highlands west of Augusta, Lincoln County’s own Dodge Point Preserve, and many other parcels large and small. These are among the state’s most important recreational and ecological lands.
The LePage administration claims it wants to spend the extra money on energy-efficient home heating systems. This may be a worthy goal, but our public lands are not a piggy bank to be raided, and depleted, for this or for other good causes.
Robert Seymour, professor of forest resources at the University of Maine, calls the administration’s proposals “rooted in ideology, not science,” and “a serious threat to the bureau’s long legacy of excellent forestry in Maine.” He says they “should die a quick death in the Maine Legislature.”
Currently our public lands are managed to produce larger, high-quality sawlogs, generating at least twice the dollars per acre as nearby private “industrial” forestlands (often overcut and resembling puckerbrush).
BPL’s public forests are mature forests, supporting a full range of birds, wildlife, and magnificent recreation opportunities, which is a good cause in itself.
To destroy this public legacy, and the bureau’s record of “exemplary forestry,” for the sake of short-term dollars would be truly unfortunate, and unrepairable in our lifetimes.
