On the eve of the National Park Service’s centennial, President Barack Obama named Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument on Wednesday as the newest national park site.
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The Katahdin Woods and Waters monument adjacent to Baxter State Park includes the East Branch of the Penobscot River and stunning views of Maine’s tallest mountain, Katahdin. The land is cherished by Native Americans, and its history includes visits by naturalist Henry David Thoreau and President Theodore Roosevelt. For more than a decade, Roxanne Quimby – the wealthy, polarizing co-founder of Burt’s Bees – tried to give away the area to the government to create a new national park. Mount Katahdin, the state’s highest peak, can be seen in the background as a rainstorm passes through Baxter State Park. Susan Collins and Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin last fall wrote a letter to Mr. Obama outlining “serious reservations” about the proposal.
This spring, Maine’s legislature passed a symbolic bill saying the legislature doesn’t consent to the federal government acquiring land for a monument.
Republican Gov. Paul LePage called the proposal an “ego play”.
She retreated from the project in late 2011 and handed it over to her son, Lucas St. Clair, who returned to his native ME to try to salvage the effort. The land will be managed by the National Park Service and will be open for a host of recreational opportunities, most notably hiking, camping, whitewater paddling and fishing.
It will be the only national monument that allows hunting, because Elliotsville Plantation put a specific provision for that activity in the deed it transferred to the federal government on Tuesday.
Quimby began buying the timberland in the 1990s with earnings from the Burt’s Bees line of natural care products and formalized her plan in 2011. The national monument designation required only an act by the president. Rob BishopRob BishopObama creates new national monument in Maine GOP blasts EPA on mine spill anniversary Obama asks agencies to consider climate in environmental reviews MORE (R-Utah), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a June statement following a field hearing that the GOP used to highlight local opposition.
The private donation totals $100 million.
Through the Centennial Campaign for America’s National Parks, the National Park Foundation seeks to raise $350 million for programs and projects created to protect America’s special places, connect people from all backgrounds to parks, and inspire future generations of national park stewards.
But unable to persuade members of Maine’s congressional delegation to introduce park legislation, St. Clair altered the family’s strategy and began trying to convince the Obama administration to designate the land a national monument.
“I will not sit before you today and pretend that if the president declares the Maine North Woods a national monument that everything will be okay and life here will be hunky dory”, Rep. The gift has been facilitated by the National Park Foundation as part of its Centennial Campaign for America’s National Parks.
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FILE – In this August 4, 2015 file photo, birch trees show signs of beaver activity on woodland proposed for a national park in Penobscot County, Maine.
