March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Schoodic harvest uncertain

The executive director of the Professional Forest Logging Contractors of Maine, Dick Schneider, writes of the Schoodic timber cut: “[T]hese harvests [one disjunct from Acadia National Park, and a second, more controversial one on 1,600 acres at the park’s edge] are progressin environmentally acceptable and with minimal aesthetic impact because they have been properly planned and are being conducted by professional firms. … The results of this performance are good for the future health and productivity of the forest lands. … (BDN, Dec. 17).”

Hold on. What results?

The cut occurring on the Schoodic land touching the park (the only cut in dispute) just began in a tiny corner of the forest not visible from the park entry road. Harvesting, directed by the Dave Warren Co., will take roughly a year. Predicting “results” now may prove akin to having predicted Joe Brennan’s recent win over Susan Collins.

Schneider also says: “Some will cling forever to the position of no cutting under any circumstances.” He misspeaks if he is referring to Friends of Acadia, or to Acadia National Park, maine Coast Heritage Trust, Frenchman Bay Conservancy, Friends of Schoodic and hundreds of Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro citizens active in the issue. The organizations and many Schoodic dwellers have repeatedly called for successive light harvests.

Toward that end, after Dave Warren signed a moratorium on timber cutting, Friends of Acadia and the other nonprofits funded a real estate and timber appraisal and an ecological assessment, located three for-profit conservation investors, supplied them with the data, and uncovered and spoke by phone with the mystery landowners (a father and son) in Milan, Italy. At least one investor has already reached the owners. Each investor has agreed in principle to buying the 1,600 acres, developing about 90 acres, and granting a no-development easement on the rest to allow sustainable harvesting and keep the forest on the tax rolls. Put differently, Schoodic conservationists have not sought impervious protection, as Mr. Schneider seems to imply.

The only certifiable progress on the logging front seems positive. Namely, the Dave Warren Co. has profoundly transformed its language. When Schoodic erupted last April, the foresters said it was inappropriate for the public to influence logging on private land. Now, by contrast, forester Mike Benjamin of the Dave Warren Company goes on record as favoring a harvest that is in “everyone’s best interest…not only because of the laws but because we know what the effect is (BDN, Dec. 2). Those are welcome words.

But questions persist. Is the land in fact for sale? Will the current owener develop it after harvesting? Or will the land, as Dave Warren asserts, remain shipshape for recut in 15 years? How likely is that recut if the Dave Warren Company and H. C. Haynes, the logging contractor, do not retract their apparent plan to remove two-thirds of the standing timber now?

As Schoodic has attained national status, people here and elsewhere in the nation have realized that the public has a manifest interest in land bordering the seventh most heavily visited national park, owned by all Americans. Just as no rational homeowner would remain silent while his neighbor tried to erect a skyscraper on private land next door, no one interested in safeguarding the natural beauty of Acadia and perpetuating the park’s vitality as a regional economic generator would tolerate a hatchet job at Schoodic. Unfortunately, under Maine forestry law a draconian cut is legal.

“[P]rofessional performance is the key,” Mr. Schneider writes, “and [the foresters] have made that commitment on the Schoodic Peninsula projects.” Friends of Acadia agrees: They have. Let’s all watch as the cut goes forward. People can then decide whether words equal deeds. If things turn out fine, it will owe in no small part to the public’s unrelenting laser eye.

Either way, the name of the Dave Warren Company and H. C. Haynes Co. will be linked with Acadia National Park, possible forever. So, too, the Professional Logging Contractors of Maine, which vouches before the fact for Dave Warren’s future contract.

And in the distant unseeable background lurks that pesky question — whose answer is known only by two gentlemen from Milan — of whether any harvest is mere prelude to a major subdivision of Schoodic Point. That would be some result. W. Ken Olson is president of Friends of Acadia.


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