[at-l] FYI: 9/9/99 article in Bangor News

["FannyPack - 96GA2ME" <fannypack96@hotmail.com>]

                  Copyright 1999 Bangor Daily News
                       BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE)

                           September 9, 1999 Thursday

LENGTH: 1619 words

HEADLINE: Viewing many Saddleback issues

BYLINE: David B. Field

BODY:
   At a recent public meeting on the controversy surrounding protection of 
the Appalachian Trail on Saddleback Mountain, most speakers seemed to think 
it was importantto establish their "Mainer" credentials.  Here are mine:

   My family has lived in what is now the state of Maine for 11 generations. 
  Until my brother, sister and I left our home town of Phillips, our family 
had lived there for nearly 200 years.  I've been maintaining six miles of 
the Appalachian Trail on Saddleback Mountain for 42 years.  No taxpayers 
dollars were spent to support this work, or the work of the 432 other Maine 
Appalachian Trail Club volunteers who, in 1998, contributed 14,478 hours of 
work to the AT.  Looking south from Saddleback, hikers see a 280-acre 
woodlot in Madrid that has been in my family for 88 years.

    During all of that time, the land has been open to the public for 
hunting, fishing and other recreational use without charge or restriction.  
It will continue to be managed for timber production, and will remain open 
for public use so long as the public continues to respect the privilege.

   The National Park Service seeks to acquire a corridor of land along the 
AT across Saddleback for three reasons.

   First, the NPS must, to meet the intent of the U.S. Congress, acquire a 
permanent right of public passage along the AT footpath.

   Second, the particularly significant natural resources of Saddleback's 
"treeless" zone clearly merit protection under the
>mandates of the National Trails System Act, the Maine Trails System Act and 
>Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission and Natural Resources Protection 
>Act.

   Third, these laws also call for the protection of significant scenic 
resources along the AT.  Few hikers travel the Appalachian Trail just to get 
from one place to another.  What they see from the trail is an essential 
part of their experience.

   Saddleback Ski Area's owners, as part of their proposal for settling this 
issue, have declared a willingness to provide a right of public passage 
along the AT across their land and to forego any development activities 
within the treeless zone along the AT.  Most of the current controversy 
focuses on the appropriate level of protection of views from the trail and 
on physical crossings of the trail that would be required if the southerly 
side of the mountain were to be developed for skiing.  The National Park 
Service Environmental Assessment of five AT protection alternatives details 
the impacts of those alternatives on thesurroundings of the AT and on ski 
area development opportunities.

   Although great concern has been expressed about ski area development 
threats to the mountain's alpine zone, only a ski area proposal for ski 
trail crossings just below the treeless zone offers any such threat.  The 
heart of the controversy really is the view.

   Ski area representatives have argued that the 25-acre-per-mile 
condemnation authority in Maine's Trails System Act represents the Maine 
Legislature's judgment of "all that is necessary to protect the Appalachian 
Trail. " (The Maine law was passed in 1973, and reflected the federal limit, 
which was then also 25 acres.) They have also said that the 
125-acre-per-mile condemnation authority in the National Trails System Act 
is all Congress requires for protection of the trail.

   This is simply not true.  Condemnation authority represents the absolute 
minimum scope of acquisition necessary to protect the AT where all efforts 
to provide better protection have failed.  Neither the federal nor the state 
law places any upper limit on land acquisition from a willing seller, but it 
makes no sense to assume that the Congress and the Legislature intended to 
allow anything other than the bare minimum needed to be taken against a 
landowner's wishes.

   In fact, federal law calls for "the conservation of nationally signficant 
scenic, historic, natural or cultural
qualities of the areas through which" national scenic trails, such as the 
AT, pass.  Maine law describes "primitive trails" (including specifically 
the Appalachian Trail) as "trails providing for the appreciation of natural 
and primitive areas and for the conservation of significant scenic, 
historic, natural or cultural qualities of the areas through which the 
trails pass and offering primarily the experience of solitude and 
self-reliance in natural or near natural surroundings.  Rights-of-way and 
buffer areas may be established and maintained to further that experience 
and no use or development shall be permitted which threatens such primitive 
character. "

   There has been too much talk, on both sides, about "pristine wilderness. 
" Trail interests are guilty of hyperbole in describing what now exists at 
Saddleback, and Saddleback Ski Areasupporters have used the term as a straw 
man that is easy to destroy.  Writer to the Bangor Daily News, Ralph Nodine 
(Aug. 14-15) states that the NPS is using "the pretext that any sight or 
sound of the real world would upset the tender sensitivities of the hikers 
and disturb the illusion of an undisturbed pre-Columbian wilderness" to 
stake out an excessive taking of property.  Come on!

   Anyone who has hiked across Saddleback knows you can easily see villages, 
roads, radio towers, the ski trails at Sunday River and other signs of human 
activity from the mountain.  Except where it now passes through several 
federally designated wilderness areas in national forests, the Appalachian 
Trail is not, and never has been, a wilderness trail, although the AT, as it 
is, satisfies a wish for a wilderness experience that many of its users 
seek.  The only written evidence I have of my great grandfather's trips up 
Saddleback from West Phillips records a hike he took there in 1860 -- the 
year that saw the peak of agricultural development in Maine.

   From the time of European settlement to 1860, about five million acres of 
that land have reverted to forest.  But, in 1860, far more of the land 
around Saddleback, particularly to the south, was open farmland than is true 
today.  The AT in Maine has passed through a working forest from its 
inception.  North of Monson, in what some now mistakenly call "The 100 Mile 
Wilderness," hikers in the late 1930s expected to spend just about every 
night not in a tent or log lean-to, but in a commercial sporting camp.  More 
to the point, the EA Alternative 2 that is being supported by the ATC and 
the MATC would allow ski lift towers practically on the AT.

   Accusations of oppressive behavior by the NPS over the past xx years 
(some have claimed as much as 28 years, despite the fact that the NPS did 
not even begin a program of AT land acquisition in Maine until 1984) have 
recently been escalated as
unlimited-private-property-rights advocate Charles Cushman, who came all the 
way from the state of Washington to help tell Maine people how to think, has 
chosen Saddleback as his poster child for the region.  If the National Park 
Service was the heavy-handed, unfeeling agency Cushman suggests, this would 
have been all over years ago.  Bureaucratic proceduresimposed by Congress, 
foot-dragging by Saddleback Ski Area and the extreme reluctance of the NPS 
to use condemnation have contributed to the long process.

   Saddleback proponents claim that the NPS has been afraid to go to court 
for fear of losing.  I do not believe this.  They've bent over backward to 
try to find a solution.

   The BDN account of the Rangeley meeting, which I attended, was a bit 
exaggerated.  It's true that Cushman disrupted the Park Service's agenda, 
but Rangeley folks behave pretty well, no matter how they are agitated or 
aggravated.  Except for a couple of totally out-of-line personal attacks on 
the AT Park Manager Pamela Underhill, comments from both sides were 
thoughtful and there were no shouting matches, pushing, shoving or whatever 
else people might imagine went on who were not there.  I was somewhat 
puzzled by the reporter's reference to "NPS officials snickered in the back 
of the room. " I observed nothing of the kind.

   Statements from the ski area imply a choice of EA Alternatives 1, 2 and 4 
will lead nowhere but condemnation court, something no one, including 
supporters of those alternatives, seems to want to see happen.  A 
condemnation action may appear to many trail supporters to be the only 
acceptable wayto protect the AT, but courts are unpredictable and court 
actions can easily lead to unpleasant surprises.  Both the "No Action" 
Alternative 5 and Alternative 3, which comes closest to the ski area's 
current offer, could easily expose the Park Service to accusations of 
failure to meet its responsibilities for protection of the AT.  If any merit 
is seen in further negotiation, then at least a choice of Alternative 3 
would, presumably, not be rejected out of hand by the ski area.

   I believe most people in Rangeley have both a sincere liking for the 
Appalachian Trail and a sincere concern for the economic future of their 
community.  I believe that the National Park Service, the Appalachian Trail 
Conference and the Maine Appalachian Trail Club share a commitment to 
protect the Appalachian Trail and to respect the concerns of the people of 
Rangeley.  Perhaps the best guideline for everyone involved in this dispute 
was offered by the late Julian Simon in his book, "The Ultimate Resource": " 
     More people sharing in the enjoyment of something is a good thing even 
if the experience is not perfect for any one of them. "

David B. Field is chair of the Appalachian Trail Conference.



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