The vast majority of the voting and tax-paying population does not hunt. As someone who enjoys camping and hiking, as well as other outdoor pursuits, I'd prefer it if these lands were excluded from hunting, trapping and 2-stroke engines. Most of the people I've spoken to feel the same way.

The thing is, you can camp and hike and do hundreds of other things in the woods and not disturb another single living thing. The same can not be said for hunting, snowmobiles, and the like.

Don't hikers have enough land.
Can't we all get along.

My sentiments exactly Carey! I'm tired of "hunters have enough of this and enough of that". Hunters are not exclusionary. We work hard to share and be respectful. Maybe hunters are a small percentage of the population but we sure are larger in numbers than those Maine residents who use Baxter State Park now.
And yes mike I agree, hikers and campers and the like have enough land to do their thing on now, don't they?
So if we want Baxter to be forever wild and a true wildlife sanctuary - which there is no such thing - we need to close the land to everyone because everyone, no matter what you do when you go in there, are disturbing something or somebody.
Fishing kills fish! How come nobody complains about that? Campers build fires that pollute the air and put our forest at risk. Etc. etc. etc.
Give me a break!

The Katahdin Lake proposal is another throat stabbing of the Katahdin Area and Northern Maine economy. Many businesses in the Katahdin area (Patten, Island Falls, Sherman, Stacyville, East Millinocket, Millinocket, Medway, Shin Pond,Bowlin Pond Camps, Matagamon Camps) depend on traditional uses of this land to support their families, particularly sporting and guide businesses. The land will also be lost to traditional forest practices even though it will take years for the forest to grow back from the devastation that was allowed to occur. One official has stated that "there is not much game in the area for hunters anyway". There are no trees left up there, why would deer stick around with no cover! A woodpecker has to fly thru an entire township before he can find a tree to land on! Where was Restore, the Sierra Club, and the Nature Conservancy while all this was happening? Waiting in the wings like vultures for the big action to take place of course!Watch them crawl out of the woods when the deal falls thru to cry and complain about the forestation practices that took place.

One of the worst things about this whole situation is the secret dealings that included the Governor that has transpired over the last few years concerning this proposal. The forest near the Katahdin Lake area, particularly T3 R8, was allowed to be savagely cleared knowing that the land would be finagled to wealthy, anti traditional use greens that want to "Retool The North Maine Woods" so that they can ultimately create their own park which would eventually swallow up the region and the people that maintain a livelihood in that area. These people think that Maine people can thrive on a "trinket" selling economy while they bathe in their untold millions used to suck up land so that they can get "that back to nature fuzzy feeling".

I recommend that you all take a ride in towards the Katahdin Lake area and see for yourself how the land involved in this deal has been allowed to be brutally raped.

If you and I had done to a human being what was done to that area in question we would have been thrown in jail for rape and murder.

I personally enjoy snowmobile access to Katahdin Lake. It is breathtaking scenery there in the wintertime. I do not have time to access the lake in the summer via Avalanche Field in BSP. I certainly don't want to lose the traditional access and use that I have had for 46 years in this area. The view of the mountain and the lake itself aren't going anywhere. Our state government turned their backs and let us down by allowing what has happened up there. Its been a shame as to how all of this has transpired along with the trusted people that were involved in this.

The deal is going down in flames in the legislature and will fall thru. Rightfully so.

Carey,

I read your synopsis of what George Smith said and listened to the recording. I think it is absolutely appalling at the gross misrepresentation of the facts in those statements.

It would take a long time to refute each statement, so I will address just the first one as an example. Mr. Smith said that hunters are the primary users of the Katahdin Lake property now. This is just plain not true and the people who know the land the best, even though they are hunters themselves, spoke before the legislative committee and gave them the facts.

The former long-time owner and operator of the sporting camp on the lake, Al Cooper, gave a detailed listing of the numbers of different types of users who came to his camps last year. He said they had about 150 guests. 8 to 10 were bear hunters (in late August and September, not in Oct and Nov.) and about a dozen were deer hunters (I actually didn't get the exact number he said for deer hunters, but it was in this range and Baxter Park numbers only showed that 9 people in all of November went through the Park and into the camps). The other 120-130 guests were there for other reasons with the largest number (60) being families there just to enjoy the lake and views.

He also said that maybe 99%, but closer to 100% of all the hunters at the camps are from out of state. He said that no one locally hunts in the area that is being acquired. There are some new roads on lands that will be kept by the Gardner Land Co. and some people are now hunting from those roads.

The landowner, Tom Gardner, who is also pro-hunting said (in terms much more frank than mine) that those who claim that there is much hunting on these lands isn't being straight. He said there isn't hunting there, he has never seen an orange vest there, and that the right thing to do is to have the land around Katahdin Lake go to Baxter Park to help fulfill Governor Baxter's vision.

Its unfortunate that people have to mischaracterize the facts when trying to sell their philosophy. It is true that the Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps has a long tradition of hunting from the camps. It is also true that there is very little hunting ocurring in the area now, and the new owner of the camps is happy to operate them without hunting as an activity for his guests.

Steve's comments also bear some scrutiny, for example the businesses he lists do all depend on the maine woods for their businesses to be successful, but none of them use the land around Katahdin Lake. His description of the logging that has happened sounds pretty appalling, but it isn't the land that would be acquired by Baxter Park. Those acres have not been cut. Much of the land hasn't been harvested since early in the 1900's, and much of forest is much older, with borings routinely showing 200 and 300 year old trees, according to the new camp owner and two ecologists who have studied the area.

For people who philosphically believe that every acre of forest land should be open to hunting then it really doesn't matter whether people hunt on these acres or not, and that is okay, but it shouldn't be misrepresented. If there is any forest land in Maine that should be wildlife sanctuary, then it is this land, as part of Baxter State Park. As the new owner (since 2002) of the Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps (also a hunter) said today before the legislative committee, wildlife sanctuaries also have a long tradition, and Katahdin Lake should be sanctuary, as part of Baxter Park and like the other core lands of the Park, as this was Governor Baxter's vision for this land.