Coastal Mountains Land Trust outrage: NGO agrees to join in gutting five acre Goose River headwaters forest for skate skiers

Outrage is indeed coming from every quarter at news that Maine's Coastal Mountains Land Trust proposes to go along with a forest fragmenting plan hatched by the town of Camden, to install a competition two mile  "skate ski" track in a thickly wooded pocket valley, where today moose and bears prowl unhindered by man..  Here's  an update, followed by what you can do.


The project would gut a five acre thickly forested headwaters valley on Ragged Mountain's northeast slope, to cram a 16 foot wide two mile long "skate-skiing" track  with numerous hairpin turnings along witt support facilities on lush wild forest land that is part owned by Coastal Mountains Land Trust and partly by the Town of Camden.  

The state of Maine considers this location to be an Area of Statewide Ecological Significance  due to its unusually rich concentrations of at-risk species and habitats co-occuring on the landscape. .See state report on ecological significance of Ragged & Bald Mountain. The Goose River connects Ragged Mountain (via Hosmer Pond) with Rockport Harbor. With Penobscot Bay  and the Gulf of Maine. For more photographs and maps of the threatened area, click here  

Coastal Mountains Land Trust will make the whole mess possible by letting the "multi use trail" be cleared bulldozed and culverted in part through their "protected" land on Ragged Mountain. See MAP 1.

Why? Because just after passing through the land trust property, the trail would reach its high point, back again on town of Camden property and rejoined to the Camden Snowbowl Resort. There, the town proposes a major septic field and what appears to be half a dozen potential structures   See rectangles in upper part of  MAP 2.   In return, CMLT get to connect their own separate hiking trail directly to the Camden Snow Bowl's planned hi speed ski track.  In summer, the trail, like other Snowbowl trails, would be opened to hikers and unleashed dogs, which will inevitably drive away the bears, moose, foxes deer and other wildlife from a now-fragmented forest.

 WHAT YOU CAN DO.   Read this summary of issues (pdf). then do two things:

1. Ask Coastal Mountains Land Trust to pull out of the deal, or else make public their reason for supporting this destructive project. CMLT should also make public  its dealings with the anonymous donor and others surrounding this plan. Contact Scot Dickerson or Kristen Lindquist at CMLT by email:  info AT coastalmountains.org. Or by phone 207-236-7091.

2. Ask the Camden Planning Board to reject the plan. On July 20, 2011, the Camden Planning Board is going to consider this plan at its evening meeting,  then vote on whether to approve it, disapprove it, or table it pending more information.  Let them know what you think.  Is fragmenting such a large and irreplaceable coastal mountain forest worth it? Who or what is the anonymous funding interest promoting this skate-ski development in such a fragile place?   Turning the headwaters of the Goose River into a septic field is an insult to Rockport.  Rockport citizens should be outraged that their headwaters of their river be defiled so casually by the town of Camden.
  
Postal mailing address is Chair, Planning Board, Camden Town Office,PO Box 1207, Camden, Maine 04843  Or Email your information to Chris MacLean, chair of the Camden Planning Board.   

Either way, ask Chris to send copies around to the planning board members. Be brief and to the  point - an irreplaceable steeply sloping natural forested wetlands-rich valley full of interior dwelling bird habitat in the Camden Hills should not be fragmented and disturbed for a speculative recreational activity. Especially one being promoted by an outside apparently anonymous interest. Camden should conserve its irreplaceable natural resources. 

That's it. Send this to a friend and ask them too to leave the town of Camden's natural forested headwaters of the Goose River alone.

'Travesty Island' pageant on Sears Island August 31

"Travesty Island," a free theatrical event to protest plans to develop Sears Island, will be held Sunday, August 31, at 1 p.m. near the gate at the north end of the publicly owned island. 

 The event is intended to draw attention to the Baldacci Administration's second effort to build an unneeded industrial port on what is now the largest remaining totally wild island in public hands on the East Coast, and to chide several conservation groups for supporting the plan. 

 In the pageant, giant "Grim Reaper" figures personifying the forces of industrial sprawl and ecological destruction will face off against a thin line of defenders barring them from the island, led by the Green Knight and Diana, goddess of all things wild. 

Representatives of the island's wild animals and its marine life, its old forests and its fertile eelgrass beds will also be there defending their island home. Who will triumph? Come cheer on the forces of creation and nature against those of destruction. 

Want to be part of this family-friendly pageant? There's still time! Call 548-2950 or 323-2757.

 Or just show up at the island at Sunday at 1pm. Bring a mask, a drum or other instrument, or just you and your friends. 

 In addition to the Governor, the pageant will criticize the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Coastal Mountains Land Trust, Islesboro Island Land Trust and several other groups for signing onto an agreement that terms a Sears Island industrial port "appropriate" - even though it will mean the outright paving over of some 40 percent of the 941-acre island, and would badly fragment the eelgrass-laden nursery shoal edging the island. 

 In return the Baldacci Administration will hand over control of the island's remaining 600 acres to those groups, and allow them to  conserve the island  but also to build a "information center  and meeting area " (including a parking lot)  involving up to 10,000 square feet of roofed structures and a complex of access roads and parking lots. 

 "The Maine Sierra Club and the land trusts are providing green cover for a port project that ought to be setting off alarms in anyone who values our fast-dwindling natural resources," says Peter Taber of Searsport, one of those taking part in the "Travesty Island" pageant. Directions: Take the Sears Island Road located on Route 1, two miles north of downtown Searsport on Route 1. The road ends on the causeway to the island. Look for the banners.

For more information: Ron at 691-7485 Suzanne at 548-2950 or Peter at 323-2757. MORE ABOUT SEARS ISLAND