| | Dear Friend,
Welcome to the August 2006 Maine Woods Initiative News, an electronic newsletter designed to keep you up to date on the Appalachian Mountain Club's Maine Woods Initiative, a plan for land conservation that incorporates outdoor recreation, natural resource protection, nature-based tourism, sustainable forestry, and community partnerships in Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness region.
I'm especially pleased to announce another milestone in our Maine Woods Initiative: the recent purchase by AMC of Medawisla Wilderness Camps. Exciting things are happening in Maine. Read on and see!
Sincerely,
Walter Graff
AMC Deputy Director
Outdoor Recreation
As part of the Maine Woods Initiative, AMC will be providing additional outdoor recreational opportunities and supporting the best traditions of the Maine sporting camp with its recent purchase of Medawisla Wilderness Camps near Greenville. We’re planning to offer camp-to-camp skiing and dog-sledding trips between Medawisla and other sporting camps in the 100-Mile Wilderness region this winter.
AMC’s Summer Family Adventure Camp programs at Little Lyford Pond Camps are the summer’s hot ticket. As of today, only three slots remain available for the session beginning Aug. 13, while the program beginning Aug. 20 has already filled. These week-long programs bring families together for fun and exploration in the outdoors. In the coming sessions, AMC Land Stewardship Manager Bob LeRoy is set to provide a fly-fishing demonstration and AMC Special Projects Manager Gerry Whiting is slated to lead a walk focusing on the property’s cultural history.
Also featured at Lyford’s this summer are a variety of guided fly-fishing opportunities, led by a licensed Maine Guide, for those who want to brush up on their angling skills. AMC also plans to create some new wilderness campsites this summer that we hope to have ready for use by next year’s fishing and hiking seasons.
Community Partnerships
The Southern Piscataquis Regional Recreation Map and Guidewas released in June to great community acclaim. A joint project of the Piscataquis County Economic Development Council, the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, and the Appalachian Mountain Club, the map focuses on outdoor recreational opportunities in Piscataquis County, and provides historical and cultural information as well. They are for sale from a variety of local vendors and are available free of charge at health care providers and schools in the county.
| Teachers participating in Maine Project Learning Tree visited AMC’s Katahdin Iron Works property in July, where they hiked with AMC Education Director Pam Hess and learned about the Maine Woods Initiative. Our logging contractor, Wayne Ireland of Northeast Forest Products in Howland, Maine, represented AMC and Huber Resources Corp. on a site tour, where teachers got a first-hand look at AMC’s sustainable forestry operations and visited the site of another timber harvest being conducted by Huber, AMC's forest management consultant. The visit was a joint effort of the Maine Tree Foundation and AMC.
Conservation
In late March, the Appalachian Mountain Club joined with our colleagues at The Nature Conservancy and the Forest Society of Maine to announce an historic agreement designed to protect more than 400,000 acres of forestland owned by Plum Creek in the Moosehead Lake area. As of this writing, work continues on developing the final details of this Conservation Framework (pdf). AMC has not endorsed Plum Creek’s development plan. The Maine Land Use Regulation Commission will determine the final outcome of the plan, based on fact-finding and public input over the coming months.
P erhaps you saw the recent report from Trout Unlimited on the status of brook trout in the eastern U.S. According to the report, the species have strong populations in only five percent of their historic habitat, and Maine shows the strongest numbers. Brookies are plentiful on AMC’s Katahdin Iron Works property, which supports a fishery of native, wild brook trout that have not been crossed with hatchery-raised fish. Management of the 10,000-acre ecological reserve on the KIW property is designed to help protect the headwaters of the West Branch of the Pleasant River and its fish populations.
| Through its trail building and maintenance program, AMC is achieving several goals of the Maine Woods Initiative by creating new opportunities for outdoor recreation in the 100-Mile Wilderness region, providing access to the woods, waters, and peaks, and protecting natural resources. Trail work partners this summer include volunteer crews from the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, the Chewonki Foundation, and AMC’s Maine Chapter members. Check out the latest on KIW trail work.
People
Meet AMC’s Maine Policy Manager Bryan Wentzell.
Sustainable Forestry
Wet weather translated into a slow start for this year’s harvest on the KIW property, but conditions have improved with the drier weather, which has improved production. We are harvesting pulpwood for use by Maine mills, as well as cutting pallet logs for a local client. Forestry is focused on removing dead and low-value trees while retaining large-diameter trees and restoring hardwood stands affected by past high-grading and beech bark disease. AMC expects to seek Forest Stewardship Council certification for sustainable harvesting practices in 2007.
MWI in the News
March 31 Boston Globe editorial by Don MacGillis.
Syndicated columnist Tim Jones, whose Active Outdoors column appears in a dozen New England newspapers, filed a piece in June on hiking and fly fishing at Little Lyford Pond Camps.
View ongoing press coverage of the Maine Woods Initiative and Little Lyford Pond Camps.
View back issues of MWI News.
Media Contact: AMC Public Affairs Director Rob Burbank at rburbank@outdoors.org or (603) 466-2721, ext. 195. Contact Rob if you have ideas for articles to be included in future issues of MWI News.
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