Appalachia, June 2005
The MWI is an outgrowth of the goals contained in Vision 2010, a strategic plan developed by the AMC's Board of Directors to guide the club's activities and growth for a ten-year period. A key factor in formulating Vision 2010 was examining "whether the club was fulfilling its mission and living up to its potential," says Laurie Burt, who was the board's president when the plan was formulated in the late 1990s. At the time, the AMC was experiencing tremendous growth in membership. But while many members favored more recreational facilities, the club realized that its ability to add educational programming and activities in the White Mountains was limited. Vision 2010 goals include increasing the number of miles of trails managed by the club by 43 percent, educating 50,000 children a year, playing a significant role in protecting 2 million acres of land, and providing additional opportunities for a greater number of overnight guests at its facilities.
At the same time that the AMC was planning for its next decade, Burt notes, a new sense of urgency surrounding the changes taking place in the Northern Forest was emerging. Huge swaths of timberland were changing hands across the region, the forest products industry was faltering, and mills were closing. Both recreational interest and development pressure were spreading to more remote regions. These changes had prompted the AMC to join forces with other conservation groups to form the Northern Forest Alliance, which called for identifying and protecting ecologically and recreationally valuable wild lands, promoting sustainable forestry, and supporting strong local economies across the region.
Conservationists also realized that the public sector could not afford to fund large-scale land conservation without private help. Public-private partnerships would become the key to future success.
"There was a growing consciousness of the whole Northern Forest situation," says Burt. "When we looked back a hundred years, there was rampant deforestation. At that time, the club asked what it could do. Now we're looking at what we can do to make sure this land is available for the public to enjoy in another fifty or a hundred years."
In September 2001, directors and lead staff met for a retreat at Cold River Camp. There, the concept that "a big idea needs a big place" resonated with the group, according to Deputy Director Walter Graff. Significantly, club leaders realized that they needed to look outside the White Mountains and the club's traditional hut system if they were to achieve their 2010 goals. They also realized they might have to look with fresh eyes at traditional Northern Forest uses, like timber harvesting and snowmobiling, if they were to become large landowners.
The AMC started looking for "a big, spectacular place," as Burt describes it, where the club's "three pillars of conservation, recreation, and education" might be applied. They were seeking a place where the AMC could have greater control over land management, where conservation-based economic development would be welcomed, and where recreation, timber management, and the protection of sensitive ecological areas could coexist. Staff members considered land across northern New England and eventually focused on Maine. They wanted land that the AMC could purchase outright and where land protection tools, such as conservation easements, could be used in partnership with organizations on adjacent lands to assemble a contiguous area of protected land of 100,000 acres or more.
