Condensed SAM Testimony
Delivered by David Trahan, June 1, 2016
It is SAM’s mission to defend the rights of sportsmen and firearm owners. In addition, we promote the responsible conservation of our natural resources. On several occasions, including last year, we polled our members on whether they supported the creation of a National Park for the Katahdin region of Maine, as proposed by Roxanne Quimby. Each time the answer was a resounding NO, with our last poll at 92% opposition.
Through the generations Mainers have struck a delicate balance with landowners, sharing the land for all sorts of recreational uses, like hunting, fishing, trapping, and snowmobiling. Over time, large landowners have leased land and camps to outdoor recreationists, and as a result, thousands of camps have sprung up in the wilds of Maine. During these adventures into the Maine woods, moms, dads, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, and friends learned how to hunt, fish, camp, and conserve our natural resources, and in the process built bonds that made families stronger, and men and women better citizens.
Unfortunately, that delicate balance between landowners and Mainers was threatened in the early 1990s when the radical group Restore the North Woods appeared on the scene. They proposed abandoning traditional recreation like hunting, snowmobiling, and other motorized recreation, as well as ending logging. Instead, they proposed creating a 3.2-million acre wilderness National Park surrounding Baxter State Park. The opposition to this attempt to place northern Maine in federal ownership was swift, and overwhelming.<<<Read the Rest>>>
