There’s talk of another refuge in Maine. I have mixed feelings about these things. It’s great they protect the flora and fauna within, but they also protect a status quo that I personally can’t stand.
The hoity toity love to establish them so they can vacation where people once lived. It’s how the west was won, with the self- important declaring that place was too good for the people who lived there.
Now, I know it isn’t exactly like that, but as a descendant of people driven from that land (and erased by blood quotient rules and the like) I have a problem with people deciding “nature state” excludes original inhabitants.
Now, you’ll say this can’t be accomplished because those people have come and gone. This is when I begin to wonder why they think a species can be reintroduced but the descendants of a people cannot.
It is the same thing. Animal or human, we’re talking about descendants not the actual inhabitants. In fact, the animals we reintroduce are less genetically similar to those driven out than the people we might are.
Now, this is just a theory, but I suspect the idea of establishing a wildlife refuge in Western Maine has more to do with human interests than it does wildlife. An electric transmission line that might benefit us all, for instance, might have inspired it.
This place isn’t what it was. It never will be. That isn’t to say I want it developed further, but neither do I want it used to deny people the resources they need. It was used in an attempt to deny them a transmission line that would have driven electric and heating costs down last year. Let’s not forget that.
Jamie Beaulieu
Farmington, Maine
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