https://themainemonitor.org/us-fish-and-wildlife-service-considers-a-new-refuge-in-franklin-county/
As mentioned in the article, this has come up before. It is centered around the Bigelow area. There is lot of conserved land in the area already but it is mostly conserved from development and subdivision but working forestry is still allowed and practiced in much of the lowlands. Mainer's have a long memory and some bad blood from events at the Moosehorn refuge in eastern Maine a couple of decades ago by refuge staff blocking access to private lands by buying and closing chokepoints on refuge lands left a very bad taste with conservatives in the state. This was taken up but the "Wise Use" movement as an eastern beach head to what is a very significant political movement out west.
Generally, wildlife refuges are centered around aquatic areas like lakes, ponds, rivers and wetland while the land in the proposed area are mostly highlands. In NH the Lake Umbagog refuge has gotten some local black marks for gobbling up high value properties along the lake and river and tearing them down which has reduced property tax revenue to Errol. Somewhat more regionally they hit a sore spot in making it very difficult to route ATV traffic over land that previously were publicly accessible. The Pondicherry unit of Silvio Conte has had far less negative publicity, mostly buying land on a willing buyer/seller basis and building and maintaining the very popular viewing platform and rail trail to the pond. They also have allowed the Coos Trail to formalize a trail through the property
My guess is Caribou Pond and possibly the ponds to the west heading towards Rangeley are target properties. The Navy S&R school had made noise in the past that they would like to expand their area of control in that area and in other areas of the country defense department lands are managed as refuges. At one point there was a proposal to use the Redington S&R location as a site for an east coast missile defense station but the US is mostly focused on westward threats these days.
As mentioned in the article, this has come up before. It is centered around the Bigelow area. There is lot of conserved land in the area already but it is mostly conserved from development and subdivision but working forestry is still allowed and practiced in much of the lowlands. Mainer's have a long memory and some bad blood from events at the Moosehorn refuge in eastern Maine a couple of decades ago by refuge staff blocking access to private lands by buying and closing chokepoints on refuge lands left a very bad taste with conservatives in the state. This was taken up but the "Wise Use" movement as an eastern beach head to what is a very significant political movement out west.
Generally, wildlife refuges are centered around aquatic areas like lakes, ponds, rivers and wetland while the land in the proposed area are mostly highlands. In NH the Lake Umbagog refuge has gotten some local black marks for gobbling up high value properties along the lake and river and tearing them down which has reduced property tax revenue to Errol. Somewhat more regionally they hit a sore spot in making it very difficult to route ATV traffic over land that previously were publicly accessible. The Pondicherry unit of Silvio Conte has had far less negative publicity, mostly buying land on a willing buyer/seller basis and building and maintaining the very popular viewing platform and rail trail to the pond. They also have allowed the Coos Trail to formalize a trail through the property
My guess is Caribou Pond and possibly the ponds to the west heading towards Rangeley are target properties. The Navy S&R school had made noise in the past that they would like to expand their area of control in that area and in other areas of the country defense department lands are managed as refuges. At one point there was a proposal to use the Redington S&R location as a site for an east coast missile defense station but the US is mostly focused on westward threats these days.
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