Unintended Consequence

The bald eagle population of Penobscot Bay is apparently growing rapidly. We wouldn't necessarily know, for a sighting over here on the west side of the bay (away from the islands where they wisely live) is rare, lasts maybe two seconds, and is the occasion for wild whoops and comical gyrations as we press noses against the windows to follow its flight out of sight.

Also living and breeding on the islands are gulls and eiders, which boast large numbers, and great cormorants, which do not. In fact, the cormorants probably won't last the century, or the decade, for the eagles have forsaken their traditional diet of fish and now feast on tasty birds, chicks and fledglings mostly. The cormorants, because they are so few to begin with, suffer the most.

Are humans to interfere? Should we discreetly patrol the cormorants' nests, perhaps with signs advising the eagles to leave, or at least re-consider the benefits of fish? How much cholesterol in cormorants? Should we compute the eagle's RDA? Who's going to win, a magnificent warlike raptor, the symbol of America, or a lowly black water bird? If you had to save one for democracy, which would it be? Sounds like our foreign policy until recently.

Equal rights

The Governor has just signed a bill allowing gay marriage in Maine. A proud day for the state, and for New England, for if New Hampshire also passes the law as expected, only Rhode Island will be left in another century. Opponents will try to mount a ballot referendum this fall; I hope they see that their money and effort, however sincere, could be much better spent on issues that are productive, not destructive.

It was four years ago that the gay rights law was signed in Maine. That too suffered a referendum repeal, which thankfully, the voters rejected. You could ask why it took four years for gay marriage to follow. Isn't it obvious that there's a breath (no, a gale) of fresh air blowing across the country?

LURC

It sounds ominous even when you spell it out - Land Use Regulation Commission. When you consider what it does - a zoning board for all the unorganized territories in Maine, about 10 million acres, nearly half the state - it sounds impossibly ambitious. And when you look at the issues it covers - an addition to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, a large wind farm, permitting a trailer on a ten-acre plot, the proposed Moosehead Lake development of hundreds of thousands of acres - it sounds ludicrous. How can seven men and women handle all this?

Then you realize that although the area is immense, there really aren't all that many people up there. Piscataquis County, for example, the heart of the Great North Woods, boasts 17,000 people in almost 3 million acres. So LURC is really not much more than a zoning board for a smallish city. Or is it?

Unfortunately, the issues can be as immense as the territory. How do you deal with a Plum Creek Timber Company that wants to develop Moosehead? How do you account for the needs and wants of fishermen, hunters, hikers, snowmobilers, foresters, skiiers, tourists? How do you handle the PR departments of the investors and speculators that now own most of the territories? What about the Maine lynx and moose and bobcat and salamander? What about the lakes, the old-growth forests, the pristine streams?

Fairly and openly and slowly seems to be the MO of the Commission. Its members have a healthy mix of commercial, academic, civic and scientific experience. Yet I tremble at the thought of irreplaceable treasure in the hands of mere mortals, no matter how committed and balanced and moral, no matter how much they are policed by the public and the conservation groups. We need an immortal, a Thoreau, who more than 150 years ago saw the danger and wrote of the need of a "national preserve." Maine Woods National Park, anyone? What happened to that idea?

LURC was established in 1971, after rampant development of the wilderness in the 60s. The game is changing again and we may need a new higher power to protect us from ourselves.

Atlantic Salmon

Starting today, there was to have been a month-long fishing season on the Penobscot River north of Bangor. It's amazing that there are salmon at all in the river, considering what we've done to prevent their runs. Yet every spring some hundreds of fish make it up from the ocean, enough that last year the State opened three miles of the river to catch-and-release fly-fishing. Once 50 fish were caught, the season ended.

But this year the State, under some pressure from the Feds, cancelled the season. The Feds want to make the salmon an endangered species, the State prefers to keep them "threatened." Apparently, the difference in terms is great.

I don't know if Maine's salmon commission wants to please the fishermen, or just keep the Feds out of Maine's game. A certain independence needs to be maintained, I'm sure, and catching a salmon on a fly-rod must be a great thrill, even a privilege. I never fished for salmon, but when I was a teenager, fly-fishing for brown and rainbow trout was a holy activity even if anyone could get a license (I definitely wasn't just anyone back then - I was a "tortured soul"). The Little South Branch of the Pere Marquette River in northern Michigan was my church. And most fishermen will say it's not about the fish, it's about being outside, on the fish's level. One fellow said, "It's not about catching a fish, it's being able to."

But times are dire for the Atlantic salmon. Until someone can prove that catch-and-release does absolutely no harm, and that hundreds of guys in waders flogging the waters and climbing the banks is beneficial, I'm thinking the church-goers should put their religion on hold for a while. Progress in cleaning the waters and removing the dams is slow, but sure. The Feds are right to interfere. Sometimes our human nature doesn't know when to act and when to stop, look and listen, even the most exalting of us.