Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

GEORGE SMITH: Republicans abdicated their role as natural resources guardians

Republicans led the conservation movement in this country, but not anymore. In their zeal to protect private property rights and encourage the private enterprise system, they’ve turned their back on their conservation heritage.

Well, not all of us Republicans have done that. Imprinted at birth with two affiliations, Republican and sportsman, I remain a strong conservationist. But that may be driven by my sportsman gene.

In Maine and throughout the country, sportsmen remain true to their heritage, with a clear understanding of the important role the government can and must play in conserving our most valuable natural resources and assuring that all citizens have access to our special places.

Here in Maine, this remains true. The Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, my employer for the past 18 years, joined environmental groups in actively campaigning for every Land for Maine’s Future bond issue. Maine sportsmen can be proud of this and of their strong voting record in favor of the Land for Maine’s Future program.

As we approach another vote on an Land for Maine’s Future bond issue, I know that sportsmen will once again cast most of their ballots for this program.

I wish I could say the same about my fellow Republicans. This is much on my mind after recently reading “Becoming Teddy Roosevelt,” written by Andrew Vietze, a wonderful exploration of Roosevelt’s relationship with Maine guides Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow.

In a 1907 speech at the Deep Water Convention in Memphis, Roosevelt noted, “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all the others.”

And he didn’t just talk the talk. Roosevelt achieved the most remarkable conservation record of all of our presidents. He created the Bureau of Forestry in 1907. In 1908, he convened the governors for a congress on natural resources and 36 of them returned home and started their own state conservation commissions.

At the federal level, a national Conservation Commission was launched on June 8, 1908, to conduct an inventory of all the natural resources in each state. Roosevelt called the final report of the commission, “one of the most fundamentally important documents ever laid before the American people.”

During his tenure, the Republican Roosevelt worked consistently to protect the nation’s natural heritage, saving some 84,000 acres per day, creating 150 national forests, five national parks, four national game preserves, 18 national monuments (including the Grand Canyon), 24 reclamation projects, and 51 federal bird reserves (including the first, on Pelican Island, Fla.).

Were Roosevelt to be back up in Island Falls visiting Bill Sewall today, he’d be appalled to learn that Republican voters, by a margin of two to one, plan to vote against the Land for Maine’s Future bond on Nov. 2. That has to change, and the change must be led by gubernatorial nominee, Paul LePage.

LePage believes strongly that private landowners are the best stewards of Maine’s natural resources, and says that if we want them to do something for us, then we’ll have to “incentivize” (pay) them.

Well, that’s just what we do with the Land for Maine’s Future funding. We buy land from willing sellers so the places in Maine that are most special remain available to future generations, as well as ourselves.

LePage says he wants to “brand Maine as a place to hunt and fish.” To do that, we must secure access to the land and water of this state, and that’s just what Land for Maine’s Future does. It’s time to stop advertising Maine as a destination for sportsmen while depending on private landowners to accommodate those sportsmen on their lands.

It’s also time for Republicans to understand that our advocacy for private property rights can be consistent with our support for public lands and conservation.

Indeed, advocating for more public lands serves the interests of private landowners who do not want to provide their lands for the recreational pleasure of the public.

I can’t say it as well as President Teddy Roosevelt. In his seventh annual message, Roosevelt made the case for conservationism, asserting that, “The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life,” and reporting that he had been trying “to substitute a planned and orderly development of our resources in place of a haphazard striving for immediate profit.”

If Teddy Roosevelt were living in Maine on Nov. 2, he would most certainly be voting “yes” on Question 3 for a new Land for Maine’s Future bond issue. We should follow his lead.



George Smith is a writer and TV talk show host. He can be reached at 34 Blake Hill Road, Mount Vernon 04352, or georgesmithmaine@gmail.com.

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