ST. FRANCIS, Maine — For years residents in northern Maine have enjoyed unlimited access to the fishing and camping opportunities at Third Pelletier Brook Lake on private land managed by North Maine Woods.
That all changed this summer when several of the Irving Woodlands-owned roads leading to the popular fishing spot were blocked with steel gates, largely in response to incidents of vandalism, according to the landowner organization’s executive director.
Some residents are questioning the move and have scheduled a meeting for 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28, at the St. John Plantation town office to discuss those concerns with landowners and members of the Aroostook County delegation.
“Third Pelletier [Lake] is owned by Irving and according to our property lines it is within the North Maine Woods,” said Al Cowperthwaite, executive director of the North Maine Woods. “Prior to this year people could drive into it without having to go through a checkpoint.”
People who want to camp at the lake, Cowperthwaite said, were required to check in at a staffed North Maine Woods gate, obtain the appropriate permits and pay a fee before heading to the campsite.
“We did have a sign saying people needed a permit to camp there,” he said. “That has not been terribly effective.”
In addition, high school-age youths for years have been using the camping area as a spot to hold parties often involving underage drinking and incidents of vandalism, according to Cowperthwaite.
“We have a hard time keeping picnic tables there because they put them in a big pile and burn them,” Cowperthwaite said. “It’s things like that that have driven the change. … Moving the gates around so Third Pelletier [Lake] is now within the North Maine Woods [and] bringing this area under [our] management will provide a safe, clean camping experience for visitors.”
Residents such as Lezime “Blackie” Thibeault of St. John Plantation see it as an end to their traditional use of the woodlands.
“We have nothing against gates,” Thibeault said. “But now it looks like they are taking over.”
Among his concerns, he said, is loss of access to other popular fishing and hunting areas in addition to access by all-terrain vehicles as they are not permitted within North Maine Woods boundaries.
Cowperthwaite stressed his organization made sure officials were kept in the loop last spring when plans were unveiled to relocate some of the steel gates.
“He did talk to me way back last summer and told me what they were doing,” said Sen. Troy Jackson, D-Allagash. “I called Irving [Woodlands] and told them it was not a good idea.”
Jackson said he hopes the meeting on the 28th will help answer questions and allay concerns over the new gates.
“A lot of us have been going in there for years and now we have to drive another five or six miles and pay to go through the North Maine Woods checkpoint,” he said. “For me, that seems to be a little bit of a slight against the people up here.”
As far as officials with Irving Woodlands are concerned, the company is committed to allowing access to its land.
“As part of the North Maine Woods, Irving was maintaining six gates on the land we own in [Aroostook] County,” Mary Keith, Irving Woodlands vice president of communications, said in an email Wednesday afternoon. “In the spring of this year, North Maine Woods publicly communicated the details regarding a reduction and repositioning of the gates on Irving land [and] three gates were to be removed and three gates were to be repositioned.”
Subsequently, and after conversations with Jackson and members of the community, Keith said it is apparent to her company that “repositioning of the gate near Pelletier Lake finds the balance between local recreational use for our neighbors near the lake and North Maine Woods access.”
Cowperthwaite pointed out that townships between St. Francis and Wallagrass that include several remote trout ponds such as Wallagrass Lake, Honeywell Lake, Wheelock Lake and McLean Lake remain open to free public access.
as far as rampant vandalism is concerned isn’t that what we pay game wardens to control? all it would take is a $100 game cam to stop that with some enforcement. the way i see it the purpose of this is to add revenue. i would also like to point out that the vandalism and theft are ill reportings sometimes. i personally went through a checkpoint was charged an over night fee to stay on private land (which is not applicable) then accused of breaking and entering and theft because i looked “like i couldn’t afford” to stay on the private land with the owner present. in my opinion the only theft that occurred is when i was denied a refund.
I can’t blame people for gating their lands to protect it from those disrespectful people. It sounds like the owners involved with this land gating gave it an honest attempt to keep the land open to the public. They closed it off when they saw that there was an overwhelming problem. I respect people’s private property and if I use it, I keep it clean. I’ve seen too many places be closed off due to people trashing these areas. It truly is sad.
you have the right to put onto and travel by waterway and cross private property to do so. You are not garautneed the right to use any roadway with any vehicle. If you want to walk there you are free to do so. Otherwise you may want to build and maintain your own road while others use it freely. It is costly to maintain and deal with frequent recreational use. Somebody has to do some mild management and that costs money. This is the intended purpose of the gates, as well as a mild safety net. Acadia national park is $20 dollars and that is PUBLIC. I’d rather spend it to go into the North Maine Woods. The difference is that these PRIVATE landowners are generous enough to let us use their infrastructure.
It is people like you who take for granted the priveledge of private land access for the multitude of recreational activities people enjoy in this state that cause these reactions. Try going to the south and accessing private land for doing whatever it is you feel like doing, you will either pay to join a costly “club” or be charged or shot for trespassing. This is private land, bought and paid, just like yours. I’ll be over tomorrow to use your driveway to access your back yard, I hear it’s lovely. Do you mind?
North Maine Wood’s Inc. has every right in the world to do what they are doing. Al Coowperthwaite is an honest and decent man. Perhaps it is you Bill Randall who is in need of a lesson, a real lesson. And what would that lesson be? The curious would like to know.
Bill feel free to invite the local youths to your property to camp, party, and burn your property. I’m sure the problem at the lake will end then! Right? Or better yet why don’t you go down there and school those youths yourself. You seem like a convincing fellow!
The original deal was free public access in exchange for low property taxes. Now that free access is being cut off, will the large land owners be paying the same tax rates as the rest of us?
Ask Roxanne Quimby.
Not really the same situation. Most of the large landowners post their property because the local welfare drunks are causing too much damage and the towns don’t want to pay for police protection.
Roxanne wants to give us her land and create thousands of jobs in the Maine.
Don’t let Roxie’s little media speech and release’s fool you. She’s doing this so she can claim a tax credit and capital gains exemption on the donation’s cash value on her corporate, AND, her personal tax’s. As far as job’s are concerned, even Roxie hasn’t produced, on paper, any number’s that can be verified by anyone, of any group. So when you hear these old tired chant’s and cry’s about hte Park and some type of ‘expansion’, make real sure you have all the fact’s, not just what Roxie or anyone else wnat’s you to see and examine. A balanced look-see is way past due. And the landowner’s should be especially looking at this too.
We are fortunate that we can access this PRIVATE PROPERTY at all, In many areas of the country access is either fully denied or costs a fair amount of money to be granted access. I have personally witnessed “young adults” coming into campsites at 1 am in the morning throwing parties and when confronted threated myself and my kids with violence. upon leaving in the morning I could follow their route in by all of the beer cans and bottles thrown on the side of the road. Getting a game warden or forest ranger to do anything about it? They didn’t seem interested in helping out at all.
Buy yourself some land if you want unrestricted access. Otherwise, you should be thanking that landowner for an opportunity that you’ve had to use their land up to now. These guys don’t owe you anything.
I bet the same cry babies who cry about nanny government in their lives, are the same ones crying to nanny government to do something so they can violate private property rights
Great ponds and other public waterways, whether surrounded by private land or not are owned by the citizens of Maine. That is pretty clear to most people. The public has a right to access to them, but not to the land around them, which I take to mean that we can walk to and enter them,or land a plane on them. Any other means of access or use of the surrounding private lands is the prerogative of the landowner, corporate or otherwise. Obviously taxes, and other arrangements with public agencies come into play. A state or national forest would be another matter, not that controlled access and use would be any less important. But, as a concept, national or state forest land seem to be anathema to many folks in northern Maine, though few western Mainers seem to have a problem with the White Mountain National Forest or the state-owned wild lands and lake shores in the Rangeley region. Likewise with our neighbors to the west: no one (except a few developers maybe) in NH or VT seems anxious to sell the national forests in their states to land companies. They seem to regard multiple-use public forests as assets rather than threats of some kind. As owner attitudes change in Maine, partly because of stupid behavior on the part of some visitors, mostly because many of the corporate owners are primarily interested in land investment rather than forest products, Mainers might come to wish they’d moved toward more public ownership years ago when it was more affordable. Time will tell – trite but true.
if you can’t afford the $6 dollars stay home. You can’t afford to go anywhere. No one is entitled.
If these corporate crumbs paid the same tax rate on their land as the rest of us private landowners are required to pay, didn’t clear cut the lands that destroy the wildlife habitat and pollute our waters and cause global warming, I might have a little more sympathy for them. If they paid and fought their own forest fires instead of using the people’s dollars and equipment, I might have a little more sympathy for them. Fact of the matter is these corporate crumbs have only a single interest in their existence and that is to acquire “MONEY.” Yes, every dollar bill on the earth if they could. They epitomize “pigs at the trough.”
If you can’t respect the free use of property then it is time to step up and pay. I would shut the place down if people were not being respectful. I bet if someone burned your picnic tables or destroyed other property you would do the same thing. do not blame the owner for something that they did not do. They like you are protecting what is their’s. We the public just don’t see it that way. I hope that they are sensitive to the issues presented at the meeting but if not then it is time to follow the new rules.