Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument recreational map/NPS
It took nearly three years, but highway signs with information for visiting Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine are being installed along the Interstate 95 and Route 11 corridors between Medway and Island Falls.
A total of 22 signs will be installed in or near Medway, Stacyville, Sherman, Patten, and Island Falls. Six of the signs will be located on the I-95 corridor with the remainder along the Route 11 corridor in the Katahdin area.
The sign placement is the culmination of a three-year effort to get informational signs for the monument approved, constructed, and installed, and included the coordination between the National Park Service, the Maine Department of Transportation, and private sector contracts. All contracts were awarded by the National Park Service.
The installation of all 22 signs is expected to be completed by the end of November 2019 and will be ready for the 2020 winter season.
Comments
Say goodbye to this once enchanted woods.
This is the irony of protection. Once a quiet place that few knew about. More publicity more people coming in. Teddy Roosevelt said it best, "For the benefit and enjoyment of the people." Conservation has its trade offs.
It is good that the monument is getting public notice. I think a LOT more of the North Woods should be protected, it covers 12 milllion acres after all, of which about 2 million recieve some kind of protection. If it were up to me, I'd have Congress provide enough money to buy all 12 million acres, which would probably cost in the neighborhood of 100 billion dollars. i'd classify 10 million acres as a monument, and the remainder as national forest. Hiking, hunting, and snowmobiling would be allowed throughout as pre-existing uses, and i'd have Congress appropriate 2 billion a year for funding, staffing and maintenance. Currently monuments subsist on shoestring budgets, and that is something that needs to change.
Nick is on an outstanding hot streak with these great proposals. We thankfully have some protected public spaces in the West; but, the east coast regions are short on remaining wild lands and what little is left is either already being developed or will be developed sooner than folks expect. Now is the time to protect larger, ecosystem-scaled, preserves while there is still a chance. Sure, some of the usual characters will point to the areas already protected; but, we once thought Yellowstone, at roughly 2.2 million acres, was huge. We now know that Yellowstone is only the minimal and marginal core of its Northern Rockies ecosystem. We will recognize the same lack of comperhensive vision with regard to the Maine Woods in the future unless we see it in its full complexitiy now and protect as many of its diverse elements as we can. Sustainable wildlife gene pools need intact habitats large enough to hold them.