Just a minute, there, Sun Journal. Your usual editorial prescience seems to have deserted you in your commentary on a proposed Maine Woods National Park feasibility study (May 6).

The celebrities and others (including such non-celebrities as me) who signed onto an advertisement supporting the proposal have no intention of doing the study themselves. They are simply advocating that the study be done.

National Parks Administration professionals would organize the effort, aided by a full array of Maine people to provide the balance you rightly call for.

That would include state parks and recreation people, timbering and other business interests, environmentalists, elected leaders, scientists, academics and others. The list would most certainly include local folk – the people whose lives would be directly affected by the presence of a 3.2 million-acre national park.

Surely the time has come for calm assessment. We need to think of how important a park could be for northern Maine communities reeling from the loss of jobs in the forest products industry. These are jobs that are not likely to reappear.

Keyed to a booming tourist industry, a national park would generate economic diversity and expanded job opportunities in a region that sorely needs both. Is this not a prospect that deserves, at the very least, a serious feasibility study?

It would be good for Maine, good for our people, good for a region of stunning wilderness beauty.

Gordon A. Glover, South Freeport


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