Talk to any sportsman. Ask him about access. Ask him if he has noticed how fast we are losing recreational access to lands that have been traditionally accessible to hunters, fishermen, hikers and snowmobilers. The amount of acreage that sportsmen have lost access to in the past 10 years is worse than we could have imagined.

The figure, according to the Maine Professional Guides Association, is one million acres. Some of it is in organized townships and some is in unorganized townships. Some of it is private land. Some of it is public land. Some of it is land that you purchased with your federal and state tax dollars. The MPGA, to its credit, appreciates the crisis proportion of this issue and has undertaken it as a life-and-death battle that must be fought, not only by Maine guides, but by all Maine sportsmen who fear for the loss of their heritage.

Although state government spokesmen repeatedly express concern about the seriousness of the access issue, very little of consequence has been done to address it. There have been a lot of words and a lot of task forces and study groups, but beyond talk, not much action. In fact, if you look carefully beneath the rhetoric, you will find, in some cases, that state government is part of the problem, not the solution.

Only sportsmen and Maine’s citizenry can bring the kind of pressure and problem-solving initiatives needed to stem the tide of declining access to recreational property. The MPGA’s leadership is a solid step in the right direction. Other groups need to follow suit.

Step one in fixing the access problem will be dealing with the ever-growing problem of illegal dumping. More and more land is being blocked off by landowners fed up with those misguided among us who would sooner dump old shingle or tires in the woods than pay a landfill operator a dumping fee.

Illegal dumping in wooded areas has gotten so bad that, according to one biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, cleaning up litter left on MDIF&W lands, has become the “number two management activity,” in terms of cost and manpower effort.

The irony is that in the open-burning-dump days, the days before sanitary landfills, illegal dumping of old appliances, outmoded propane tanks, construction debris and unwanted furniture was not even an issue. If you wanted to dispose of an old sofa you were not required to disassemble it, divide it into metal and fabric, and wait for the third Thursday of the month between 2-6 p.m. And you didn’t have to pay $20 to a landfill operator or figure out what was landfill allowable and what was not. You simply hauled unwanted stuff to the dump and off-loaded it. That was it. Simple. No red tape and no $20 dollar bills.

Bangor resident Bill McDonald hit the point home in an article on access that will appear in the December issue of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. Bill writes: “In a poor state like Maine, a system which makes a person pay $20 to get rid of a set of tires or $25 to throw away a 20-year-old TV, and take time off from work for the privilege, guarantees that trash will be dumped in the woods. The result is an ugly mess, an ugly landowner, and a line of rocks blocking the road.”

Before you get your dander up, this is not an appeal for a return to the good old days of open burning dumps. But in some ways, these rural dumps were less unsightly than a woods full of old appliances or our modern-day landfill “mountains” that leak methane and spoil the view.

Whether we like it or not, human behavior is predictable. People tend to take the paths of least resistance, laws or no laws. We can’t blame it all on the landowners, who are simply protecting their property.

But we must face the facts. Impractical and burdensome disposal regulations and policies are promoting illegal dumping, which in turn is leading to more and more posted land.

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is [email protected].