51. [The] Northern Appalachian Restoration Project
(Latest update 2001)
P. O. Box 6
Lancaster, NH 03584
E-mail: nff@sover.net
Key Personnel
Andrew Whittaker, Exec. Director
James R. Sayen, Exec. Director
Christopher Kuntze, President
Membership
(Not available)
Finances (1998)
Assets: $45,916
Income: $155,064
(50l(c)(3), files an IRS 990 form)
Coalition Involvements
Cenozoic Society
Earth Island Institute (300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco,
CA 94133-3312, publisher of Northern Forest Forum)
Earth First! (considering Jamie Sayen’s affiliation, and
NARP references to the Cenozoic Society)
National Audubon Society
Northern Forest Alliance
Northern Forest Center
Sierra Club
The Wilderness Society
Organization Description and Goals
“Promote sustainable natural and human communities in
the Northern Appalachians. - IRS report
“Purpose of NARP programs include protection of environment,
especially forest and wildlands; promotion of sustainable community
economies; and community education concerning environmental and
economic issues. NARP serves several thousand residents of the
region and publishes the Northern Forest Forum.” -IRS report
Board of Directors
Andrew Whitaker, Executive Director
James R. Sayen, Executive Director (An “Earth First!er,”
he was arrested with Jeff Elliott in Nov. 1990 while protesting
DEC’s pond reclamation program at Track Pond near Saranac
Lake. A DEC officer was injured in the scuffle.)
Christopher Kuntze, President
Kathleen Fitzgerald
Jim Northrup (consultant who had the contract to design the management
of the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Reserve)
Mary Stinehour
Adam Necrason, Treasurer
Comments
Northern Appalachian Restoration Project’s activities and publications make it apparent that it’s real goal is radical: restoring the “Northern Forest Lands” to wildlands
Publications
The Northern Forest Forum (quarterly newsletter). According to the Northern Forest Center, “This newspaper is packed with stories of the Northern Forest ecosystem and conservation progress and is an incredible resource.”
The publication uses the ploy of “economic revitalization” to give itself credibility, using the tactic of blaming the region’s woes on the timber industry, which NARP claims doesn’t pay its share of taxes, is an absentee, irresponsible landowner, etc. A typical issue in 1995 had the headline “8 Million Acre Headwaters Wilderness Reserve System Proposed” and gave a “Blueprint for a 75-Year Transition to Sustainable Natural & Human Communities.”
The programs in the Forum outline are a guide to tactics being used by all of the other kind-faced groups whose real goal is restoring the region to wilderness. The Forum called for:
“Economic Revitalization
Local Ownership & Control
Economic Diversification
Local Agriculture
Labor-Intensive Value-Added Wood Products
Low-Impact Forestry,
Ecological Restoration Jobs
“Cultural Restoration
Restoring Sense of Community
Ending Regional Brain Drain
A Restoration Academy
Network of Local Museums
“Political Restoration
Local Control Over Decisions
Watershed Citizens’ Councils
Protecting Rights of Future Generations
“Ecological Restoration
Restoring Wildness
Protecting Ecological Integrity
A strategy for Reserve Design in More Developed Regions
of Maine, NH & VT
“Land Acquisition
$2 Billion Can Buy 7 Million Acres
That’s Only a $100 Million a Year for 20 Years
The Northern Forest Forum announces on page 1: “Printed on Totally Chlorine-Free Paper.”
Proposal to Establish a Headwaters Regional Wilderness Reserve System:
Objectives proposed by Jamie Sayen are listed below, as indicators of the gist of the Northern Appalachian Restoration Project’s overall goals:
“Maintaining Ecological Integrity in Representative
Reserve Networks” —cites Reed Noss (prime advocate
of the Wildlands program)
“Forever Wild” Constitutional Amendment similar
to New York’s Art. XIV in all Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
“Identification of Core Wilderness Areas” (wildlands and Biosphere Reserve terminology}
“Location of undeveloped areas” (owned by corporations which “are generally head-quartered out of the region, in some cases, out of the United States...There are no year-round human settlements within the boundaries of any of the proposed 16 Headwaters Reserves.”)
“Watersheds of high value, as intact as possible”: Connecticut, Androscoggin, Kennebec, Penobscot, John/Allagash/Aroostook, and Saco.
“Sites adjacent to existing public lands”: Public lands become “anchors.”
“Efforts to connect the Headwaters RWRS with reserve systems in the Adirondacks, the Berkshires, the Taconics, and Canada will build upon existing public lands such as the Adirondack Park, Willoughby State Park and the Green Mountain National Forest, and provincial parks in Canada.”
“Concentrated occurrences of rare species, areas of unusually high species richness, and locations of rare plant or animal communities.” (“Most of northern Maine has not been inventoried”)
“Location of depleted seral stages, especially old growth” (refers to studies by Charles Cogbill in the Forum and Mary Byrd Davis for Cenozoic Society)
“Extirpated Species”: Requires large areas for restoration of the wolf (especially), wolverine, cougar, lynx, and caribou (especially). Restore salmon. Restore microflora and fauna. Multitude of uncatalogued, unstudied organisms, including soil microbes, fungi.
“Reserves Must Be Very Large”:
(1) “To protect watersheds”
(2) “Because existing public lands cannot assure ecological
integrity”
(3) “There is inadequate data of occurrences of rare natural
communities and species nor of species richness”
(4) “The mature, closed-canopy forests that characterized
the pre-settlement hardwood and Acadian forests of the region
has been replaced by early and mid-successional forests”
(5) “Extirpated carnivores and migratory ungulates have very
large area requirements”
(6) “Current [industrial] forest practices and development
patterns are inadequately regulated and are generally incompatible
with the goals of the reserve system”
(7) “Air-borne pollutants”
(8) “To sustain key geomorphological, hydrological, ecological,
biological, and evolutionary processes within normal ranges of
variation”
(9) “To protect the integrity of natural disturbance regimes”
-The Northern Forest Forum, Headwaters Restoration 1995,
pp. 5-6
Federal Regional Wilderness Reserve System: “Forever
wild” network of ecological reserves for every region in
North America, under a new public lands agency in the US Department
of the Interior, in cooperation with Canada and Mexico, with the
goal of protecting, preserving and restoring the native biotic
communities and all their natural processes in perpetuity. No
motorized recreation will be permitted. Regional “local control,”
which has been lost to international corporations and a few families,
will be restored.
—paraphrased from The Northern Forest Forum, Headwaters
Restoration issue, 1995, p. 6, Jamie Sayen
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