Many of us in Maine know exactly how good we have it when it comes to opportunities to enjoy the natural world. Whatever our preferred activities or seasons, we love living in a place where opportunities for enjoying the outdoors are always accessible. The Katahdin region – packed with rugged mountains, serene woods and wild waterways – is one of our crown jewels. Yet we may be about to risk the health of this ecosystem forever to let a Canadian company try to earn a few dollars in the short term.

In Bangor on Oct. 23 and in Millinocket on Oct. 16, 17 and 18, the state’s Land Use Planning Commission is set to hold public hearings about this company’s application to rezone Pickett Mountain (about nine miles from Patten, on land that, at present, is sensibly zoned for small cabins) for an industrial mining operation.

This company, Wolfden Resources, already submitted an application once, but it was so shoddily put together the company withdrew it before it could be formally rejected. This is not a business we want to trust with our woods and waters.

I urge all Mainers who love the outdoors and can attend the public hearings to do so, and everybody who’s unable to attend to write WolfdenRezoning.LUPC@Maine.gov. Our wilderness can sustain us all. There are more riches, metaphorical and literal, to be had in preserving this land than there is in letting some corporation tear it apart.

Joshua Jackson
Brunswick

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