 up the Catawton Woods and Waters National Monument. It's, personally, it's one of my favorite places on the planet, and so it's exciting to hear about what's happening and appreciate the fact that our, well, it was going to be two, but three speakers tonight are going to tell us a little bit about their efforts to, you know, plan for the monument that was created in 2016 and develop some, you know, broad concepts of what the management will look like for that space. The speakers we have tonight, Noel Musson, is a professional land use planner. He has a master's degree in community planning and development from the Muskie School. And Noel has, as you'll tell tonight, has a very participatory planning approach that works with clients, government officials, citizens, and other experts in terms of trying to create livable and sustainable projects. He worked as a planner for the town of Harpsville and grew up on Mount Desert Island and has taken his expertise around the state. Terry Dewan is an award-winning landscape architect. He has over 40 years of professional experience in landscape architecture, visual resource assessment, site planning, design guidelines, and community development. You know, I said this in the spring, but I first encountered his scenic assessment studies when I moved to Maine, you know, almost 30 years ago. And it's sort of, that work kind of rebuts the, you know, age-old adage that beauty is in the eye and the beholder. I mean, you know, Terry is willing to say, no, we can maybe as a community agree on what's beautiful and figure out how to protect it. And he's done, you know, developed tools that can be used by communities and agencies to really assess, you know, assess scenery. He's also written several studies in community planning, visual impacts, recreation planning, water access, and highway corridors. And then a third person who I think is gonna maybe speak right at the beginning is the superintendent of Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, Tim Hudson. And Tim has a career of more than 50 years if I added it up correctly, though he doesn't look that old, so he started doing this when he was four, I think, and has worked with the Park Service as an expertise in National Park Project Management. He started his career as a seasonal employee, as many do in the Park Service, worked as a civil engineer in what's now the Denver Service Center, became the chief of maintenance at Yellowstone for 20 years, then moved to Alaska and was the Alaska regional chief of maintenance and the associate regional director in Alaska. Hurricane Sandy brought him back to the east coast. He was responsible for the sort of the recovery efforts for the National Park Service properties that were affected by that hurricane. And then we stole him and he came up to Maine to be the first superintendent of Katahdin Woods and Waters. So we, I mean, Tim, I think there were several awards from the Park Service, I think both the meritorious, okay, there was some interior meritorious and distinguished service awards, like the two that I saw on his CV, but we've got tremendous amount of expertise and a real high octane group of speakers tonight. And so I'm gonna shut up and let them actually present about this place that they've worked on and know so well. So I don't know if Tim's gonna start off or Noel or Terry, but I will turn the microphone over to one of you. Well, I think I'll jump in. Also, I noticed a few people here, but I will point out that Isabel Ashton's here, she works with Tim up at Katahdin Woods and Waters and Andy Bossy's here from friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters. They've been super helpful to us throughout this whole process and doing a great job, you know, just promoting the monument and doing all the good things that they're doing up there. So just wanted to point out a couple of those people. I think on the agenda for tonight, if Terry, we have a presentation that we're gonna go through and then we'll try to answer any questions at the end, but I think are you getting ready to share screens, Terry? I really could. Just so everybody can see what we're talking about. And then I think all of us have a pretty, we've talked about the monument for the past three years, quite a bit together. So we tend to just sort of talk and go through and Terry will jump in or I'll jump in or Tim will jump in if we have some additional information to add. And then maybe toward the end, Tim can jump in and just give us a little update on how things are going at the monument currently or with the year of, you know, our recent challenges with COVID, people getting back out into the wilderness and kind of what's going on up there now. That makes sense. So I think what we're gonna try to go over tonight is pretty high level stuff just to try to give everybody a sense of, you know, what the background of the project is, what we've been doing for the past three years. A little bit more information about what Ketahden Woods and Waters National Monument is, at least from our understanding and research. And then what are some of the challenges that we have moving forward? So we're gonna try to hit the high notes and let folks know where we're headed with this. Just a little bit of background, most everybody knows, but the area that was or is the monument was donated to the National Park Service by Roxanne Quimby, who worked really hard and diligently to try to accumulate land through acquisition that was gonna be, you know, given back to the people of Maine and to the country. We all know initially, you know, the process had some fits and starts, but we had a tide turn, we'll call it here down on the coast. And, you know, the president Barack Obama created the National Monument, which we're working on today. So there it was in 2016. And the proclamation is really the basis of where we started from our work. And you can find it online and it's actually quite an interesting document to read. Our team, well, we were asked around three years ago to put together a team of Maine professionals who are helping us work on this project. And we actually, besides Terry and I, we have other members of our team. We have another planner named Van Smith, Nancy Montgomery, who is, you know, world-class interpretive designer. Mark Leathers, who is a forester and has extensive experience in the area that we're planning for in the monument was working with Roxanne prior to this area becoming a monument. And Gwen Hilton, who was a chair of the Land Use Regulatory Commission back in the day, about LUPC today, and has a lot of knowledge of rural planning challenges. And it's been a great team. And for me, a really, really great experience working with all these different team members. So, as I said, the planning process is really, the presidential proclamation actually targeted three years for this management planning process to occur. And it involves two different things. One is something called a foundation document. And the other is what we're calling a management framework. We'll get into what that is in a little bit. But the foundation documents are really, they're kind of the synthesis of monuments, resources, the values, the history. It's using some of the legislative language and it's largely a static document. It's really a park document, National Park Service document that helps describe the monument's purpose, its significance, some special mandates that apply to it. And it helps set the stage for, or the builds the foundation of, thus the name. What are the special things about the monument? And what are the needs of the monuments so that we can start to direct different budgetary funds and budget requests toward the monument's needs. And the management framework is a little bit more of a hybrid approach for this project, but it's really taking the management ideas up to a basic decision-making, and it's not a decision-making document, but a basic high level of thinking about different areas of the monument. For those of you who are familiar with NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, it really stops short of the requirements of a NEPA document, which would be kind of more specific and require different levels of review. But it does consider identification of opportunities, problems, conflicts, additional management planning needs, and what we're calling management areas. So it's like, I call it a guidance document too, or if you wanna talk in municipal terms, it's sort of like the master plan, but not master plan in the terminology that the park service would use. And throughout the time that we've been working on this, we've had an extensive amount of community engagement processes. We've been all over the state of Maine, we've had meetings in the North, we've had meetings in the Patanocca area, we've had meetings in the Bangor area, we've had meetings in Portland, and now we're having virtual meetings. So this is, I think hopefully we're trying to cover it all. And through that, we've really tried to identify or gotten feedback from people across the state of Maine about winter activities, about infrastructure needs, about those range of experiences within the monument, about the compatibility of different types of uses that happen in the monument. So you see some, we've developed different tools that we've tried to use to help solicit feedback. So this is an example of a winter use exercise where we tried to talk about conflicts or compatibility of different types of winter activities. We've done some different feedback to have people walk around to different stations, to talk about cultural resources or natural scenic recreational areas to help us identify any data gaps that we might have missed or get some thoughts on future management areas. So we're really building our knowledge base. That's how we started. We wanted to hear from other people and then build our knowledge base. So where is it? I'm not sure how many people have actually been to the monument, but it's about 100 miles from where I am right now in the lovely town of South Los Arbor on near Acadia National Park. Comparatively to Baxter State Park, it's adjacent to Baxter State Park, but we're talking about 137 square miles or about 87,000 acres. But this map really shows the comparison and the link really between Baxter State Park and Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. So, Terry, you can jump into for these ones, but what we learned, I think, over the course of our work and experience at Katahdin Woods and Waters is it really is many places and many faces. So anywhere you go in the monument, there's different characteristics. So you see this map to sort of illustrate some of what we're thinking. Yeah, no, this is Terry here. Nolan and I did a similar presentation to Ken's class and some of the slides that you see were borrowed heavily from that presentation. When we talked to them, though, we actually had them do an academic exercise to help come up with a management framework of their own without the benefit of what we've done. It was very interesting exercise. But in looking at the monument, we said it's 87,000 acres. How do you develop a vision for such a large area? And so we encourage the students to break it down into smaller manageable pieces. And so this is an attempt right here to show six different areas that each have its own separate identity. Oh, do you wanna go through here? Go on, Terry. You're doing good. Nobody wants to hear me anymore. Yeah, if we were doing this live, we would ask people to raise their hand. How many people have been here already? So I just assume that at least half the people in the digital room have been here already. And you probably have a great love for the place. And if you don't, you're probably gonna wish that you have seen it or making plans to see it. But in terms of what's out there, the East Branch of the Penobscot River is the major water body that runs from the north to the south of the area. Just in terms of subdividing it into big chunks, the area north in this area here has many of the outstanding hydrologic features. There's waterfalls, there's beaver flowages, there's rapids, there's Haskell deadwaters, there's Haskell rock, which is a major geologic feature in the middle of the East Branch. There's places to stay and places of historic value. Haskell hut, we're looking Haskell deadwater. Once you get to the south of Big Spring Brook there, the river changes character. It's a lot slower. I know Ken talks lovingly about going out there and canoeing this area and just being at ease with the beautiful silver maples that overhang the river. It's really quite a special place and much different from the northern stretch is the river. It's had a quick stream, another major river that runs through the middle of the monument that makes up in Baxter State Park. It's known for a lot of log-driving history. There are enormous boulders at Oren Falls right here. In fact, you can see pieces where they've actually tried to blow the boulders apart when they're during the log-driving areas. It's a wonderful place. In the middle of the monument, there's an area that's made up of a lot of mountains. The International Appalachian Trail goes to the heart of it about over 30 miles of the IAT is found within the National Monument. There's some historic structures at the top of DZ Mountain. There's an old fire lookout that's still up there. Then the Loop Road in the southwestern end is probably a place that people know about when they've been to the monument. This is one place that people are gravitated to because of the Loop Road. It's a pretty rudimentary road. There's a few shots here that show what it looked like a couple of years ago. I know there's plans right now that Andy might be able to talk about to upgrade the overlook at Mile 10, which has a spectacular view of Mount Katahdin. And then along the way, there's a multitude of other things to see. Small ponds, the hike up to Barnard Mountain. The view from the top of Barnard Mountain at the top there is really what most people identify with when they think of KWW. And then on the east side, east side of the east branch is Boyes Parcel. This is 14,000 acres of land. Again, with its own special character, that's borders on Lower Shinpan, but there's very little access onto it. It's accessed by the American Thread Road, passing by places like Kimball Deadwater and Kimball Brook. There's a Loop Road, as you can see in the middle of the oval there that provides access down to the Savoy's River. And it's a place that is, again, very different from the rest of the monument. That's one of the things that's fascinating about KWW is that the variety of different experiences and opportunities that are out there. Kerry, I would also add, you know, just a reaction to the Savoyes Parcel is it's just, it's such a unique area, but it's also kind of a mini monument. So it's one of the areas that's a little more close, it's a little closer to a main road. You still get quite a bit of the same and similar experiences. And didn't we determine it was almost, it's bigger than any other state park in Maine? That area? That's right, it's much bigger than any of the state parks. If this was a state park, it would be the largest state park other than Baxter in the state of Maine. Okay, so how do we go about determining what's out there? Well, one of the advantages of working with such a remarkable team is that there is a lot of good information available through places like Sewell Company, through the Office of GIS, various agencies. And we looked at a variety of different resources. The natural resources, of course, what most people think about when they think of a national monument. And by natural resources, you know, we mean things like wildlife habitat and places of ecological significance. There are two areas, focused areas of statewide ecological significance that either border on or are part of KWW, the Baxter region to the north and the East Branch, the Savoyas River, and the South Cream to the south. There's also, again, a lot of good detailed information from beginning with habitat. For example, maps that illustrate where high-value plant and animal habitat are located. We did a lot of work on water resources because after all, this is Gatahden Woods and Waters National Monument, looking at the rivers that flow through it, the small streams that feed into the rivers and streams. There's very special ponds, the remote ponds that are classified by the Land Use Planning Commission as remote ponds. We had to take into consideration watershed divides and wetlands that are found throughout the area. Beginning with habitat maps, if you haven't seen them, are wonderful resources. They offer a lot of detail. And this is just an enlargement of the place where the three rivers join together. Wasada Cook and the lower left, East Branch in the middle, and Savoyas River coming down from the north. As you can see from the labeling here, these show the approximation of various species and special concerns of threatened species, natural communities that are indicative of the sort of richness of the habitats that are out here. Nola, why don't you talk a little bit about the cultural resources? You've been doing a lot of that recently. Sure, yeah, we're, again, one of the important things about the monument is the vast amount of cultural resources from this area being homeland to the Wabanaki people to logging and the history with Roosevelt and others in this area. So what we try to do through this process is collect as much information as we have, but also recognizing that some of the data that we have available may be something we call data gaps. And that's something that goes into the planning process that we need to look at. We've actually been spending quite a bit of time with the Wabanaki representatives to try to integrate their story into what we're writing for both the foundation document and the management plan. So we can talk about that later, but quite a bit of time trying to understand from them what's important culturally to these areas and how we work that into the process. We'll also be identifying the start of some interpretive themes. When people come to national parks or national monuments, it's very often an educational experience. And so what are the themes that make this place so unique, so special? Certainly, as Noel just pointed out, the Native American culture and the connections to the land, to the landforms, to the rivers is extremely important. The logging history and the working lands are a fascinating story to see how this area has been treated over the years, coupled with the forest fires that have really played a major role in the way the landscape looks today. And then there's the whole story of the transition that went from logging to the sports and the recreationists, the people, the sports who came up here to climb Mount Katahdin and the places that they visited along the way, the places that they stayed, the monument line, early surveying attempts to denote what's out there. And then the story of the early conservationists, the recreationists, the artists, the photographers who came here in droves when they started to hear about the wonders of this area. And then last but certainly not least, the local history of the people that lived around here, the local towns and the culture that's built up around the national monument lands. I think we like to say that this area is a good, another great example of Mainz North Woods and all the magic and stories that go along with that. The National Park Service, of course, is famous for the preservation and display of scenic resources. And KW Davis is not the exception there. We certainly have a wonderful number of places that people go to because they're drawn to things like the views from the top of Barnard Mountain, the views from the Loop Road, the oversized boulders at Oren Falls, the tranquility of stretches of the rivers and the waterfalls, the scenic overlooks, the small ponds and so forth. We're starting to develop maps that show where these places are. We are not at this point, however, doing anything to show how these places might be improved, that might be a later phase down the road. But we certainly are recognizing the importance that the monument plays in the resources of the whole area surrounding Mount Katahdin and the other preserved lands. Land use and forestry, as I mentioned, is a major component of the history of the area. There's a lot of evidence. As you drive through, some of the roads that you travel on are shared by active logging operations. In many places, logging companies own one side of the road and the monument owns the other side of the road. There's a lot of evidence of logging activity and years gone by. There's most of the road network that you can travel on. We're done as a result of gaining access for logging operations. I also think, Terry, this is important to kind of think about as this slide indicates that the past logging history also indicates different types of habitat and how things are regenerating within the monument itself. So it's a really good example of how different habitats get to grow back or how the landscape is affected by this type of forestry. Sewel company, of course, there's a lot of work in forest management. And as Noel said, Mark Leathers has been working on this land for probably a dozen years or so when the previous owner first got involved in it. And he knows the area. He knows every tree and bush that's out there. And he said, it's amazing to go drive through the area and look at places that five to 10 years ago had been heavily harvested. And you probably don't recognize the fact that these had been so heavily harvested today. If you look at the map on the left, you'll see a dotted line. This is on the Suboyas property, just to the south of Floreshyn pond. On the right, I took a Google Earth map and enlarged it just to show what this area looked like about five years ago. And as you can see, it's a whole network of logging roads and skitter roads. And I would guarantee if you went out there today, just five or six years later, you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of a lot of this activity. We hear a lot of people when they talk about the monument describing it in terms of as wilderness character or the fact that it is wilderness. Well, it's pretty hard to think that given its most recent history that this would be classified as a wilderness, at least not right now. Access, of course, is one of the issues that we have to deal with in terms of providing a way for people to get there. You know, it's not an easy place to get to. The map on the left shows the major public roads that lead into the monument. The map on the right shows in yellow, the roads that are currently within the monument. Most of these are unpaved gravel roads in various conditions, but people do find it. And they are putting signs up just this year. Visitor use experiences and the types of recreation, of course, is one of the main draws people want to know. Well, once I get there, what can I do? Well, there's a wide variety of things that are available for people. You know, hiking, of course, horseback riding, hiking across streams, fishing, just exploring on bicycle on foot. And then during the wear time, there's an equal number of activities that are available for people from ski joring, which is dogs pulling people on skis to people winter camping. Stargazing is a major sport now or activity that has certainly drawn a lot of attention because of the monument's designation as a dark sky memorial. Okay, Noel, do you want to take the next group? All that background information and the information that we were able to gather through our public process, what we're trying to do is develop something called the management framework, which is basically it's based upon a sound vision for the monument. So taking all the information and thinking about how this area should be or could be managed in the future. And it really relies on our natural, natural, the scenic, the historic and natural resources that Terry just went through. And also considering comments that we've gotten back from the public, from different agencies, non-governmental organizations that we've met with and from the park service itself and from the donor. And it acknowledges also that there are some stipulations that were on the presidential proclamation and from existing deeds that are, you know, like this, like this, like this, like this, like this. As we're managing. So what the management framework is not is a really highly detailed plan. It's more of a vision plan. We don't propose any specific actions in the management plan. Those will really come later and will be guided by this management framework. It's not a land use plan in the sense that we're gonna illustrate the location of new trails or roads or campgrounds or any of that. That will also come later as part of the process. But what it really does is sets the vision for the monument. Thinking about how to guide future decision makers who are gonna actually do the physical plans or put the details to management policies or think about interpretive plans and locations for interpretive science and other components of the future of the monument. So what we were able to develop, this is sort of the high level view of what we're calling the management areas map. So you can see several different colors here which we'll go over, but we've broken the monument into different areas which have different characteristics and different management objectives associated with it. So we've come up with gateway areas where we describe what those are gonna be, where those are the areas where they're essentially just your first touch in the monument, different points along the way. What should or could happen in those areas? Develop recreation areas which are the orangey colored locations on this map where more development, more people are gonna be or the river corridors, thinking about how each of the river corridors has a different experience and along the east branch what you'll see in later slides, more of a transition between experiences as you go down the branch. Some more less intensive use areas and some backcountry areas we're calling each having a different kind of visitor experience. So in the management framework also includes besides the map, a matrix which really puts into more descriptive terms that the resource condition of a particular area, the desired visitor experience of a particular area, the types and levels of development that might be associated with that area, different levels of management or types of management that might be appropriate for that area. And then what types and levels of visitor activity might be appropriate for that area. So it's starting to set the stage for all these future more detailed planning processes. Yeah, the framework is guided by work that's been done in many other national parks, national monuments around the country. And so we had a great deal of assistance with the park service who steered us in a certain direction to make sure that we're meeting their criteria for development of the management framework. So things to keep in mind as we're going through this or as you eventually start to look at and review some of these documents is that they're preliminary at this point. We've had a lot of feedback and I think hearing very similar comments. So we're really kind of refining the process as we continue right now. And management area boundaries are really starting points for evaluation but there may be sub areas within each management area. So we've taken it to the highest level of view and then you kind of have to start to, as the park gets more, as the monument gets more experienced, we'll say there are more levels of detail that can come out of that. But these are, I think about the management plan is like the guardrails that keep you on the road in the direction that you want ahead, the big, big direction. If any of you have been to any of the earlier presentations and looking at the slides that we're gonna see tonight, you may notice some subtle differences in terms of the mapping. We've been very responsive to the comments that we've heard by the comments we've heard through the park service and Tim and others. And so as we go through there, as Noel just mentioned, this is an iterative process and it certainly is still preliminary but it's getting to the point where it's gonna be released as part of the management framework. Do you wanna keep going Terry? So the management areas, when we developed these five different areas, we're based upon many considerations. You've already seen the maps of the natural cultural scenic recreation resources. That's the stuff that makes up the physical presence of the monument. But what are the existing conditions and what are the facilities that are out there that will play into an understanding about a vision for the future? What are the established land use patterns in terms of where people enter, the way that people use the land right now both on land and on water. The context is extremely important. The fact that it's immediately abutting Backstreet State Park was tremendously important. Backstreet State Park has its own management protocol and certain values that they certainly hold near and dear to their heart. And we'll address that to some extent as we go through here. There's also, we like to think of the back of this area as being a giant chocolate chip cookie and the monument might be one of the chocolate chips but it's surrounded by a lot of preserved land. And so we have to think about the context that it sits within and how it relates to the broader landscape around it. Presidential Proclamation is certainly full of a description of allowable and not allowable activities and uses in the area. The National Park Service has regulations and policies that apply here. And certainly dealing with the ADA American with Disabilities Act is another guidance document we think about the management areas. We also had a lot of input, as Noel said, from the public. We've had dozens of meetings so far, of we in the Park Service and listening sessions where people came and just unloaded their thoughts and then followed up with great written comments. And as you saw, one individual even came with a sketchbook full of drawings and painting that he had done out there. We've had many meetings with non-governmental organizations, letters, emails, phone calls, and finally, last but not least, the National Park Service has provided us a tremendous amount of input and the development of this. So as Noel said, there are five different management areas. This is what the area looks like right now. And then if you overlay the management area overview on top of that, you can see where these five areas are. The gateways, the developed recreation, river corridors, the non-intensive use areas, and the backcountry areas. I'll go through each one of these briefly. The gateway areas where these purple dots on the map are indications of where the place where the public is welcome is either established entranceways right now or places that we feel could be developed into a place where you may go to get information. There may be a place that's a little bit more developed in terms of a structure or parking or a trailhead. We don't know, we've identified where these places might be. Knowing that when people arrive, they wanna know that they have finally arrived and then they're gonna ask the question, what do I do here? Where should I go? How do I keep safe? What should I expect to see and do here? So, yeah, we are not dictating at this point what sort of facilities happen at each one of these areas, but just recognizing the fact that we do need gateways at certain key locations. These, we've again identified these places knowing that these are diagrammatic at this point and some places already have some facilities. The Madagaman Inn, for example. There are restroom facilities, there's a small parking area, there's trailheads, other places like at Sandbank. There's already a small informal campsite available at Savoyas Parcel off the American Thread Road. Not much there already, but again, we need something to let people know that yes, this is where you go to get information. Develop recreation areas, are the areas shown in brown right here. And for the most part, these are areas adjacent to the existing road network. As you can see in the lower left on the map, this is around the loop road. We're going out maybe a quarter of a mile that says that when people are in these developed recreation areas, they have a certain sensibility, they have a certain level of expectation about what to see. Many of the people may not even get out of their car. They may wanna experience the monument from the safety and comfort of their own vehicle. Other people though may wanna use this as a starting point. People are drawn to these areas by the views of the landscape, especially the more distant landscape. There's also, especially on the loop road, multiple users from outside the monument who use this. In other words, there's logging activity that take place that use this road. So people have to be made aware of the fact that you're not on a dedicated road strictly for visitor use. As we mentioned earlier, hunting is allowed on the east side of the east branch and snowmobiling is allowed on some of these roads and some of these areas. The management framework anticipates what sort of uses may happen here. Again, we're not getting in any detail, but we know that there may be improvements necessary for roads and turnouts if it's desirable. There may be picnic areas and restrooms, but whatever is done here, the long-term vision say that they should be relatively unobtrusive. What that means is a design decision that'll come later, but laying the framework right now puts it out there that the natural and physical resources will remain relatively intact. That should be really the dominant experience of people along these developed recreation areas. A lot of activities can take place here. In addition to sightseeing, there's places where you can go for horseback riding, hiking, star study and so forth. We also want to make sure that when people go here, that the trails are well marked. We may find that the type of users who frequent these areas aren't necessarily well versed in the use of compasses and maps. So there needs to be a certain amount of wayfinding that's factored into the vision for this area. Then lastly, what should the character of the roads be? A lot of people are so much concerned that the roads are fairly rough. They're typical of what you may find in main woods, but what should the character of these areas of these roads be in the future? Here's a blow up of the loop road on the left, and here's a couple of views from the loop road on the right. As you can see, it's a gravel road. It's in some places, the two-way road, and in some places, it's a one-way road. It's wide enough for two vehicles to pass, but it's certainly not a road that you're going to want to travel more than, say, 25 miles an hour on. The river corridors. This is, again, some of the real unique parts of this area. We said that the river corridor as a management area should be probably within a quarter of a mile or so. This is a zone where the people who are either on the river or next to the river feel that they're experiencing the river in some way. They may hear it. They may see it. They may smell it. They may see the mist rising off the river. These are the, of course, the major streams and rivers that are the defining elements of the monument, and for the most part, these are areas of high scenic, recreation, cultural, and ecological value. So this raises a lot of challenges, of course. When you're on the river, what should you expect to see from the people who are on the shoreline? When you're on the shoreline, what should you expect to see? We're saying that the access to these areas should be primarily by trails and that the vehicle access should be very limited and that the sounds and sights of human activity should be minimized. This is the point we've had a lot of discussion about. People who are coming down the river with a certain level of expectation. Do they want to be able to see parked cars or hear cars driving along the river? Probably not. It's an opportunity, though, to do a lot of thinking about providing for a good visitor experience, protecting the resources that are the river and, of course, places where you've got the waterfalls and the rapids providing for visitor safety. And we certainly anticipate that there'll be low impact recreation in most of these areas. Preserving these natural features is gonna be high on the priority for what the resources should look like. There's many places, there's gonna be high visitor use, especially where it's fairly easily accessed. Other places, it's a lot more difficult to get to. There's also a great deal of winter activity with people going out there to cross country ski and snowshoes and camping along the area. There's also a lot of fat tire biking that's found throughout the monument. Here's a few shots of what the various places the river looks like right now. As we mentioned earlier, once we've established these larger management areas or zones, we may be subdividing some of them. And the river quarters is one example of how the east branch itself is one system. But when you start to think about it and look at the character of the river, the type of uses that take place right now, the width of the river, the type of water features, it's really possible to divide it up into four possibly more sub areas. The upper east branch, just as you come in from Madagaman, the Oxbow to Haskell Deadwater, a place that's rich in wildlife habitat, the Middle East branch, where you find the pitches and the waterfalls and places like the holding machine, which are named after the power of the waters in this area. Then we have the Lower East branch. We saw some slides on the upper left here that's a much different character. People go there for a much different type of experience. It's a recognition that there are a lot of things that are going on that are all interrelated. There's a new book that's hopefully gonna be coming out in 2021 by the Friends Group called The Three Rivers Paddling Guide. Hopefully will be published in full next year, but it contains a wealth of information about what to expect, where the portages are, where you can camp along the way, some of the scenery along the way, some of the natural history. This is one page out of this book. If you're really interested in going down the rivers, I strongly suggest that you get this book. The yellow areas are the areas between the river corridors and what we're gonna end up last of the bad country. These are the areas shown in yellow. These are areas that are rolling topography as opposed to steep mountainous topography. There's a lot of streams and small ponds that are found out through here. The access is primarily by the trail systems, many of which are old logging roads or dedicated use trails. Vehicle access to these areas would be regulated by gates. So we would allow emergency vehicles, for example, to get back into most of these areas, but probably not open up for normal cars driving through these areas. The experience that's gonna be anticipated somewhat between the remoteness of the bad country, which I'll mention in a moment, and what we're calling the dynamic character, the river corridors, we're gonna expect to see a lot more people as certainly in the northern stretches of the East Branch. What we're trying to do here is establish a balance between these non-motorized recreation and the natural resources in these areas. This is the place where you may find things like additional trails or improved trails, the huts that are out there, primitive restrooms and campsites, interpretive signs, some of the things that you might normally expect to see in a national monument. Again, with the type of activities that are found in many places throughout the monument, including hiking in some places, mountain biking, fishing, and so forth. And here's some examples of the roads that are currently out there. Some places, the existing bridges have been taken out. Some places as rudimentary covers over the streams that do provide a network of access ways throughout the monument, especially going north-south. On the left is one of the many ponds that are found throughout the monument area. Now, the backcountry is one of the largest components of the management areas. These are the wilder, steeper, more remote parts of the monument that's shown in the dark green right here. Many of the mountains are named, some of them aren't named. There are established trails to the top of some of them. As I said before, the International Appalachian Trail goes through it. Barnard Mountains and the lower part of this green area. Some places there are existing structures that would be preserved as part of the vision plan for these areas. But it's important to think of, this is an area where the resources, the resource value, the slopes, the woods, and so forth are really the driving force behind the development of the management's framework, that the natural ecological processes are carefully preserved in doing the vision plan. Now, when we set out to define where the boundaries might be, we took a look at things like the IAT, International Appalachian Trail, which is that dotted line that courses its way through here. The steep areas that are found along the mountains and the sides and the mountaintops are the areas that are shown in the tan color. And then we have huts that have been created by the International Appalachian Trail that are part of this area. So you start to overlay the green areas on top of that, then you start to see how it makes a lot of sense, that these areas are more remote. People are gonna go here, we're gonna have a much different expectation of what sort of facilities to expect, what sort of experience, how many people are expecting to see, and so forth. These areas are probably gonna have limited and very dispersed facilities. There won't be, we'd like to think that people who go there will not have an expectation for the sort of activities and facilities that you may find in the more developed areas. There probably will not be toilets and campgrounds. And that's the, one of the realities of people decorating this area is gonna be the lack of services and the rudimentary facilities. You have to, people who go there are gonna have to accept the fact that when you go there, you may be pretty much on your own. Now, one of the interesting things about that is to compare the national monument to what the Baxter State Park people call their trail free zones, which is this map right here. These areas that are colored on this map then superimpose the backcountry area, you can see that there's a lot of synergy between Baxter State Park and the areas that we're calling the backcountry areas here. These are areas that will provide a buffer around Baxter State Park and a continuation of the habitats that's so critical to the management of Baxter State Park. So that in the nutshell is the preliminary management areas, the monument gateways, the purple dots, the development recreation areas around the existing roads, the river corridors in some areas that are broken down into sub areas. The non-intensive use areas where you may find a lot of recreation taking place using the existing road system and then the backcountry areas. However, there's an area that, as you can see, just to the right of Gattahden Lake there, about three quarters of the way down the map that's hatchered, that's called we're calling it a future planning overlay district. And what that means is that this is an area that may be adjusted based upon more detailed future planning. There's been a lot of questions raised by many people about things such as the location of the Loop Road. Is that too close to the border of Baxter State Park? As you can see, jutting into the National Monument right there. Is the Loop Road too long? What do you do about access to some of the mountains? Is this the proper place? So there's a lot of discussions that are happening right now that are gonna feed into the ultimate decision-making process that will guide the development of the management areas. Terry, there's actually, as we were going through this, a couple other future planning areas that we are adding to the mix that aren't reflected on this map. And one of them would be up on the northern part where the integration between the access and the use of the river corridor and then down at the lower northern end different ways that people get into the monument potentially in the future. But I think what we tried to do is set up a process through the management framework which would allow us to identify areas that we don't know all the answers to at this point. And they really need a little further flexibility and discussion as the monument starts to establish itself a little bit more. So we tried to add in some of these areas where we've had a lot of different discussions at this point. So those will also be reflected on the final product. Noel, where's the next steps? So the next steps are fits and starts, but we're in the currently in our sort of final, I'd call it our final public outreach process where we're trying to go around and let everybody know what we've actually done as in terms of listening to their feedback and developing the management framework and the foundation document. We're in the final stages of drafting the final foundation document right now and that should be done this fall as well as the final version of the management framework. We're soliciting feedback from Park Service and tribal representatives on both of these documents currently. So that's where we're headed. And now we're happy to answer, Tim, do you want to add anything? Yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah. Oh, good. Well, thank you. No, that was, that's where we're at. I think part of the, some of the things that approximate the deeds told us a lot of things. A lot of these right-of-ways, for instance, those roads you saw coming into the market, only three roads we could bring the public in legally. The other ones we only have management rights to. So that's why the concentration if you've been up to the Subwayous area, the American Thread Road is our access. The Gronin Road is where most people come in, but no one, that's a private road that we do not have. We don't have any rights on that road. So in fact, is right now, we're actually making the American Thread Road more passable to a vehicle we started last week. The things that came with the deeds, that's where the access piece, it's prescribed very clearly where hunting would be allowed and where snowmobiling would be allowed. And it doesn't, some of the people are, because it's allowed there, the other areas would then go back and reflect our management policies, which so they're not disallowed, but they'd have to go through a rigorous environmental assessment or even an EIA to do certain things. So the hunting and the snowmobiling were basically, when the deeds came, they were written in there. And that is where a lot of the right-of-ways from the logging truck sharing roads, the only place on the loop road that the logging trucks can go is actually the state has a right-of-way there. No one out in the private do not, but the state has a right-of-way. Probably not clear on the map, but that area north of the Todd and Lake is actually BPL land and it's not part of Baxter. So that is somewhat confusing to people. Part of the idea of this is to make this an experience that everybody could have a good experience, but they can't all have it in the same place. And so there's different areas. That's why we came up in the old ways with the park service the last couple of decades with done general management plans, which were very detailed and they were unimplementable. They took seven years, they cost a lot of money and they were obsolete by the time they got there and you still had to do more compliance. So this is one of the first actual attempts to go back and do a framework type mapping so that these are the kind of activities that will be okay or acceptable by resources in these certain areas. And then you go back and you do separate compliance on all of those. So instance, the viewpoint, it needs to be upgraded. We will do some separate environmental documents to upgrade that area so that public can weigh in. Otherwise, this document becomes so voluminous that it never goes anywhere. And that's the reason that we've gone to this method. As Noel said and Terry, we've had about seven or eight, nine, 10 meetings and the last year we've heard the same things over and over again. So that's what this reflects. And those areas with the crosshatch and there's actually three major ones. Those are where we've heard a lot of different areas. And so we've shown those, this is gonna take more study and these the kinds of things we'll look at. Will we cut off the top of the loop road? Is there another way? How do you make access for the day tripper in the river? Because the easy float, you can't get to walk a mile and a half to your canoe to get out of the easy float. The access from the south, which didn't show in these maps, we don't have access up from Milanoca. So that is another spot. If that could happen, we would have, we developed something down there. The other thing that we talked about, there was reserve rights for this that came with it for up to seven years for the previous owner to buy, to build things that are not, they're non-federal actions. And some of that is going on at this time. A trail's already been built. There's a contact center envisioned. So that's where we're at. We'd love to answer any of the questions. A lot of the lines are not completely definitive. That is lost everything here. Can you still hear me? By just one dead. We can still hear you, Tim. Your face is just paused. That's all. Well, that's probably a good thing. Well, I think as I get reconnected here, you know, quit talking. I would, you know, Isabel Ashton is on. I think Jean Roy is on as well. And they are, you know, they are the, Isabel is the new integrated resource chief for the park. She's been here for about a month and Jean is the chief of interpretation. And she's been here for almost a year. And so that's where we're at. And since I can't see anymore, while I'm reconnecting, I'll know I'll turn it back to you. And I'd be happy to answer any questions or comments people have, but I can't see them right now. Great. Now I think Ken will turn it back to you for any questions. Actually, Sarah's gonna handle the question. No, that's fine that we hadn't decided that, but I'll let her take over. We'll keep passing it around the virtual room. So we do have some various questions. A couple of folks had to drop off, but I told them that I would ask the questions and give them the answers tomorrow. The first one is, can you share more about how you work with the indigenous populations who consider this sacred ground? Yeah, from the get-go, we had established a working relationship with representatives from all the main tribes. And the National Park Service is actually really proactively working with them on this site. We've had multiple meetings where we've sat down and discussed their relationship to the monument. And I've been working with them very closely to try to craft language that is reflective, not only of the things, some of the things that we've talked about, but their perspective on it. It's actually from my work, I can speak selflessly to it. It's really, really interesting. And I think to the credit, to the Park Service and to the tribal representatives that are working really well together to try to reflect all of the things that are important to them. And try to understand how we can work together. So in this foundation document is really where you're going to see that reflected quite a bit in how the tribal history and significance of the monument is going to be reflected in the way that we try to weave it in to the document. So to answer part of that, all four of the tribes have seen the language and we've been very, spent a lot of time making sure that the language fits in. So they've seen the writing. So it's not, we're not trying to, they, we're not trying to paraphrase things. And so that's taken quite a bit of time of the between the, all the Wabanaki people. So that's been an effort to, like I said, and also the Park Service has worked on and we were having meetings about every quarter. Now they've gone to Zoom, but that's what's going on. And we look at it as part of our management strategy with them, not just with the framework, but with other things. I would say they didn't just see the language. They actually have participated in writing the language. So that's correct. Great. So the next question is, are you collecting information about native species that are endemic? I'll let Tim answer that question. From the management framework perspective, I think we would set up the process for that to happen and identify certain things as data gaps. But my understanding is that these are ongoing processes that the Park Service kind of have to. Yeah. I see Isabelle has her hand up. But yes, I'll let her go here. But that is, as we do these, we have a set of planning needs and that's one of them. That's been high on our list. And Isabelle's law actually started working on the indigenous plants and we've actually started on heavily mapping certain areas of the monument. But go ahead, Isabelle, you can take it from there. No, that's all I was gonna say is one of the priorities whenever the Park Service has new lands, they've been trying to inventory what is in the monument. And so one of our first steps was doing a detail, what we would call a vegetation map that includes vegetation and rare plants and those sorts of things. And so we have a part of it done. We're a couple of years from having everything done. It's not a quick process to do that. It's a lot, it's a big park. So we're working on it though. This is also very unusual. Most Park Service lands that we get have been public lands before. This has never been public land. So a lot of that data that you see in other areas, whether it came from the Forest Service to BLM, a state park or Department of Defense, we get a lot of stuff. There's been a lot of that mapping going on. My favorite story about this is that when I went to the Shippo's office in Augusta and asked about what they had there for historic structures and things in the monument, and they had one note that Myron Avery, who most of you may know who he was, that he was one of the ones that got the Appalachian Trail to end on Mount Katahdin instead of Mount Washington. He went by Lankasu, which is where Don Fenler was found, and there's a sporting campus vendor since at least 1886. They said there were three buildings there in 1932. That was the entire Shippo's office take on the monument. So that's the data gap here that we are starting from less knowledge than most places we get that were public lands. Very interesting. A similar question, I mean, you might have a similar answer, but how are we looking to protect the other species in the area from human contact? You guys wanna take a whack at that? Again, I'll start from the management framework. This is my own, that's my task, but I think what we've tried to do in the mansion is really set up areas sort of the high level management language that the park service can use to identify how that different areas are gonna be treated. And I will say, and I think we didn't hit on this like hard enough at the very beginning, but everything that we've done starts from the perspective of the resource and it kind of works down from there. So the primary objective is protection of the resource and the management framework. I'm not sure what those other things you were talking about because we look at it holistically and if there was something specific, with the question, we don't pick and choose. We take a look at what's there and try and keep it as natural as possible. Great, so the next question, I think this is referring to the last map that you had up, but is there a difference in the color gradation of the blue areas, how they go from lighter to darker blue? Yes, when we started to talk about the river corridor as a unique place, in one of the round table discussions we had, someone made the comment, well, that said that the river is made up of different personalities. Depending upon where you are, it can be wild and it can be untamed, it can be gentle. We had to reflect that in the managing strategy. And so with that, we came the notion of subdividing the river, the way we looked at the river into more unified sub-areas. And that's where we're at right now. That was directly as a result of comments that we heard from participants in the public engagement process. And then the last question is, are you willing to share these slides with the group? I don't think we have a problem with that, but we'll have to check with Tim and see how we post these. Actually, we post these on our website anyway. Yeah. And we will also have this recording on our website as well. Hey, Tim, could you talk a little bit about the visitor levels that you've seen this year? I heard you speak the other day. What's happened during the pandemic? So, it's kind of interesting. You know, we only have good numbers for three years. We have nine counters. And just to start, the total sum of visitation for 2018 from our counters was 20,550 visitors. We count two visitors per car. We haven't done a scientific study, but we know that that's in the general realm of other social studies that we've had in other parks that runs from Texas Conservatives. They're usually about 2.1, 2.2. So anyway, and in 2019, we had 22,350, so it went up about 10%. So, some of the visitation for this year, through the 30th of September is 23,025. So, we've already exceeded last year without October being in there. Now, there's two things going on here, unfortunately. The 2000 summer season, 20, was the first year we had signs on the interstate, and I was hoping that we could see that would make a difference. But after COVID, who knows what made the difference? So, but it's kind of interesting to look at the main travel months to date this year, June, July, August, September. There's a steady percentage increase in the total visitation, but there's even a higher percentage increase on the Loop Road and the North Entrance Road, which are two main visitor use roads. Now, percentages, I don't like to use percentages because we don't have high visitation. So, the percentages sound, they sound high, but the numbers aren't that high because when you go from 400 cars a month to 600 a month, that's a 50% increase, but it's only 200 cars. So, just take it with that. For the total year, for the season to date, the total visitation is up 28%. And each month has shown an increase over the previous months. And now, June was 9%, July 18th, August 27th, September 44th just kept going up. For the season to date, the Loop Road is up 87%. It's almost double. Each road is going to increase the other month. September was 44, excuse me, that's the North Entrance. The Loop Road is up 87% and the September was up 110%. Part of that can be attributed that the leaves were early because some of that didn't slop over to November. So, we've had 8,700 vehicle visitors come over the Loop Road. So, the percentages are substantial, but for instance, the busiest day in Loop Road was 129 visitors spread out over the day on the 26th of September. Now, the view area did get congested that day, that's probably, but that's where we were at with fall colors. The other thing I've gotten calls on is, you hear a lot of stories about how resources have been hammered in the parks. We didn't see it. I think we're far enough away from an urban area, and I was talking to the Portland paper, they said that Acadia didn't see it either. So, we didn't see the litter problems that are happening like Delaware Water Gap and some of those places that are near the areas. So, we saw a lot of visitors, a lot of increase. We haven't run the numbers where they signed in at the contact centers, that's the only place we have to treat plates, but we know we had a lot of mayors come in this year. We always do, but it was a high percentage. And then as the season went on and we saw the governor's restrictions change, we saw more of the New York and Massachusetts and New Jersey plates come in. So, we have the capacity to take it, the carrying capacity, we social distancing, the trails are mostly the old logging roads. And so, social distancing is actually easier to take care of that way. And we actually had one additional question that was added, which is, has there been a final decision about the North-South road connection in the monument? I'm not aware of any North-South road in the monument. There's the old road that actually, the old, old road that came up, actually the crossing over the Wastataka is not on park land. And it crosses private land and that old bridge on the Wastataka is actually BPL land. And that bridge is impassable. So, we have not talked, you mean a car route is not even in our planning mode at this time. We had some comments, I think more people would, we get more comments about, you know, what can walk through, how far can I bike on the old roads? But re-establishing across that bridge is not on our land at all. We'd have to cross land, we do not own. That's not gonna, that's come up occasionally, but that's been way in the minority. All right. Unless you're talking about a North-South road coming out of Milanocket, if that's the question, I don't know what the question is. That is something that is, you know, that's why you see a hatch mark down and if you ever got a connection up from Milanocket. All right, before I hand it back to Ken to close it out, just while I have everybody's attention, I wanna let folks know about our next community conversation. So we will be having another community conversation on the 27th at 7 p.m. The title of this talk is, The Deals Made, The Money Involved in the Lack of Transparency in the Pursuit of Big Hydro. We're gonna have three speakers for that event. We're gonna have Meg Sheen from, who's a coordinator of NAMRA. Mark Krezewick, who is a Sierra Club staff person who's in charge of the Beyond Coal Campaign for the Eastern Region. And then we're gonna have Kevin Cassidy, who is a senior staff attorney at Lewis and Clark School Earth Law Center, Earthrise Law Center. You can learn more about that event in register at sierclub.org forward slash main. And I'll hand it over to Ken. Ken, it looks like you are muted. I live on Zoom, you think I would know better. I'll make this really quick. I just want to thank Noel and Terry and Tim for coming and meeting and presenting with us tonight. And for everybody else joining us, there are a couple of things posted in the chat that hopefully you got to see both the link to the proclamation and also to the website that's the planning website for Katahdin Woods and Waters that I think Andy put up there. I'm, you know, this is coming toward the finish line, probably none too soon for those who've been working on it for years, but I think there's still opportunities to weigh in, especially as the draft framework and foundation document get out there in the world. So I encourage you to do that. And more than anything else, I'd encourage you to get up there and see the monument. So I think that's probably it. I can't see anybody anymore because it just says thank you on my screen, but thank you everybody for coming. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, have a great evening. Good night. Thanks. Thank you.