Transcription of Alan Stearns for the show Preserving the Royal #263
Lisa: Having lived on Littlejohn Island for 2 years now and having grown up in Yarmouth, I am really a huge supporter and friend of the Royal River and the work that is being done by the Royal River Conservation Trust. I’m really pleased today to be able to have with me Alan Stearns and Kyle Warren, both of the Royal River Conservation Trust.
Alan grew up in Eastern Maine. He served as the deputy director of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands from 2007 to 2011. He currently serves as a trustee of the Maine historical society and as president of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. He previously served on a boards of the Main Island Trail Association, the Friends of the Kennebec River Rail Trail, the Maine Olmsted Alliance for Parks and Landscape and other organizations and campaigns. Alan holds degrees from the University of Maine School of Law, the University of Maine and Brown University.
Also with me today is Kyle Warren who acts both as the stewardship and outreach director for the Royal River Conservation Trust and also as land steward for the Town of Yarmouth conservation lands. He registered Maine Master Guide with a geology degree from St. Lawrence University. Kyle grew up on Mooselookmeguntic Lake in the western mountains of Maine. He brings a passion for wise and sustainable land use choices to the Royal River watershed, preserving and improving local opportunities to fly fish with his upland bird dogs and ski tour motivates his passion. Since early 2010, he has worked with many groups to educate and improve the functions of our local wild spaces. He has been active in land use and environmental regulations since 2004. Thank you for coming in and joining us.
Alan: Thanks for having us.
Lisa: As I mentioned, I’m really a huge supporter of the Royal River because since I moved to Maine in 1977, it’s been a big part of my own personal life and each of you has your own relationship to bodies of water. I know having grown up in old town Alan and Kyle on Mooselookmeguntic Lake. I wonder how much of that has work its way into your own current interest in the Royal River Conservation Trust.
Alan: It’s big for me. I grew up outside in Maine, hiking, paddling, spending a whole summer on lakes. For me, from a career perspective, I’ve chosen to try to give the same opportunities to everybody that grows up in Maine in the future. With my family always went paddling or camping or hiking and there’s so much of that in Maine, but it’s also important to hang on to it. Working now in the outskirts of Portland, it’s a good thing that Greater Portland is growing and thriving, but it’s all the more important to hang on to the quality of life while we still can. Our work giving the public access to the river, giving the public access to the coast, giving the public trails to hike on is all partly driven by my memories of childhood growing up in Maine.
Kyle: I used growing up in the Rangeley region. I was excited about some bigger mountains and spend some time in the Central Rockies after during college and returned to Maine mostly because of the lack of access to water in the west. It’s an important part of how we enjoy the outside, how I enjoy the outside. It’s so available here. It’s pretty easy decision.
Lisa: It is interesting that many people that I’ve spoken with say that when they move inland there is something that doesn’t feel quite right because the mountains might be beautiful or maybe I went to Burlington for a few years to get my medical degree. Certainly, the lake was beautiful, but there’s this feeling of being land bound and coming back out to the coast again. There’s almost this relief. There’s this resonance. Do you think that that has something to do with why people so love the Royal River the fact that you had something that opens out into a bigger space?
Alan: The coast definitely gives you that serenity and infinity of looking out over the water. I think almost all water gives people some sense of calmness or some sense of being able to relax or have adventures. The Royal itself is both the estuary headed out in the Casco Bay which has an amazing views and the full coastal fog and all of that that comes with it, but so much of the Royal is inland and small waterfalls, places to go paddling, places to go fishing. In the Greater Portland area, there actually isn’t that much fresh water. If you live in Portland and you are looking to go trout fishing, the Royal is a pretty good one of the closest opportunities. If you live in Greater Portland and you are looking to go fresh water paddling, chances are it’s going to be the Royal. If you live in a neighborhood in North Yarmouth or Pownal or Yarmouth and it’s 95 degrees and you just want to go swimming, you want public access to the Royal too because that’s where you go with your dog or your kids to get wet on a hot day.
Lisa: Kyle, I’m fascinated by the fact that you are a registered Maine Master Guide and you have a geology degree. There’s something about knowing the outdoors in a really intimate way that has appealed to you for quite some time. You also really like fly-fishing and hunting and you like going out with your dogs. There’s something that also appeals to you spirit, your soul. Is this something that you think is important to people for Maine in general?
Kyle: I think the existing access whether it’s the paper company land or to the beaches or any of the great lakes. There are great ponds in the state that have state access, had made it really available for Maine residents to be part of. It’s a tough thing to shake once you understand the value being out and watching the sunrise.
Lisa: Tell me about the Royal River Conservation Trust. How long has it been in existence?
Alan: In some ways, we’ve been in existence for 25 years now. We are the result of the merger of the Yarmouth Land Trust and the Friends of the Royal River and the North Yarmouth Land Trust and the Pownal Land Trust all of which have been around for roughly 25 years. It was about 15 years ago that all those groups merged to have a bigger, stronger focus on the whole watershed conserving land and also outdoor programs to get people engaged with the land that we conserve.
Lisa: How many different sites have you now been part of restoring or acquiring or helping steward?
Alan: We have deeds on 3,700 acres. Some of those are conservation easements where we don’t own the land, but we have a place in the deed where we can guarantee that it will always be forest or always be farms even though we don’t need to own it. Then, we actually own 11 preserves where we own the land and we invite the public to come use it for hiking or for boat access or for hunting or for just being quiet.
Lisa: I met you at the estuary just off Bayview Street in Yarmouth last week and this is one of your sites and one of the sites that you lead the Rain or Shine Club, Kyle?
Kyle: Yeah. We lead weekly outings for about a year and a half now and that’s one of the places that we returned to, special spot.
Lisa: Why is it important to have tours like the Rain or Shine Club? Why is it important to help people understand how to experience these places?
Kyle: It’s important to show people how we have intended to manage these properties. There’s a whole variety of different ways that these properties could be used whether it’s for mountain biking or trail hiking or a variety of other ways that people could get out on the land. For us to bring groups of people including, in many cases, toddlers on these weekly outings, it helps to reinforce that sense of importance to be in the wild even if it’s now in the far reaches. It’s important to have this chance for access right next to our houses so that we can use it during the week and bring the dogs out in the morning to get some exercise and have good predictable place to access from whether it’s a parking lot or a dock.
Lisa: What are some of the other sites that you bring people to?
Kyle: We visit Bradbury Mountain State Park in a few different ways and the Bradbury to Pineland Corridor. We tr to move our outings according to the season. If we have a chance to pick blueberries like we did last week, then we’ll go to an open meadow where there is great blue berries growing. In the winter, we like to cross some ice when that opportunity presents itself. Just be nimble enough and responsive to just environmental conditions and transitions and being able to see these places and different seasons is a good way to explore our whole service area.
Lisa: Alan, part of what do at the Royal River Conservation Trust is to generate resources so that parcels of land become available. You could potentially purchase them and also have the resources to maintain the lands and even lands that you don’t own too, how be a part of that. That’s an interesting conundrum to have to fund raise for something that may not yet be there.
Alan: It’s easier than you might think partly because so many people are pulling with us, so many people with so much generosity want us to succeed. When a parcel land comes available, sometimes it’s donated the land itself, sometimes we have to raise money for it. If we are going after the right project, there are any number of people in our communities who want to help us and some remarkably generous people who want to do the right thing for their kids, for their grandchildren, for the next generation. Again, in growing developing areas like Greater Portland so often we talk about access and a lot of my job is looking for that new piece of land, securing access, buying access, encouraging land owners to donate access.
That so much of what land trusts do and have done, but Kyle’s work and programs like a Rain or Shine Club realize that even if there is public access, even if there is conserved land, that doesn’t mean that somebody who just moved here from Washington or Texas knows how to find it or feels comfortable with once they find it. In addition to raising money to conserve land, we are also raising money, sometimes to hold people’s hands and take them into the scary woods and show them the magic that we know is there even if they didn’t grow up going into the woods, even if they didn’t grow up in this area. The Rain or Shine Club and other programs are as much about providing access as buying the accesses and several parts of the effort to get more Maine people engaged with more of Maine.
Lisa: You told me that part of the mission and vision of the Royal River Conservation Trust is with children to create a sense of wonder. I really love that phrase and that idea that it is somehow important to open the eyes of others to something that maybe they wouldn’t otherwise thought to look for. Why wonder? It could be anything. You could have come up with any set of words, but why that?
Alan: I think a lot of the strength of the conservation movement in Maine comes from ecology and biology and wild life and that’s so important to save the natural resources from a scientific perspective, especially in large growing towns like Yarmouth, North Yarmouth. It’s so important to also recognize the human side of conservation and I think all kids and all adults interact with the outside differently. Some people get a sense of wonder by going over a big jump on a mountain bike and some people get a sense of wonder by sitting and looking at a very small flower and some people get a sense of wonder by paddling hundreds of miles off the coast.
For everybody, that sense of wonder I think for me is part of being human and being able to relax that it’s who we are as a species that sometimes you need to imagine the great outdoors and live in it and let yourself go with it. For everybody, it’s different, but if we can provide access to the ocean and mountain bike trails and playgrounds and nature preserves and boat access points. If we can provide it all, then we know that everybody in this area will have a place to escape and let go when they need to.
Lisa: Kyle, your volunteers are very important to you and to your organization and they run the gamut. There are some people who come in for a day of work. There are some people that have committed to maintaining an entire stretch of the Royal River Conservation Trust lands. How do you best work with people to understand what it is that they hope to accomplish by volunteering?
Kyle: The most engaged volunteers are the ones that are passionate about the project that they are working on. Recently, we’ve had very generous family in Yarmouth donate their time and resources to build us a new and improved boardwalk section that’s going to make the trail more accessible to the whole scope of people, whether it’s strollers or wheelchairs or anybody in between. They’ve been incredibly passionate about it and it’s noticeable in the product of the work. I’ve also had the chance to work with some court-ordered community service folks and I don’t see that level of passion in those volunteers and that’s sort of a black/white comparison, but they really does run the whole length of the trail so to say, but passion is definitely the linchpin.
Lisa: Not everyone wants to be recognized for volunteering either. You mentioned to me that there is a stretch that has been maintained by a relatively young man and he doesn’t really come out of the woods to go to parties, but he is very good about taking care of, I believe, it’s the New Gloucester stretch of woods.
Kyle: It is. It’s the New Gloucester Intervale Preserve. He shows up in the spring and keeps the parking lot mode and opened and gives me a call if there’s a tree down that’s too big for him to manage on his own. He is a neighbor and a friend to that property, but most of it to the general effort that we put forth. He allows me to spend my time in other places.
Lisa: One of the things I enjoyed most about visiting the estuary with you was that I used to live, I rented a place that was continuous to the estuary, so I had my own experience with the estuary. Now, I live in a place that is near the Littlejohn preserve which is another part of the Royal River Conservation Trust. At various times, I’ve had medical practices along the Royal River, 1 in the Sparhawk mill, 1 further up the river. I also went swimming in the Royal River when I was younger and high school. My children have learned how to canoe in the river. I’ve been ice skating.
There are so many different iterations of the river and how even I’ve experienced it in my own lifetime. There’s some sort of interesting simultaneous familiarity that I have with this, but also that’s always new, that there’s always something that’s different and that is the nature of rivers in Maine. That sometimes they are used with industry and sometimes they are used for conservation. You are experiencing this even now. Peter is talking about dam removal on the Royal River. That must have been an interesting conversation that you are having.
Alan: It’s a conversation that’s been going on Yarmouth for years and will continue for a few more years at least. The river as you said is different things for different people, different times, different generations. There are today 2 dams left on the Royal in Yarmouth that don’t serve much if any of a purpose anymore. They were mighty dams of the mighty industrial era of Yarmouth 100 years ago, but today, they serve a function for some recreation to create a pond for paddling. They have some historic significance, but they’re no longer part of industry or they’re no longer part of the Yarmouth’s economy. The big opportunity if 1 or more were removed or if we could invest in fish passage is to get fish up over the dams.
Today, almost no fish of any specifies can go up over the dams and whether sea run fisheries or others, fish passage matters. Whether be alewives or shad or any number of other species, it will affect 100 square miles upriver. Dozens of miles of river tributary up river that could be better for trout, better for wild life, birds feed on fish, better for so many aspects of water quality and habitat if we could crack the nut of the dams in Yarmouth and a lot of people working on it. We don’t have the answer yet. We are not proposing dam removal today instead our bottom line is fish passage. The fish must be able to get up and over. If we can find a way to do without dam removal, that’s fine. At least in the Bridge Street Dam, I think many of us have come to conclusion that dam removal might be the most cost effective best way to get the best for the fish.
Lisa: In my conversations with both of you I was struck by the complexities of working with different interest when it comes to possible dam removal. You mentioned that you have to take into consideration other people downstream who would be impacted, the people who own Marinas, for example, other people who have docks. It’s always a complicated question as to how this is approached, but my understanding from talking with each of you is that you are really not attempting to impose your view. You are trying to be as collaborative as possible and coming up with a solution that works for the greatest number of people and creatures, fish, for example.
Alan: I mentioned that the dams in Yarmouth don’t have much if any of a role in Yarmouth’s economy today, but just down river, the Marina which are the heart and soul of Yarmouth’s economy and quality of life. So many of our members have boats at the Marina and so many people who love to fish in this area head out to Casco Bay or other places to fish from those Marinas. There’s really no reason to polarize the discussions when exactly the people who want better fishing are just down river with a real attention on keeping their businesses open and thriving. We don’t want to harm them and we are talking to them and getting more information to come back to the table with ways to, again, crack the nut in a way that feels good for everybody.
Lisa: Kyle, if you could send someone to 1 favorite special place that is part of the Royal River Conservation Trust, where would that be?
Kyle: I think that totally depends on the season and the day. Right now, Chandler Brook on the trial side of Bradbury Mountain State Park is pretty special.
Lisa: That’s a wise answer. In this way, it will give people the opportunity to learn more about the Royal River Conservation Trust which they can do by doing to our show notes page, lovemaineradio.com. Also, you can read about them in Maine Magazine because we are doing an article on the Royal River Conservation Trust. Thank you so much for having with this conversation with me. I think it’s part of a much bigger discussion. We could keep talking for a long, long time about all of this, but I appreciate that you are both in there and you are both so passionate about the work that you do because it does directly impact me and my children, my family, my community members, my neighbors. We’ve been talking with Kyle Warren and Alan Stearns of the Royal River Conservation Trust. I appreciate your coming in today and I appreciate the work that you do.
Kyle: It’s fun. Thanks for having us.
Alan: Thank you Lisa.