Quimby Addresses FRA’s IFF

The featured speaker at FRA’s December 4 Industrial Forestry Forum in Bangor, Maine was Roxanne Quimby, whose personal journey from California countercultural vagabond to entrepreneurial Maine millionaire has made her a centerpiece of Maine’s land-use debate. Having built her (recently sold) “Burt’s Bees” personal care products business into a $180 million fortune, she has chosen to devote that fortune, in the Portland Press Herald’s paraphrase, to buying “as much land as possible in northern Maine and creat[ing] a national park, where hunting, snowmobiling and logging could be off-limits.” So far, Ms. Quimby owns 40,000 acres, making her the state’s second largest individual landowner.

The FRA Forum meeting drew 250 people—FRA members and others, including plenty of media. To quote again from the Press Herald: “More than preserving wild land, she told the skeptical crowd Thursday evening, a national park will attract millions of visitors who will help diversify the economy by attracting restaurants, motels, services and new residents. But judging from the group’s reaction, Quimby’s vision of economic development is about as welcome as an infestation of spruce budworm.”

Those in attendance say her combination of entrepreneurial drive and personal charm were apparent throughout the evening, and if she is as good a listener as she seemed, she now knows the difference between a national forest and a national park and that, in land use debates, a distinction may be made between “conservation” and “preservation.” But she made a point that resonated with the values of most of the people in the room: that she is willing to pay fair market value for her acquisitions and believes she has a right to choose how to dispose of them.

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