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Tourism Strategy Needs Scrutiny

March 26, 2008 - A news release came across my desk this week and really surprised me. Flabbergasted or shocked might be a better verb choice, too, because it was an eye-popper.

The release covered the recent partnership of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) and Maine Office of Tourism (MOT), and the gist of the news covered how these two groups had teamed up to promote fishing tourism.

To visit the MOT Web site, folks can go to Visitmaine.com and click on "Fishing" on the home page. One million people worldwide look at this site annually, so it's a healthy readership by Maine standards.

So far, so good.

However, the fishing part of the site pushes landlocked salmon, landlocked arctic char and brook trout -- the latter two allegedly fragile resources -- and a destination fishery, albeit a fishery that's already over-fished.

The site hits us with the following four statistics:

- Maine leads the country with 160 landlocked salmon waters.

- Maine is the only state other than Alaska with landlocked arctic char.

- Maine claims more wild, native brook trout populations than any other state in the nation, and it has more miles (and acres) of native brook trout waters than any other state.

- The Rapid River near the Maine-New Hampshire border southwest of Rangeley village has "some of the largest, wild river brook trout found anywhere south of Labrador." (Have any of the folks responsible for that last tidbit ever fished northern Quebec, south of Labrador, where giant brookies rule?)

Maine has approximately nine principal waters with blueback trout, and except for just after ice-out, fishing for them requires trolling gear or deep-water jigging as much as 100 feet down. Blueback populations lie in high elevation ponds because this species needs cold water.

Many farsighted individuals think bluebacks are rare enough in Maine to be listed as endangered, and the state agency responsible for protecting this species is promoting fishing for it.

I have chased landlocked arctic char in Quebec where the northern latitude insures cold water, so this species stays on top longer in spring. It's nothing in that province to catch 2-pounders with occasional larger fish.

In Maine, the state record is 4 pounds, 4 ounces, caught in 1958. That fish was an anomaly, though, because a 12-inch specimen is large in the Pine Tree State.

If you believe what organizations such as Trout Unlimited are saying about Maine's fragile brook trout fishery, should we be systematically asking people from across the country or world to fish for them?

I do not pretend to have the definitive answer to that question, but perhaps DIF&W would be better off pushing black bass, and the Maine Office of Tourism should target striped bass -- not brookies and bluebacks. The topic at least calls for more public discussion because Maine lies within a one-day drive or less of 70 million people.

The Rapid River by any standard is over-fished and a smallmouth bass introduction now threatens it. I don't go there because of fishing mobs. Is it a good idea to send more people to a river where a hot dog stand owner would make out like a proverbial one-armed bandit?

This recent move by DIF&W and MOT does not strike me as a well-planned tourism strategy.

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Birdwatchers Are Seldom Bored.

For example, early last Sunday morning, for reasons too complicated and mundane to explain, I sat in a small SUV at the Augusta Wal-Mart parking lot for 45 minutes as a gusting, icy wind occasionally shook the vehicle like a toy. Thanks to several bird species, though, the time flew.

First, good-sized flocks of house sparrows were flitting around the huge, paved lot everywhere, looking for food. Normally, house sparrows wouldn't interest me that much, but these birds were engaging in a behavioral trait that wowed me big time. A half-dozen of these birds performed the act, too.

Shortly after a driver parked a vehicle and the occupant(s) walked away, a house sparrow would land on the ground next to the front fender and hop onto the top of a tire by the motor. The warmth from the engine and rubber and shelter from the gelid wind must have attracted the birds because they'd do it shortly after the car parked. Not once did I see a sparrow perch on the tire of a cold vehicle.

The occasional American tree sparrow and small flocks of black-capped chickadees also fluttered around the parking lot, and American crows and two gull species -- herring and ring-billed -- were quite abundant, too.

(During my childhood and early adult life, I seldom noticed ringbills, but these days, they frequent parking lots around Augusta, a daily visitor.)

Once, a big flock of birds wheeled next to the ground in an empty corner of the parking lot. I thought they were snow buntings, but it was too far away to see the telltale, flashing white of the wings.

Binoculars would have come in handy, but who would have thought a birdwatching safari would be going on at Wal-Mart?

It's common to hear how pavement ruins habitat -- and it does -- but bird species that have adapted to man flock to the black deserts.

House sparrows love French fries, too, as any sharp observer will notice while parked at a fast-food burger joint where people eat in their vehicles and throw the occasional tidbit out to panhandling birds. An acquaintance often refers to house sparrows as McDonald sparrows.

Contributed by Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes, a writer, editor and photographer.

SOURCE: Kennebec Journal

DATE: 03-15-2008


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