Worm harvesters angered by ANP enforcement actions
As Acadia National Park celebrates its 100th anniversary, a simmering dispute over worm and clam harvesting on the intertidal zone flats bordering park lands is coming to a boil.Last fall, a park ranger allegedly confiscated one digger’s clam harvest and summoned him for taking clams from the flats inside the park boundaries. This spring, another ranger forced a worm harvester to dump his day’s take of bloodworms and leave the flats or face a summons. Ellsworth worm digger Kenny Webber said he had started his day harvesting worms off Frazer Point and “worked around down by the old Navy base on Schoodic Point,” where he encountered the park ranger who made him return his take to the flats. “I lost a day’s pay,” Webber said. “I had a hundred dollars worth.” On Saturday, some two dozen members of the Independent Maine Marine Worm Harvesters Association met at Skeet Seavey’s ER Baits shop in Hancock to discuss what they see as a power grab by the park administration and to map out a response. “It’s a bad situation, the power the government’s trying to grab,” Hampden worm digger Peter Pellerin said. “We have to stand up.” Read the story here 21:30
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