Senator Susan Collins, Maine

Issue: Natural Resource Trends in the North East

By K.D. Leperi

Summer 2003

Susan M. Collins was elected to represent the State of Maine in the United States Senate in 1996 and was re-elected to a second term in 2002.  She is the 15th woman in history to be elected to the Senate in her own right. 

Senator Collins serves as Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee, one of only twelve major committees in the Unites States Senate.  The Committee has jurisdiction over the new Department of Homeland Security and is the Senate’s chief oversight committee.  Senator Collins also serves on the Armed Services Committee, the Special Committee on Aging, and the Joint Economic Committee.  Previously, she served for six years on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.  Senator Collins was also the first freshman Senator ever to lead the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.  As its Chairman, Senator Collins focused on consumer issues such as Internet fraud, securities scams, deceptive mailings, Medicare fraud, food safety, and telephone billing fraud.              

Senator Collins has been a tireless advocate for education.  As one of the architects of  landmark education reform legislation, Senator Collins led the successful charge to triple funding for early reading initiatives.  Her goal of expanding access to higher education led her to co-author the 1998 Higher Education Act and to support increases in Pell grants and other student financial aid. 

Senator Collins’s priorities include maintaining a strong national defense and strengthening our homeland security.  She also continues her longstanding efforts to help small businesses create jobs; to improve health care, particularly for citizens living in rural areas; and to combat consumer fraud.  She led the fight to restore millions of dollars to the Medicare program for home health care so that elderly citizens can receive needed care in their own homes.  Senator Collins also founded the Senate Diabetes Caucus, and led the effort to more than double federal funding for diabetes research. 

Senator Collins’s work has won praise from her home state newspapers as well as national newspapers from coast to coast.  “Her hard work, her effectiveness, and her unshakeable connection with this state show that the faith voters had in electing her in 1996 was well placed.  Senator Collins’s record is impressive,” writes the Bangor [Maine] Daily News (Oct. 26, 2002).  According to the Lewiston [Maine] Sun Journal, “Her reputation as a moderate and her willingness to work with politicians regardless of their political affiliations makes her an effective voice in Washington.” 

The Los Angeles Times referred to her as a “champion of good government,” while The New York Times has said, “She leads through the force of her ideas and her ability to see an issue fresh.” 

WiNR:  The Atlantic Monthly featured an article in April 1995, “An Explosion of Green,” suggesting that the reforestation of the eastern United States is an example to the developing world on “how to make room for people, farming, industry, and endangered species of plants and animals . . .”  The author, Bill McKibben, premises that oak and pitch pine have replaced pastures to the point where the Northeast is greener in most parts than is was in 1850.   According to McKibben, the renewal of rural and mountainous Northeast “represents the greatest environmental story of the United States, and in some ways of the whole world.”  Can you comment on this? 

Senator Collins:  The transition from farm land back to forest is a very real example of the resiliency of our forests and a graphic illustration of why trees are our number one renewable resource.  In my home state of Maine, for instance, the forest was rapidly converted to agricultural uses for the first 200 years of European settlement.  By 1850, more than 60% of Maine was in a cleared state.  Following the Civil War, farming in the Northeast began to decline, and now Maine is once again the most heavily-forested state in the nation with over 90% of the land base in forest. 

WiNR:  Reforestation is the renewal of a forest after a disturbance.  Contrasted to this is deforestation, the long term loss of forest cover, which usually comes about because of land conversion to agriculture and urbanization, and not the result of fire or logging.  How can public policy help promote good forest management and reforestation practices? 

Senator Collins:  In my home state of Maine, one of the best tools available is our “Tree Growth Tax Law.”

This statute requires “Current Use Taxation” as opposed to “Highest and Best Use.”  Under this law, landowners who enroll in the program are taxed at a very low rate and are therefore able to retain ownership and maintain long-term forest management.  This, I feel, is an excellent example of public policy that encourages stewardship of forest lands.  In the Maine forest, natural regeneration is so effective that reforestation not an issue. 

WiNR:  Under the auspices of the Recreation Fee Demonstration program through Public Law 104-134 as amended, the National Park Service and Forest Service collects recreation fees to reinvest in recreation areas on federal lands.  The authority to collect fees has been extended to September 30, 2004.  Do you support this legislation or do you feel there are better ways to pay the costs of maintaining public lands? 

Senator Collins:  I agree that user fees are an appropriate method of funding a portion of these costs and therefore would support the continuation of this program through 2004. 

WiNR:   Some contend that recreation fees serve as deterrents to rural and low-income families to enjoy public lands.  Others contend that users should help pay the costs of maintenance.  Can you share your views? 

Senator Collins: I believe that all Americans should have access to the recreational areas of our public lands.  From my experience, the fees currently in effect don’t unreasonably restrict public participation.  I also believe that user fees are an appropriate mechanism to fund a significant portion of the maintenance and improvements at these recreation sites.  These lands have been acquired over many generations to provide a wide variety of public values; they are a true national treasure, and they must not be taken for granted.  If there is information available that demonstrates that unnecessarily high user fees are limiting public use by some Americans, I would want to be made aware of it. 

WiNR:  The certification of sustainable forest management practices is a trend we are seeing worldwide and in particular in the Northeast.  Does this make sense, environmentally and economically? 

Senator Collins:  Sustainable forest practices are critically important to the future health and vitality of our forest lands.  The ability of the landowner or land manager to demonstrate to the general public that the forest is being managed in a sustainable manner has been a real challenge in recent years.  The value of certification programs has become increasingly important.  Third-party review of management plans and forest practices has done a great deal to assure the public that certified land owners are, in fact, managing the forest sustainably.  I believe in the long term that certification programs will bring about better forest practices and that the forest-based economy will benefit. 

WiNR:  A major challenge for forest certification is to encourage participation by small, non industrial private landowners, where administrative costs of certifying small parcels are very high.  How best can this be done? 

Senator Collins:  I recognize that it can be expensive for relatively small land-owners to certify their land under the current programs.  I am also aware that some mills are requiring proof of certification for any logs or fiber purchased.  I’m convinced that the answer to this problem lies in cooperative assistance between the entity purchasing the logs and the small landowner as both will ultimately benefit from such an arrangement.  I do want to say, however, that from my experience, some of the very best long-term stewardship of forest land has been, and continues to be, on the small, family-owned lands.  This is especially true in my state of Maine. 

WiNR:  Do you see any emerging trends or issues in the Northeast that legislators may need to deal with in the next five years? 

Senator Collins:  I am very concerned about the effects of suburban sprawl for many reasons, not the least of which is the conversion of high-value timber lands to subdivision and development.  These lands, once lost to other uses, will never again produce forest products, provide a habitat for wildlife, allow public recreational opportunities, or provide any of the other forest-related values that we enjoy.  Nevertheless, development pressures on these forest lands are tremendous.  We will need special tools to protect them and to ensure that they will be there in the future. 

I have introduced legislation, the Suburban and Community Forestry and Open Space Act, which would establish a $50-million grant program within the U.S. Forest Service to support locally-driven projects that preserve working forests.  As part of the program, state and local governments, as well as nonprofit organizations, could compete for funds to purchase land or conservation easements to keep forest lands threatened by development in their traditional use.  Projects funded under this initiative must be targeted at lands that are in parts of the country that are threatened by sprawl.  The legislation requires that federal grant funds be matched dollar-for-dollar with state, local, or private resources and be used to promote sustainable forestry and public access to forest lands.    

WiNR:  Women in Natural Resources thanks you for sharing your insights on emerging natural resources trends in the Northeast.