On Sat, 18 Mar 2006 11:20:21 -0700, Willi
wrote:

Memphis Jim wrote:
There are several long term trends that are making parts of Maine, and
parts of other states in the northern U.S. have more wilderness.

In the case of Maine, much of the state used to support a small farm
economy when the U.S. was much more agrarian than it is now.


Thanks, your and Greg's explanation make sense. For some stupid reason,
I assumed that since our Country's population is growing, all areas of
the Country would have population increases. The area I live in and the
areas I most visit all are places with considerable growth and the
issues are dealing with this growth while still retaining the open space
that makes the areas desirable. Although ranching isn't profitable for
smaller operations (and VERY difficult even for big ones), the land
they're on is very valuable and many ranches get sold and developed into
"gentleman ranchettes". Thankfully the majority of the mountainous areas
in CO, NM, WY, MT, and UT are National Forests. Hopefully they'll stay
that way.

Willi

Helps if the land is too lousy to grow profitable crops and too far
from cities and industrial areas to use as homes. Much of what keeps
Northern WI, MN, and the U.P of Michigan going as far as the people
who live there are concerned are tourists and summer people. If not
for the tourists and summer people, a lot more of it would go back to
trees and wild than already has.

In northern MN some of our old pit mines are being turned into fishing
lakes, as the mining business is almost all gone. The Boundary Waters
Canoe Area has been around a long time. 'Useless' land turned to a
tourist bonanza of a mild sort. Fortunately a lot of the land was
turned into state parks and state or national forests during the early
exodus from the area, so it'll stay forests. They snapped them up
before 'the cabin up north' got into huge popularity again.
--

r.bc: vixen
Speaker to squirrels, willow watcher, etc..
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.
Really.