A. Bartlett Hague Jr.

“I never before knew the full value of trees. Under them I breakfast, dine, write, read, and

receive my company.” –Thomas Jefferson

Bart Hague was a lifelong leader in conservation and environmental protection. His life,

relationships, career, retirement, and community work were driven by his dogged dedication to

these causes. He was known to say, “I am not stubborn. I am determined.” One of his

long-time collaborators remarked, “Anyone who has ever argued against Bart regarding an

environmental issue will understand the use of the adjective dogged.”

He resolved to be active late in life and continued to “run” in Waterford, Maine’s annual fall

foliage race until he was 95, to the delight and exasperation of his fellow townspeople as they

expressed concern for his safety. A major snow storm in his 95th year did not deter him from

showing up at the town’s annual meeting to vote on an important clause related to Waterford’s

shoreland zoning ordinance. Until September 2023, his wife, Mary Ann, continued to drive him

almost every weekend to walk with his Rolator around beauty spots near the White Mountains

and behold the peaks he had summited for almost a century. To the last, he told his caregivers

he was a “lifelong hiker.” In his final years, he often sat under a majestic maple tree that had

grown up with him, as he looked out over his favored Mahoosuc Range – especially Goose Eye

and Old Speck Mountains – from his home at the crest of McWain Hill in Waterford, Maine, while

participating fully in the family’s activities.

The seed for Bart’s interest in the environmental field was planted when he visited his Aunt Mary

on McWain Hill in Waterford as a boy in the 1930s. The Maine landscape inspired him; he also

witnessed environmental degradation for the first time when his favorite pine grove was

clear-cut. His strongly held belief that society should protect this and other landscapes fully

formed during his undergraduate and graduate years and guided his career in environmental

protection and his membership in a burgeoning movement.

His public service career in the environmental field spanned over four decades and included

over twenty years as a charter employee in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where

he was a water quality planner on teams to clean up Virginia’s Potomac River, Boston Harbor,

and Maine’s Androscoggin River. He helped plan the National Trails System with the National

Parks Service under Interior Secretary Stewart Udall’s staff. Mitigating environmental impacts of

the highway system focused much of his early career, including during the design of President

Eisenhower’s interstate highway system under special assistant Major General John S. Bragdon

(1955-1961). Although Bart began his career in Washington, DC, in 1967 he moved to the

EPA’s New England office to be closer to his beloved family home in Waterford, which his aunt

had bequeathed to him when he was 16. Always serving in the communities in which he lived,

he was President of the Newton Conservators in Massachusetts while at EPA. After he retired

from EPA in 1996, he dedicated his ensuing decades in retirement to working on environmental

issues in Maine.

Bart believed that environmental and conservation organizations needed to pool their resources

and work together, and he was named President Emeritus of Maine Lakes, having worked with

others to unify several lakes associations. He similarly proposed a regional conservation effort

around the Crooked River and Sebago Lake watershed that would, over a decade later,

manifest as the robust collaborative, Sebago Clean Waters. He was an early voice advocating

for regional collaboration amongst western Maine and eastern New Hampshire area

conservation organizations. He believed that Maine’s greatest future challenges were related to

land use and frequently advocated for sustainable development to maintain the character of

Maine’s rural landscapes, protect large expanses of wilderness, and prevent environmental

degradation.

Bart belonged to a generation of post-Teddy Roosevelt environmentalists who were keenly

aware of the limits of our country’s national resources and believed that this natural beauty was

a legacy that should be protected for posterity. His basic philosophy and approach to

conservation was informed by his honors thesis at Yale, which he wrote on Gifford Pinchot,

Teddy Roosevelt, and the early years of the Conservation Movement. He admired Gifford

Pinchot for his role in expanding the US Forest Service and founding the Yale School of

Forestry; writers such as John McPhee and Peter Matthiessen; his former National Park Service

colleague and writer John Kauffmann, especially his book Flow East; and Secretary of the

Interior Stewart Udall, under whom he served. Like the conservationists who influenced him,

Bart did not oppose development but wanted to ensure that it was sustainable and did not occur

at the expense of the public’s access to their natural environment.

Bart involved himself in mitigation and prevention at the community as well as federal level.

These efforts included several effective campaigns that prevented developments in western

Maine from overwhelming natural resources on McWain Pond and on several spots along the

Crooked River, a Class AAA river that feeds Lake Sebago. He highlighted the need to protect

Portland’s Lake Sebago water supply. He provided data to citizen activists trying to prevent

development at Edes Falls on Crooked River and took on Central Maine Power’s plans for an

expanded new pipeline, reversing and modifying an EPA approval to encourage the project to

run along existing corridors and mitigate its potential effects on the Crooked River. Over the

course of his career, he played an important, and collaborative, role at the federal, state, and

local levels in reducing paper mill pollution into the Androscoggin River.

Bart earned many accolades for his environmental work from organizations he had collaborated

with, and while he valued recognition, the sense of camaraderie he felt with the people he

worked with, and the feeling of being part of a movement, was important to him. He was

nominated for an EPA lifetime service award for his work protecting waters in New England and

across the Nation. He spent decades as a volunteer protecting Maine’s lakes and rivers and

conserving scenic lands and forests in western Maine and was amongst a group of

environmentalists awarded with a Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) Clean Water

Heros award (2022) on the 50th anniversary of the Water Quality Act for his efforts to uphold

water quality. He also was awarded conservator of the year by Maine’s Oxford County Soil and

Water Conservation District (2012); was recognized by the American Forest Foundation’s

Center for Conservation Solutions (2009) for his outstanding efforts to conserve and restore

water quality and wildlife while practicing sustainable forestry; and was awarded an Outstanding

Lake Stewardship Award (2006) for his work as a volunteer for Maine’s lake monitoring

program. Bart was declared environmental activist of the year in 1999 by the Natural

Resources Council of Maine in recognition of his years of dedication and commitment to

protection of Maine’s watersheds as both a public servant and citizen advocate, including

protection of the Crooked River, clean up of the Androscoggin River, and advocating for

protections for other rivers from destruction by power corridors.

Bart was particularly proud of his work in Waterford, including his work on two Waterford

conservation planning and implementation committees. Bart served on the board of the Western

Foothills Land Trust for 8 years. Bart and Mary Ann placed 475 acres under conservation

easement, including on McWain Hill, the former Camp Waganaki and a cove on McWain Pond,

and at least a mile on both banks of the Crooked River, to protect the viewscape, landlocked

salmon habitat, and water quality.

Bart earned a BA from Yale University and an MS in Conservation from the Michigan School of

Natural Resources and an MA in Social Science from the University of Michigan. He was the

son of Arthur Bartlett Hague, Sr, a piano professor at the Yale School of Music and concert

pianist, and Marjory Abbott Hague, a watercolorist of landscapes, and they passed to their son

an appreciation of classical music and nature painting. He was most at peace hiking in the

White Mountains, swimming in McWain Pond, practicing sustainable forestry and organic

gardening at home, and canoeing Maine’s lakes and rivers. He witnessed the Androscoggin

River’s transformation from sludge to clear water in his paddles down river.

Bart is survived by his wife and intellectual partner of 61 years, Mary Ann Conner Hague (nee

Whitehead) and three children: his son Art Hague and daughter-in-law Shivaun Pryor; daughter

Beth Hague and son-in-law Libo Liu; and daughter Mary Hague Yearl; and by three

grandchildren: Joe Yearl, Athena Yearl, and Nathaniel Liu.

No public service is planned. In lieu of flowers, Bart and his family request donations be made to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, Maine Lakes, or the American Friends Service Committee.