In recognizing that vast areas in Maine are in private hands, the State created a law that provides legal protection to those landowners who allow free access to those lands for recreational purposes. The law known as the “recreational use statute” protects a landowner from liability if a person is injured while recreating on the landowner’s property.
Allowing access to large areas of timber lands in the northern part of the State may have been the impetus of the law, but it is not limited to those areas. Overall the law protects landowners in the way it was written and amended, and also how it has been applied in the courts.