Of all the land conservation projects in the Northern Forest over the past two decades, the most hopeful might be the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership, which was concluded this past summer on 342,000 acres along the Maine/New Brunswick border.
All too often, land conservation projects meet some stiff resistance, much of it local. Some have been portrayed as elitist efforts to turn working woodlands into recreational playgrounds. Others are said to gut local economies in the name of environmental protection. The Downeast Lakes project could have been tarred with either of these “jobs-versus-the-environment” brushes. Yet it wasn’t, and therein lies the story.
For starters, the project was initiated by the very people who live and work in Maine’s Washington County, site of the project. When Georgia-Pacific, a large paper company, sold its half-million acres in the area in 2001, many locals realized that the issue was jobs and the environment. If the large, undeveloped parcels in the area were subdivided and sold off as small lots, the twin pillars of the local economy – forest products and backwoods guiding – would be undermined. So the Downeast Mainers incorporated their own land trust with the intention of purchasing a key 27,000-acre parcel on West Grand Lake.
To help with fundraising, the group turned to the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF), which had recently completed the $32 million easement on three-quarters of a million acres owned by the Pingree family in Maine. NEFF agreed to help, and the two formed the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership.
The group quickly expanded the scope of the project, recognizing that additional land would need protection in order to secure the resource base for the local economy. The original 27,000-acre goal became a much more ambitious 342,000-acre combination of outright purchases and conservation easements. At the larger scale, the partners were able to accomplish several major goals: ensuring a long-term supply of wood for Domtar, the company that purchased the local paper mill; connecting the project area with other Georgia-Pacific land being conserved by the Province of New Brunswick, across the St. Croix River in Canada; and further protecting the unusual biodiversity of the area, whose coastal and near-coastal wetlands provide habitat for an extraordinary variety of birds and aquatic insects and a livelihood for the many Maine Guides and lodge owners who live in the region.
This past May, the last of the paperwork was completed and the easements put in place. Funding for the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership, which will total $35 million when the fundraising is completed, has come from a wide variety of sources, including not just local residents and members of NEFF but also the National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, the State or Maine, the Passamaquoddy Tribe of Indian Township, and even Wal-Mart.
Downeast Mainers have something of a reputation for being skeptical of outside interference, yet the project has gone forward with hardly a peep of protest because it was originally conceived of by the local folks, not people “from away.” The partners also recognized that job protection was inseparable from land protection, and the end result is a success story worthy of emulation across the Northern Forest.
Though the ink is dry on the conservation easements, final fundraising for the project is still underway. For more information or to make a contribution, visit the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership at www.newenglandforestry.org/projects/dlfp.asp.