In 1984, when the legislature instituted the duck-stamp program for Maine hunters, the sale of decorative stamps and waterfowl art was intended to help bail the Department of Inland Fisheries and Game out of its financial bind.

The program, as it turned out, also helped the cause of wetland preservation while providing an outlet for dozens of Maine artists who compete annually for the honor of having their paintings reproduced and marketed nationwide.

In the last six years, the stamps and prints have been sought by sporting enthusiasts as well as fine-art collectors, many of whom shoot ducks and geese only with a camera.

This year, 950 prints were made of the finely detailed portrait of three Canada geese by Thea Flanagan of East Holden, the winner of the 1990 Maine Migratory Waterfowl Stamp art contest.

Persis Weirs of Deer Isle was the runner-up, and Patti Carter of Brunswick, Rachelle Bourque of Roque Bluffs, and Tom Kemp of Sangerville received honorable mentions. Their paintings, chosen from a field of 60, have been displayed since spring in several galleries throughout Maine.

They are on exhibit at Art Etcetera, in Orono, through August.

The prints sell for $145, and $35 of each sale is used by the department for the purchase and management of habitat for migratory waterfowl. Since the program began, the department has received $1 million for wetlands preservation, said Tom Shoener, who runs the stamp-art competition.

“Through the years, hunters have always footed the bill to maintain wildlife habitat,” he said. “It’s been only recently that other groups have got on the bandwagon. Not only are they collecting fine art, but they are making a contribution to the wildlife habitat in Maine.”

Waterfowl hunters are required to buy a state duck stamp in addition to a federal duck stamp and a hunting license. Of the 25,000 Maine stamps sold last year, Shoener said, more than half were bought by collectors.

“Wildlife art has played a major role in bringing people to a conservation awareness in this country,” said Tom Hennessey, a noted watercolorist whose outdoor paintings are in collections across the country and Canada. “Just 10 years ago, wetlands were considered to be wastelands, and now people recognize them as important habitats that teem with wildlife.”

Wildlife and sporting art now command big prices in shows from Maryland to Canada, Hennessey said. Works by the late Ogden Pleissner, the dean of outdoor painters, sell for $20,000 and more. But outdoor paintings have not always enjoyed so comfortable a niche in the art world.

“Art critics always looked down their noses at outdoor art, or sporting art, as it’s referred to,” Hennessey said. “They considered it as illustration. That’s changed. Now it’s being accepted as fine art. The focal point is the waterfowl, not hunting. So the art can be enjoyed by naturalists, conservationists, environmentalists, bird-watchers, anyone who enjoys the outdoors.”

To win the stamp competition, an artist must do more than paint a good picture of a bird. The department chooses the species to be portrayed — this year was the Canada goose, last year the common goldeneye.

The paintings must depict indigenous waterfowl in unmistakable Maine settings. The scenes must be correct in every respect, from the number and seasonal color of the feathers to the types of trees in the background and the leaves on the ground. The unsigned paintings are scrutinized by artist judges for their aesthetic quality and by wildlife experts for their faithful rendering of natural detail — right down to the color of a bufflehead’s eye.

“The portraits have to be anatomically perfect,” Shoener said. “A bird in peak spring color with fall foliage behind it, for example, could eliminate the painting.”

An entry last year was eliminated because the artist had painted a green-winged teal in fall plumage during winter, after the species would have flown south.

The competition also requires that the paintings portray the species only, without references to hunting.

“One year the federal-stamp winner was a painting of a black Labrador with a dead mallard in its mouth,” Shoener said. “That was heavily criticized by non-hunters, so they changed the rules.”

Shoener said that the duck-stamp program was never intended to soften the division between those who hunt and those who find it offensive. But the surge in popularity of wildlife art in Maine and elsewhere, he said, has helped to bring the two sides together in the interest of the wildlife.

“It’s really pointless to argue if it’s right or wrong to shoot waterfowl if their habitat is destroyed,” Shoener said. “Without the marshes, the summer and winter habitat, there won’t be anyone hunting geese or watching them either.”