To billionaire media mogul John Malone, Spencer Lake may be a place to rest and relax far from the cut-throat world of deals and mergers. After a day of togue fishing, he can sit back on the front porch of his luxury lodge and enjoy the spectacular views of mountains and endless forest.

But, to many of the state’s conservationists and sportsmen, the 5-mile-long lake will always be the gem that slipped through the state’s hands.

During the tumultuous past two years, when nearly a quarter of Maine’s woodlands changed hands, cable-TV magnate Malone quietly bought up all the land surrounding the lake, which is located in northwestern Somerset County. Now that his ring of ownership is complete, environmental and sporting groups point to the purchase as an example of the constant threat the state’s most pristine land is under.

“We can’t have our boat launch, but he can have … his own private playground,” said George Smith, executive director of the Sportman’s Alliance of Maine.

He was referring to a public boat launch that the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife was to build on the northwest shore of Spencer Lake. South African Pulp and Paper Industries Inc., the company that owned the land at the time, offered to donate the property.

However, since the lake is in the Unorganized Territories, a permit to build a boat launch was needed from the Land Use Regulation Commission. LURC refused to issue one in 1997 because it felt Spencer Lake should be treated as a remote pond, with very limited access.

That decision angered a lot of people. “Personally, I think … that has to rank among the worst decisions made by a regulating agency,” said Bob Williams, IF&W’s director of water access.

In effect Spencer Lake is now 1,800 acres of public water surrounded by private land that the public can’t get to. Even more irritating to Williams is the fact that his agency has stocked fish in the lake since the 1930s.

“It’s not for the locals anymore. It’s for the rich people. That’s not fair,” he said.

The opportunity for public access slipped through the state’s hands because SAPPI in 1998 sold all its land in Maine to Plum Creek Timber Co., a Seattle-based owner of woodland and mills that is organized as a real estate investment trust. Plum Creek then sold Malone the 7,500 acres it owned on the northern half of the lake, including Fish Pond and a private boat launch there that SAPPI had kept open for the public, for $10 million.

Through a company he and his wife had formed in Maine called Mosquito LLC, Malone had previously bought another 7,400 acres around the southern part of the lake from International Paper for nearly $3.5 million.

Plum Creek called the sale a conservation deal. But, state environmentalists, who view Malone as the personification of their worry that wealthy individuals will buy up the state’s landscape gems for their own enjoyment, or worse yet, for development, aren’t so sure.

“It’s an important example of what the future can hold,” Karin Tilberg, Maine director for the Northern Forest Alliance said of the Spencer Lake purchase. “If we don’t take action … we’ll see more and more sales of remote ponds to people who can afford to buy them for their own use.”

Smith of the Sportsman’s Alliance also worried that the high price Malone was willing to pay for the land will drive up prices on other parcels that the state or other conservation buyers would like to purchase. Other forestland in Maine has sold for between $200 and $500 an acre, far less than the $1,333 Malone paid. With a booming economy creating new millionaires seeking their own piece of paradise, Smith said he is concerned that other opportunities to protect pieces of the North Woods will also slip away.

Malone had expressed interest in buying another majestic spot, the land around Nicatous Lake in Hancock County. Robbins Lumber Inc. bought the land in 1996 and sold a conservation easement on 22,000 acres to the state.

“That’s why we need to proceed post haste to get public access,” George Smith said, adding that he supports the use of easements to head off purchases that cut off access to lakes such as Spencer, which is known for its salmon and togue fishing.

Malone’s plans for the largely wooded 16,000 acres he now owns are still evolving, said Steve Coleman of LandVest, the company managing the parcel for Malone.

“It would be premature for me to say what he is going to do,” Coleman said in October. A survey of the land and its timber is under way, he said.

“At this point, we don’t know what the long-term status is,” Coleman said. He said Malone plans to use the lodge at the middle of the lake, dubbed the “wilderness equivalent of the Ritz-Carlton” by Business Week in 1991, for his own rest and relaxation.

The Falcon Lodge, a complex of about seven buildings at the water’s edge, was owned by the Caliendo family of Hampden before their business, Northern Products Log Homes, went bankrupt. It was available to sportsmen for $1,905 per person for three days, a fee that included transportation by float plane, and the services of a Maine Guide, a manager and an assistant, and two gourmet cooks to prepare the fish that guests caught. Malone bought the lodge and 900 acres of land in 1996 through the bankruptcy proceeding for $850,000.

A commercial sporting camp, Hardscrabble Lodge, at the northern end of the lake, will remain open for now.

No wood will be harvested this winter. In the future, harvesting will be done because trees need to be cut to maintain the health of the forest, not because Malone needs income from timber sales, said Coleman.

After the sale of the land to Malone was completed, however, Plum Creek retained the right to cut timber there until Sept. 30. During an airplane ride over the area in October, a large clear-cut was visible on the back side of a hill near the lake, but it cannot be seen from Malone’s lodge.

Coleman said no decision had been made on allowing public access to the lake. He stressed that Malone bought all the land around it to ensure his privacy.

“There is no question in my mind that John Malone believes in property rights,” he said.

In 1998, Malone sold Tele-Communications Inc., the cable television company better known as TCI, to AT&T for $54 billion. He is now chairman of Liberty Media, AT&T’s cable television arm. With a net worth of $2.4 billion, he was ranked as the 85th-wealthiest man in America by Forbes magazine this year.

That’s down from 73rd last year because he has given away more than $1 billion, much of it through The Malone Family Foundation. The group’s first priority is to fund educational endeavors. Its second objective is “the preservation of open spaces from inappropriate development,” according to the foundation’s Web site.

Malone is known for doing much of his philanthropy anonymously. Several national conservation groups rumored to have benefited from his largesse said they had no donations from him on record.

One group that did benefit, and was willing to talk about it, was the Boothbay Region Land Trust. Director Dawn Kidd said Malone was very helpful in the trust’s purchase of the Oven’s Mouth Preserve project, which included 146 acres on two peninsulas with a salt marsh in between.

Malone and his wife, Leslie, own a house and 220 acres in Boothbay, which is valued at $964,000, and land in Edgecomb. He also owns the Mosquito Islands in Penobscot Bay and Tibbetts Island in the Back River in Boothbay.

Malone, the son of a vice president at General Electric, grew up in Milford, Conn., according to an article in Forbes in 1999. As a boy, he used to buy broken radios, fix them up and sell them for several times what he paid. Although he’s worth billions, he recently bought a $60,000 house to fix up and rent.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University with a degree in electrical engineering and economics in 1963. He went on to get a master’s and doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, and reportedly he likes to be called “Dr. Malone.”

According to the Forbes article, the “Marlboro-man-handsome Malone, 59, lives on a 42,000-acre ranch south of Denver, where his Liberty Media office is located.

He and his wife travel across the country in a $750,000 custom-built camper with their seven pugs. They stay overnight at truck stops and when curious onlookers ask who’s inside the camper, Malone tells them it’s Garth Brooks, the magazine reported.

At the age of 32, he formed a partnership with Robert Magness, the founder of TCI. Malone took over the company upon Magness’ death in 1996.

In early 1998, Malone announced that he planned to give away most of his fortune through his family foundation because he didn’t want his two adult children to be turned into “jet-setters.”

“How many cars and vacation homes can you own?” Malone said in announcing the giveaway, reported in the Rocky Mountain News.

Calls to Malone’s office in a Denver suburb for this story were not returned.