Although the population of many Maine counties declined over the past decade, the number of people living in some of the state’s most rural areas increased dramatically, according to a review of 2000 Census figures in the Unorganized Territories by the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission.

In Piscataquis County, for example, the total population decreased 7 percent between 1990 and 2000, from 18,623 to 17,235. During the same time, the number of people living in the county’s Unorganized Territories increased 20 percent. Since 1980, the county’s UT population has grown 77 percent, from 558 to 986.

The 11,070 people living in the 10 million-acre Unorganized Territories overseen by LURC remained less than 1 percent of the state’s total population.

But even though the numbers are small, planners and environmental activists see a pattern of change that could lead to sprawl and fragmentation of the state’s vast forested areas.

“You can’t look at sprawl as being synonymous with growth,” Fred Todd, the manager of LURC’s planning and administration division, said Thursday. He analyzed the census figures for presentation to LURC commissioners next week.

The recently released figures show that people are spreading out even while the population of many of the state’s northern and easternmost counties is declining or stagnant. A major exception is Aroostook County, where population is on the decline everywhere.

Larger towns in Piscataquis County – such as Greenville, Milo and Dover-Foxcroft – lost roughly 10 percent of their population, while Lakeview Plantation and the Northeast Piscataquis Unorganized Territory experienced double-digit growth.

Todd said his agency receives about 300 applications a year to construct new dwellings in the UT. Over the course of several years, those numbers add up, he said.

“It’s one of those things that sneaks up on you,” Todd said. “It doesn’t look like much in one year, but over the course of years, it adds up.”

What the census numbers do not show is how many seasonal homes have been built in the Unorganized Territories in the past decade. The U.S. Census Bureau should release those numbers this summer.

Seasonal development, not permanent residences, is the big issue in LURC jurisdiction, Todd said.

Most of the applications for second homes that LURC receives are for the western Maine area between the New Hampshire border and Moosehead Lake, he said.

In this region too, the number of permanent residents in the Unorganized Territories has increased. Overall, the UT population in Franklin County, for example, has increased 21 percent, or 258 people, since 1990. The county’s total population grew only 2 percent during the same time.

The movement of people into remote areas worries environmentalists.

“It sounds like the suburbanization of the North Woods,” said Judy Berk, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

In 1971, more than half the townships in the Unorganized Territories were uninhabited. Today less than a third are, according to the NRCM.

The movement of people into remote areas means that wildlife habitat will be further fragmented and that pristine areas will be lost to development, she said.

“While each individual house may not seem like much, the sum total is the loss of the last remote area in the Northeast,” said Berk.

The movement away from service center communities like Greenville and Milo to areas like Lake View Plantation may have serious consequences for the state down the road, said Evan Richert, director of the State Planning Office.

People move away from more populated areas to realize their dream of a house in the woods or to save money on their tax bills. The vast majority of people who live in the Unorganized Territories don’t work there but commute to jobs in larger towns, making the area a vast bedroom community.

In a few years, these people will start to demand the services they enjoyed when they lived in a town, Richert said. And these services, such as paved and plowed roads and school buses, will cost money. Now, such costs in the Unorganized Territories are borne by all of the state’s taxpayers.

At the same time, larger towns that provide fire and police protection and plow trucks are losing their base of taxpayers to support such services.

A state task force is looking into the thorny issue of ensuring that people who live outside densely populated areas incur the full cost of that choice.