To hear Gov. Angus King and other government officials talk about them, conservation easements are the best thing since sliced bread.

But now, as more large paper companies have lined up to collect money – some of it public tax dollars – for putting restrictions on land where they will continue to cut trees, the chorus of critics is growing.

The latest proposal is to pay up to $25 million to International Paper Co. for land along the Machias River to protect wild Atlantic salmon, which were declared an endangered species there and in several other state rivers by the federal government last year. The Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission hopes to place an easement on 26,560 acres along the river, several tributaries and around five nearby lakes. Another 18,375 acres will be purchased to complement existing state holdings in the area south of Grand Lake Stream.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has contributed $2 million to the project. Other public funding is expected.

While the project is touted by state and federal officials, Washington County residents and other private citizens wonder if it is a waste of money because state law already restricts tree cutting near rivers and because IP has a reputation for being an exemplary manager of riparian zones, which are the areas near water bodies.

“I have concerns about setting a precedent … of paying landowners not to do something that they shouldn’t do anyway – like liquidating their forests, destroying riparian zones, flattening deer yards or destroying salmon habitat,” said longtime forest activist Mitch Lansky of Wytopitlock.

“If current standards are ineffective at protecting public values, then these standards should be changed. There is not enough money available to pay all landowners to better manage riparian zones or deer yards,” he added.

Government officials say easements are not corporate welfare, but a great way for the public to preserve what it likes best about the woods – undeveloped shorelines, ready access for snowmobiling, hunting and fishing – at a fraction of the cost of buying the land outright.

“For me these easements are a terrific value for the public because we only buy what we need,” King said Thursday.

The right to use the land and keep it free from development can be “purchased for one-quarter, one-third to one-half the price of buying the same land outright,” he said.

Although acknowledging that forestry practices have not been found to be harming salmon in the rivers in Washington County, Conservation Commissioner Ronald Lovaglio sees easements as insurance policies.

On the Machias River, for example, the easement will ensure that IP does not sell shorefront land it feels has become a liability due to the concern over salmon. The easement also ensures that the land will not be developed into camp lots to help offset the money the company loses from not being able to harvest trees there.

“We’re getting a hell of a bargain,” said Lovaglio, a former IP executive.

The last five years, he said, have been “the single biggest period of land conservation in Maine history.” He doesn’t see any reason why the pace will slow down anytime soon.

As for concerns that the state is biting off more than it can chew, Lovaglio said Maine is doing a good job of managing the public lands it now has – a fact that he said soon will be borne out by audits of the land done by two different forest certification groups.

If the current easement proposals materialize, the state will more than double the amount of land it manages. That will stretch his department, Lovaglio said, but provisions are being written into the easements to set up endowments to provide funds to manage the lands, or third parties have agreed to look after them at no cost to the state.

Easement fever

Easement fever began to spread in 1998 after the state announced it was acquiring one on more than 22,000 acres from the Robbins Lumber Co. around Nicatous Lake in remote northern Hancock County. The land is to remain forever free of development under the terms of the $3.75 million deal.

At that time, it was the largest conservation easement in the state. Since then things have mushroomed.

Part of the impetus for the conservation push was the flurry of land sales going on at that time. In two years, nearly a quarter of the state’s forestland changed hands.

Then, a year later, Pingree Associates announced it was placing a conservation easement on more than 760,000 acres in northern and western Maine, most of the land it owns in the state.

The New England Forestry Foundation purchased the development rights on the land for $28 million. The money largely was raised from private donors and foundations. The federal government did kick in about 10 percent of the total funding.

That easement, completed earlier this year, remains the largest in the country.

When the Pingree easement was announced, some environmentalists grumbled that it was a waste of money because the forestry company could continue to cut trees on the land, which is in remote areas and not likely to be developed anytime soon. Also, public access to the land is not guaranteed.

Stephen Schley, company president, said he routinely gets calls from people seeking leases on Pingree land, especially near lakes and ponds. Some people even called to ask if they could lease a lot before the easement was made final.

Then came another large easement proposal, known as the West Branch project, that really got under critics’ skin. This one, aimed at preserving 650,000 privately owned acres to the north and east of Moosehead Lake for as much as $50 million, was particularly troublesome to many because the state and federal governments committed millions of dollars to the project before terms of the easement were final.

In fact, the owners of the land were not identified. It turned out Yale University was one of the three large landowners involved in the deal to which the federal government already had committed $16 million and the Land for Maine’s Future had put up $1 million.

Late this summer, the head of the Attorney General’s Natural Resources Division criticized a draft of the West Branch easement, saying it put too much emphasis on forestry and not enough on land conservation. The document also was weak when it came to prohibiting development and ensuring public access, Assistant Attorney General Jeff Pidot wrote in August.

Earlier this week, Pidot said the matter still was under negotiation but that “a lot of efforts had been made to deal with some of the concerns I earlier raised.”

The Machias deal

The most recent easement proposal, on the Machias River, also has many people scratching their heads.

To justify the deal, IP and state officials point to the state’s 1997 Atlantic Salmon Conservation Plan, which was supposed to avert an endangered species listing for the fish but which federal officials found lacking.

The plan said the state would protect salmon habitat by negotiating agreements or conservation easements with landowners near significant habitat. Half the habitat on seven rivers, five of them in Washington County, was to be protected by 1999 and 80 percent was to be protected by the end of this year.

A 2000 progress report on the plan said 4,806 acres comprising 40 miles of frontage had been acquired along five of the seven rivers. Much of the protected land is on the Ducktrap River in midcoast Maine, where 70 percent of salmon habitat has been protected.

While the state appears to be working away on habitat protection, federal fisheries officials long have said that escaped fish from the aquaculture industry and the withdrawal of water from rivers to irrigate blueberry fields are the biggest threats to wild salmon. The Machias River easement does not address either of these concerns.

Mark Minton, the Atlantic salmon recovery plan coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, acknowledged Thursday that the easement will not address concerns about aquaculture and water withdrawal. He said land protection is important, but not the only answer to salmon recovery.

One way to improve salmon habitat, Minton said, is to ensure that forestry companies use best management practices to prevent erosion and other threats to salmon.

As for the state’s 1997 conservation plan, he said his agency had concerns about some aspects of the plan, but other parts were considered very strong.

The expenditure of up to $25 million to buy land on the Machias is a completely misplaced effort, said Nathan Pennell, secretary of the Machias River Watershed Council, a local group set up to help with salmon recovery on the river.

He said the Atlantic Salmon Commission already owns a 250-foot corridor along the river from Whitneyville to Machias and that the agency has done nothing in 30 years to control erosion or to address other problems.

“Their track record is horrendous,” Pennell said.

He also is frustrated that local watershed councils struggle to find money to take care of small projects, such as removing beaver dams or rerouting ATV trails. There are hundreds of projects that would truly benefit salmon ranging in cost from $1,000 to $60,000 that simply aren’t getting done because the money isn’t available, he said.

With $25 million, “we could take care of them all and you’d have money left over,” Pennell said.