NORTHEAST HARBOR – To conservationists, development along the coast of Maine has begun to resemble the early going in a game of Monopoly.

As anyone who has played the game knows, buying as many properties as quickly as possible is key to winning.

That kind of feeding frenzy in the coastal real estate market has lent some urgency to the work of Maine Coast Heritage Trust, the nonprofit group whose mission is to preserve what David MacDonald, the organization’s director of land protection, calls the state’s “favorite places.”

Like a player in the board game, MCHT is trying to keep pace with the purchase of coastal properties that are being developed as housing subdivisions, trophy homes and retirement complexes.

In 2001, MCHT conserved 11 wild coastal islands and 16 miles of coastline – no small feat in a market in which prices have increased by leaps and bounds in the last few years.

“It was a very good year,” MacDonald said last week in an interview at the organization’s Northeast Harbor office. In fact, as the year wound down, a few acquisition deals still were in the works that MacDonald could not disclose until details were made final.

In all, 35 to 40 projects were expected to come to fruition in 2001, totaling more than 2,600 acres in 23 communities from York to Lubec. Among MCHT’s conservation coups in 2001 was the acquisition of three islands in Casco Bay.

Since 1970, MCHT has conserved more than 110,000 acres, including 238 entire coastal islands.

MCHT was formed in 1970 on Mount Desert Island to assist in acquiring property to augment the holdings of Acadia National Park.

But before long, MCHT became a statewide land conservation group, with its main office now in Brunswick. The organization has assisted in some key conservation deals in northern Maine, but its primary focus is coastal property.

“There is that sense of urgency,” MacDonald said, reflecting on 2001, “the sense that things are changing rapidly,” and that the coast won’t look the same in a few years if property is not preserved.

In its early days, MCHT worked with the many local land trusts that sprung up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The trend in those days was to use what was then a new concept in Maine – the conservation easement. The deed mechanism allowed a landowner to retain a property while entering into a binding legal agreement that prohibited development in perpetuity.

In the last 10 to 15 years, MCHT has moved into property ownership, though it still works closely with local land trusts. In fact, MCHT oversees a network of land trusts and offers training and organizational help to the local groups.

Two years ago, with the national economic boom beginning to affect parts of Maine’s real estate market, MCHT’s staff and board of directors met, MacDonald said, and agreed “that we needed to step up our program.”

“There was a real sense that we needed to accelerate the pace of our work,” he said.

The Campaign for the Coast was launched in August, an ambitious endeavor to raise $100 million, the bulk of which will be used for acquisition of coastal property.

In the wake of Sept. 11, many charitable organizations have seen drops in donations, as many people gave to groups working with survivors of the terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania.

MacDonald said MCHT has found the opposite to be true.

“We’ve been amazed,” he said. “People have been doubling their gifts.” MacDonald speculates that people, especially those who live much of the year out-of-state, take comfort in knowing they are saving a pristine place that is dear to them in Maine.

In 1991, MCHT helped conserve the so-called Bold Coast area near Cutler. With the acquisition costing $5 million, MCHT was accused at that time of driving up local land values with the acquisition, MacDonald said. Ten years later, the purchase looks like a fire sale bargain, he said.

The organization has a revolving fund of $1 million to $2 million that is used to secure properties while other funding sources – such as the state Land for Maine’s Future program – are tapped. These days, with the staggering cost of coastal real estate, “one buy could wipe that [revolving fund] out,” MacDonald said.

Small coastal islands, MacDonald said, have become desirable commodities for the very wealthy. People from places such as Texas or Singapore – who may have never visited Maine – are enticed with the idea of owning their personal island getaway.

“The little ones are quite vulnerable,” he said, citing an example of a 1-acre island near Isle au Haut off Stonington on which a house was to be built. “The threat of conversion,” from wild to substantially developed, “is real.”

As part of its purchasing strategy, MCHT works only with willing sellers, MacDonald said. Often, a landowner donates to the cause by selling a property for significantly less than its full market value.

Just as the use of conservation easements changed MCHT’s strategy in the 1970s, MacDonald said the current trend is to purchase smaller lots, particularly in York and Cumberland counties, to protect public access to the shore.

In Ellsworth, MCHT is looking into the possibility of creating a “greenway” along the Union River, linking the downtown to the waterfront. Such approaches, MacDonald said, combat sprawl and help preserve the vitality of downtowns.

“It’s all related,” he said.

This summer, MCHT purchased the island called Jordan’s Delight off Milbridge and dismantled the house that had been built there. This “undeveloping” approach is common in places such as California and southern New England, MacDonald said, but is not yet a trend in Maine.

While MCHT does not develop its conserved properties for recreational use, some kind of limited public access often is part of the picture.

“Showing people wonderful places,” such as the Bold Coast where trails have been created, “is part of building a constituency,” MacDonald said.

“We’re not going to stop development on the Maine coast,” he said. “And we don’t want to do that.” Instead, the organization “is about protecting the special places.”

Information about the Maine Coast Heritage Trust is available at www.mcht.org.