WATERVILLE – The Friends of Baxter State Park organization is taking a defensive stance – for now.

The new lobbying group, created to preserve the wilderness that former Maine Gov. Percival Baxter set aside at the park that bears his name, celebrated its third anniversary at an annual meeting Saturday, but has yet to flex its muscles in Augusta.

“Where this group is going is anyone’s guess,” said Friends of Baxter board member Charlie Jacobi, who also serves as a resource specialist at Acadia National Park.

“For now, we’re focusing on being there to defend the wilderness value when it needs defending,” Jacobi said.

Now 300 strong, Friends has built up a war chest of more than $14,000. Over the next year members hope to determine how to use the group’s money and influence to encourage the highest level of “wilderness value” possible, outgoing president John Neff of Winthrop said Saturday.

“We’ve tried to say that our primary interest is the park itself … now, you can’t be blind, of course, to what’s going on around you, so we’re open to anything that impacts the park,” Neff said.

The Friends platform could include issues related to hunting and trapping in the park, motor vehicle access at Baxter, and whether adding additional land to the 204,733-acre park would help or hinder its mission.

When Friends entered the public arena last spring, members were openly critical of policy decisions made by the park’s governing body, the Baxter State Park Authority.

Saturday, the group took a more conciliatory tone, inviting park director Irvin “Buzz” Caverly to make the morning’s keynote address.

Caverly described how the park has grown and changed during his 43-year tenure.

The number of entrances has been reduced to two, and motor vehicle roads are limited to 47 miles in the entire park. Of more than 80 buildings that “cluttered” the park during the 1960s, only about 30 remain.

But Caverly also described mountain peaks where as many as 500 people jostle for space during busy summer days. More than 50,000 people in 25,000 vehicles enter Baxter each summer.

The director shared his ideas for how the park can be made more wild, including the closure of several roads and the creation of more backwoods camping sites.

“To me, the park is for those who love nature and are willing to walk,” said Caverly, paraphrasing a famous Baxter quotation.

The director also joined Jacobi, Millinocket area businessman Matt Polstein and wildlife biologist Jack McPhee in debating the consequences of adding land to Baxter.

No property is being offered now to the park, but with the borderlands being logged, and discussion of a North Woods national park in the air, the time is right to consider what may become a major issue, said incoming president Holly Dominie.

“We want to talk about ideas before they get polarized,” Dominie of Readfield said. “We hope to be a brokering agency, rather than one of these extreme groups.”

But the issue of increasing Baxter’s acreage is already contentious, a fact that concerned many of the 30 Friends who attended Saturday’s meeting.

Some conservationists would like to limit park visitation, and keep all activity within the park’s boundary as low-impact as possible, keeping the land as a wilderness sanctuary.

“He [Baxter] said that in the not too far future, the people’s park might be the only green spot left in the north Maine woods,” said McFee. “I think that any addition would only add color to that vision.”

Others, such as many Millinocket area residents, see park growth, and the hunting, fishing and rafting that occurs both in and outside of its borders, as the salvation for a town facing the loss of its traditional mill-based economy.

“The park is forbidden fruit,” Polstein said.

Fewer than a dozen Katahdin-area residents have joined the Friends group, and its mission has no allegiance to the local economy.

Friends of Baxter did not add an expansion plank to its platform Saturday. It instead decided to pursue further study of the issue before taking a stand that could alienate a portion of its membership.

Baxter State Park Authority members, who have been grappling with such issues for decades, offered the Friends a single piece of advice: Have patience.

“This is the park of the people of Maine,” said Rachel Collin Therrien, an Augusta resident who sits on an advisory council to the park authority.

“There has always been conflict over these lands, and they have great meaning to all those who treasure them,” Therrien said. “There is not going to be an overnight remedy.”