A SPECIAL PLACE

The Land for Maine’s Future Program was created by voters in 1987 with enthusiastic support of a $35 million bond issue, support that was reaffirmed in 1999 with broad approval of an additional $50 million. The program promised to preserve the state’s most special places and to do it by forging public and private partnerships.

The latest LMF project, the first brought to fruition under Gov. John Baldacci, keeps those promises. The conservation corridor along Spednic Lake and the upper St. Croix River is one of Maine’s most special places, and it is made possible by a remarkable bit of partnering.

The conservation purchase – a 500-foot shoreland corridor along 16 miles of the lake and 34 miles of the river for a total of 3,000 acres – protects an area of exceptional historic, scenic, ecological and recreational value. That it does so in eastern Washington County, a struggling region with a promising future in nature-based tourism, adds an important economic element as well.

The $2.5 million deal for land owned by a group of investors and managed by Wagner Land Management combines $1.43 million in LMF money, $175,000 in federal conservation funds and $50,000 from Maine Outdoor Heritage lottery proceeds with about $1 million in private money. That strong fund drive by the New England Forestry Foundation raised money from nearly 300 individual donors by the New England Forestry Foundation, with the Woodie Wheaton Land Trust, formed by a group of local anglers, leading the way with $120,000.

This purchase makes good on a deal Maine struck with New Brunswick nearly a decade ago to protect this border waterway. Roughly a half-million acres on the Canadian side, including most of the shore, have been preserved; the effort on this side, though far more modest, is an important indication that strong relations between this state and Atlantic Canada may move beyond pronouncements to tangible action.

The downside of LMF remains that, while it is, in the eyes of a great many voters, one of the state’s best programs, it also is one of the state’s best-kept secrets. The State Planning Office, which administers LMF, provides on its Web site a good map with informative descriptions of each of the now 52 projects completed. Few visitors, and nearly as few residents, know of this, however, and so many of these investments go unnoticed. The Office of Tourism, the more likely place one would look for this information, remains inexplicably quiet about these special places; its Web site yields what scant information it contains only grudgingly and haphazardly. The exceptional nature of this latest purchase should provide the impetus to improve that.