FUNDING THE FORESTS

Places such as Moosehead Lake, the West Branch and Nicatous Lake are synonymous with the wild side of Maine. In the last decade more than 600,000 acres in Maine have been conserved with Forest Legacy funds. The federal program enables the state and private entities to purchase development rights on forest land, keeping places like the West Branch of the Penobscot River and Tumbledown Mountain free of camps and resorts, while allowing logging to continue. This benefits those who rely on the woods for work and those who use them for recreation. Both are important to the state’s economy.

Three years ago, Maine was the largest single recipient of Forest Legacy money, getting $10 million of the $60 million allocated. A year later, Maine’s congressional delegation teamed up to halt the proposed gutting of the program when the Bush administration proposed cutting its budget in half. In the end, thanks to the work of Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, $70 million was set aside for Forest Legacy projects.

This year, happily, the wrangling won’t be over how much to trim the conservation program’s budget, but over how big it should be. Maine has requested nearly $20 million for six projects, including an easements on the Machias River to protect wild Atlantic salmon and one on forest lands formerly owned by Great Northern Paper. A coalition of 90 members of Congress, including Maine’s two representatives, is urging their colleagues to increase next year’s Forest Legacy allocation to $150 million. This bipartisan effort is worthy and would go a long way toward funding projects in Maine and the 23 other states that participate in the program.

Given the realities of the budget process, however, the final figures for Forest Legacy may be smaller than this and some projects may have to wait for funding. But it makes sense to ask for as much as possible and settle for less than to start too low because there will be no bargaining upwards.

At the same time, the senators must ensure that another important source of conservation funding is not diminished. The current budget proposal calls for a significant decrease in federal support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Created in 1964, LWCF is the largest pool of federal conservation money. It is supposed to be funded at $900 million a year, with half the money allocated to federal lands and half to state projects. The state portion of this program provides funding for municipal parks, ball fields and beaches. The president’s budget proposal calls for only $542 million for LWCF, with only $160 million going to the states. This is down from $200 million for the states last year and $573 million for the entire program last year.

It is positive that LWCF is not threatened with elimination as it was in the mid-1990s. But, Maine’s congressional delegation, which has long supported LWCF, need to ensure that this program moves closer to full funding rather than in the direction it is now going.