If legislators meet in special session to resolve the property tax, they should pass the Land for Maine’s Future bond too, so it will be sent to the voters this November.

LMF is a state program that acquires public lands with partners’ help. The proposal to borrow up to $60 million and repay at currently low rates is timely. Protection of Maine’s natural estate is occurring more slowly than private development and consequent property closures.

Consider: In a 15-year period (1982-1997), 260,300 Maine acres went under the bulldozer, averaging 9,250 acres annually through 1992, after which the pace jumped to 33,560 acres developed per year through 1997. (Source: USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, 1997 National Resources Inventory, www.nhq.nrcs.usda.gov/NRI.)

Compare: Land for Maine’s Future has protected roughly 192,000 acres since its founding 17 years ago, or 11,300 acres a year. The development-vs.-protection figures imply a land extinction rate, however measured or far away.

Given Maine’s vastness, people sometimes have difficulty registering the incremental loss of their special landscapes, which is inexorable nonetheless. The concept of infinite land and resources comes from the nation’s early history when settlers faced a daunting continent. Writing in the 1960s, Stewart L. Udall, interior secretary under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, called it “the myth of superabundance,” which still persists.

Nevertheless, in the four decades since Udall began dismembering the myth, it has become clear that places of high public value-whether actively timbered, hunted, trapped, fished, planted, snowmobiled, hiked, biked, boated, birded, botanized, photographed, or merely ogled through a windshield – can become rarities in the long run.

Nor can nature-based theme parks, technologies or other man-made surrogates for the Big Outside reproduce the creation. As Will Rogers said, “Buy land, they ain’t makin’ it no more.”

He understood that today’s dollar is always worth more than tomorrow’s. That’s a reason to bond now, before the dwindling long-term supply of suitable real estate further pumps up short-term prices. The bond is financially astute, assigning high present value to properties available at relatively low present costs. Good dirt rarely gets cheaper.

Some people consider conservation acquisitions ill-advised because government has insufficient funds to maintain the present land portfolio, so why buy more. But that’s like not buying a home until you have 100 percent cash. Most homebuyers seek mortgages instead, getting the place they want while it’s still on the market, and spreading payments over years. So, too, with the Land for Maine’s Future bond.

The bond’s 1999 version passed by 70 percent and was spent down in jig time. Too little is left for new deals. Large-scale conservation purchases representing Maine’s varied geographies, demographics, recreation modes, and biological categories are stalled. Thus, entrepreneurial acquisitions have shifted mostly to the nonprofit sector, an imbalance that must be redressed.

Nonprofits such as The Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, Trust for Public Land, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Maine Forest Society, New England Forestry Foundation, Appalachian Mountain Club and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, plus many of Maine’s 85-plus local land trusts have, in aggregate, volunteered huge sums for lands and easements. They plan to raise millions more.

However, it’s unfair to ask charities to do it all.

The fairest, smartest approach consists of: 1) using philanthropy and other non-state moneys to augment bond revenues; and 2) inducing federal matches via the Land and Water Conservation Fund (Interior Department), and the Forest Legacy and the Farm and Rangeland Protection programs (Agriculture Department), which have succeeded here. LMF requires such creative financing, keeping state government’s contribution-your personal share of the bond’s debt service – respectably low.

Moreover, for each dollar LMF spends, 50 cents more must come from non-state sources – good leverage. LMF’s actual performance is superior to that, generating $2.40 in outside revenues for each bond dollar, four times what is required, further reducing taxpayers’ costs. Some reductions come from below-market charitable purchases that nonprofits negotiate for the state.

Land for Maine’s Future conserves great pieces of ground, important salt- and fresh water, areas for motorized or motor-free access, islands, bogs, forests for harvesting trees and animals or for nonconsumptive activities, active croplands, biotic repositories, and scenic climaxes: a broad sampler of Maine’s diverse physical splendor. With its partners, LMF has acquired areas in all 16 counties, including 323 miles of shoreline and 75 miles of rail-trails. The bond’s extensive reach spreads outdoor benefits democratically.

A core LMF objective is to conserve our shrinking natural abundance for public access, so that development and protection might advance in a more balanced way, toward a future landscape both useful and comely.

If there is a special session this summer, Legislators are the only humans who can ensure that voters get to enact a bond this year.

Meanwhile, if you can make more land that looks like Maine’s corner of the creation, you’re better than Disney.

Heck, you’re better than God.

Ken Olson is president of Friends of Acadia. When he served with The Conservation Fund, he negotiated the option by which Maine Coast Heritage Trust and Land for Maine’s Future purchased the riverside land and easement that permanently protect Grand Lake Stream for public access.