Land for Maine’s Future left in the lurch

For those of us fighting to save special Maine places from imminent liquidation and subdivision, the Legislature’s failure to settle on a bond package for this November comes as a real blow, at a time when Land for Maine’s Future funding is most urgently needed.

It takes a sustained effort on the part of individuals and groups to pull together a successful conservation project, as anyone who has worked on one knows. It takes a great deal of planning, community building, grant writing, and fund raising, with public and/or foundation funding to be matched by local contributions. Often it takes several years to bring a project along, build the necessary support and raise the funds. More often it is a desperate scramble to outbid a known liquidator on a listed property. This is the case in the current crisis where timberlands historically operated for long-term management are now being liquidated – stripped of the last stocks of timber and subdivided.

Thankfully the Legislature did (just barely) pass regulations designed to curb cut-and-run logging, but these have yet to go into effect. Meanwhile the price of pine is high, and undeveloped lakefront and “wilderness” land are in peak demand; the paper industry is economically stressed, and companies can get a better short-term return on divesting their land. The same forces are at work in more populated areas near the coast, where prices for Maine oceanfront are driving middle-income people inland, and farmers can better afford to sell their land than farm it. The economic forces driving subdivision have never been greater. Now is not the time to leave LMF in the lurch.

For many conservation projects, especially where private funds are stretched thin, the prospect of LMF matching funds is a make-it-or-break-it element. Folks who have been working really hard over the past year or more to pull together a project – land trusts, lake associations, ad hoc groups of people rallying to save a place they have enjoyed for generations for multi-use recreational opportunities – are now left hanging. All we can do is keep plugging in good faith that the LMF program will continue, with funding if not this year, then next.

If there is no special session this summer, we are told, better luck next June. However, for many conservation projects contingent on matching public funds, the timing is critical – for some, next year might well be too late. To assure the continuation of funds to make current projects possible, we need to bring the bond question before voters as soon as possible, soonest being the November ballot.

Let the voters decide: How important is land conservation, so that Mainers may continue to enjoy accessible recreational land and waters, woods and open spaces? Do they support renewed state borrowing for this purpose? If the last land bond is any indication, a strong majority of Maine voters would favor refunding the LMF program.

Many voices, including a coalition of over 260 organizations, are asking the legislature to reconvene for a special session to work out a bond package for the November ballot. As things stand, the governor says he will support a special session on the bond package only if lawmakers agree to put bipartisan differences aside and work together. After the legislature’s knock-down-drag-out closing session, it is understandable that they would like a break from each other. But despite the bipartisan gridlock, we know there is wide support among legislators for the LMF program.

Perhaps, with a little perspective, they will rise above their differences and see the forest for the trees, and work out a November bond package allowing LMF to be refunded so that conservation efforts now under way can continue.

Jane Crosen Washburn is a mapmaker and free-lance editor and writer from Penobscot.