PORTLAND – No level of development is acceptable in the forests that surround Moosehead Lake, a coalition of environmentalists said Tuesday, kicking off their “Save Moosehead” campaign to oppose a massive housing and resort project proposed for the region by Plum Creek Timber Co.

Former Green gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Carter pledged to “block Plum Creek’s sprawl agenda” and to pursue every means of stalling the proposed 975-lot development – including lawsuits or a citizen referendum.

“Moosehead is too precious of a gem to allow Plum Creek to tarnish it with golf courses and house lots,” Carter said.

The opposition comes as no surprise, Plum Creek spokesman Jim Lehner said Tuesday. Mainers don’t see development as inevitable the way people do in other parts of the country, so some people aren’t as quick to support a plan such as this, that can offer a balance between conservation and development, he said.

The project, scattered across 426,000 acres, concerns opponents in its scale alone – bigger than the Big A Dam project that environmentalists defeated 30 years ago and bigger than any subdivision in Maine’s history.

The company has offered a 30-year, 382,000-acre conservation easement, to be set aside for logging, recreation and habitat. But that’s not enough protection for a resource as irreplaceable as Moosehead Lake, said Jym St. Pierre, director of RESTORE: The North Woods. In fact, the area for RESTORE’s proposed Maine Woods National Park, chosen for its ecological and scenic value, includes much of the Plum Creek land addressed by the controversial development plan.

“There is really something extraordinary about Moosehead Lake,” St. Pierre said. “It’s our Old Faithful. It’s our Grand Canyon.”

Plum Creek, with ownership of just less than a million acres, has the power to transform the region all by itself, but approval of this project will only encourage other developers to follow suit, said Rep. John Eder, G-Portland.

State leaders have been silent too long, Eder said, adding that he may introduce a bill in the next legislative session to call for a moratorium on large-scale development in wild areas – at least until the state has a long-term plan in place for balancing economic development with wilderness.

But after hearing Greenville-area leaders speak in support of the Plum Creek plan this spring, the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission – the group with the power to approve or deny the proposal – rejected such a moratorium.

Steven Pound, school superintendent of Union 60 in Greenville, said Tuesday he hopes people won’t choose sides this early in the game and that they’ll give a series of public meetings scheduled by LURC over the next month a chance. Plum Creek seems to be willing to listen, he said.

If the project has any potential to boost the region’s economy and bring new families to the area, it’s worth considering, Pound said.

“As long as there’s a dialogue going on, I think people can come around to some agreement that’s good for the community,” he said.

But for members of the Save Moosehead campaign, Plum Creek is concerned only with profit and simply is not to be trusted. When Plum Creek first bought land in Maine, company leaders repeatedly denied any plans for commercial development. A few years later, Carter said, he was personally reassured that Maine forests would be used solely for forestry.

“Plum Creek deceived the people of Maine,” Carter said. “They did not tell me the truth.”

There’s more than just a single development project at stake, opponents said. This region is one of New England’s largest undeveloped areas, one of the region’s best chances for protecting wilderness, they said.

“It’s not a proposal to borrow the heart of the Maine woods; it’s a proposal to steal these incredible resources forever – to eliminate their wilderness character before our children even get a chance to see them,” said Mike Herz, a Sheepscot resident and board member of the Washington, D.C.-based group Friends of the Earth.

Friends of the Earth and the American Lands Alliance aim to make the development of the Moosehead region relevant nationally, representatives of both groups said Tuesday.

“We will take this campaign to the people,” Carter said. “The people of York have just as much at stake here as the people of Greenville.”

In June, the Augusta-based Natural Resources Council of Maine also announced opposition to the Plum Creek proposal, though NRCM is not now a member of the Save Moosehead coalition.

For more information on the coalition, visit www.restore.org.