Take a canoe trip along the shore of Lake Umbagog and you’re sure to run into goldeneye ducks gliding between lily pads or common loon diving for catfish near the floating island bogs that stretch across the west side of the lake.

Watch the large nest perched atop a tall and spindly tree near the mouth of the Androscoggin River there, and you’re likely to see osprey coming and going. With a little luck, you’ll spot a bald eagle perched on a limb above the riverbank.

What you won’t see much of is people.

While lakes around New Hampshire become more crowded, Lake Umbagog, which sits about 30 miles south of Canada straddling the Maine-New Hampshire border, remains mostly wild. That’s largely because of the national wildlife refuge that surrounds it.

The 20,500-acre refuge, which was created in 1992, is the result of what some say was unprecedented – a coming together of federal and state conservationists, timber companies and local people all working to keep the area from becoming a Lake Winnipesaukee of the north, with heavily developed lakeshore and congested waters.

This month, the National Wildlife Refuge Association named the refuge one of the most successful in the country for the way it brought people of all interests to the planning table. But even here, where waterfowl outnumber summer camp canoers and kayakers, there are challenges to conserving the wilderness.

Refuge Manager Paul Casey said about three-quarters of the lakeshore is protected, but he worries the remaining quarter, mostly private camps, one day could be converted to commercial development and that upland parcels outside the refuge border could be turned into a patchwork of second homes.

On the south side of Errol Hill in N.H., which borders the lake on the west, there is an invisible line where the refuge begins. To the north, the green hills roll down to the mouth of the Androscoggin and fade into stretches of marsh grass punctuated by dead trees as tall and straight as church spires, where birds of prey perch to hunt. To the south, the forest is broken by clearings and houses. Below, across the southern shore of the lake, cabins and summer homes form a dense line.

“That is what [refuge planners] were looking at,” Casey said, pointing from his pontoon boat, “the potential future of Lake Umbagog.”

By some accounts, “Umbagog” [pronounced with emphasis on a long “a”], means “clear water.” Funny, considering the water here is brown.

The lake was formed in 1850, when the Androscoggin River was dammed for the purpose of driving logs to paper mills in Rumford. Three smaller lakes were flooded into one, and the land around them became wetlands. Submerged stumps, shrubs and grass steep like tea bags in the lake, releasing acids called tannins that color the water.

David Houghton, executive director of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire said the makeup of the area, with a mix of wetlands and forest, creates an ideal habitat for birds of all sorts.

“Whenever you get that sort of wetland component, you get a lot of productivity,” Houghton said. “People in the North Country would call that bugs.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife first became interested in protecting Lake Umbagog in the 1970s, when a proposal was made to mine the lake for algae skeletons, or diatomaceous earth, used mostly as a filter material. That plan was stopped, but it wasn’t until 1991 that a formal effort to create a refuge began.

Then, planners outlined an area of 22,500 acres around the lake and surrounding rivers they hoped to acquire. By 1995, the refuge included about 1,200 acres, and the state of New Hampshire owned another 1,000. The refuge staff worked to gain the trust of people in surrounding towns – Errol, N.H. on the west and Upton, on the east.

When Todd Pampianou, owner of Northern Waters Outfitters, moved to Errol, N.H. 14 years ago, he said he felt the town was in a time warp, stuck somewhere in a 1950s lifestyle. Since then, it has made a lot of advancements, he said. Internet access helped when it became available about five years ago, and the increase in tourism has changed the town’s character some. But back when the refuge started, timber was – and still is – the industry that fed the region.

Many locals feared government taking control of the land that they were so tied to. Others were concerned about the effect the refuge would have on the tax base. As mills began closing, and the timber industry became ever more tumultuous, some business owners had welcomed the idea of the lake drawing new development to the area.

One, in particular, gas station owner Fran Coffin, shunned the idea of the refuge. He stood to gain from more homes on the lake and the accompanying traffic increase. After the refuge was formed, according to Houghton, Coffin noticed an increase in business and started asking people what they were doing in Errol.

They’d tell him, “We’re going to that lake. We’re going to the refuge. We hear there’s an eagle, and we want to kayak and see some moose,” Houghton said.

When Coffin heard their responses, he became a refuge supporter and, eventually, president of the refuge friends’ group. Coffin died in January 2004. This May, he was posthumously awarded an environmental lifetime achievement award from the Environmental Protection Agency.

As local support grew, so did the refuge. Today, in addition to the 20,500 acres owned by the refuge, most of which was purchased from timber companies using about $16 million in federal money, the states of Maine and New Hampshire own more than 2,000 acres. The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests owns the largest island on the lake, and the Audubon Society of New Hampshire holds a conservation easement on another 100 acres.