Corridor of Conservation Forest groups working to protect Lower Penobscot watershed from development pressures

Viewed from inside an SUV jostling down a well-used logging road, the vast commercial forests of interior Hancock County hardly look like the front line in the conservation community’s battle with development.

Aside from logging crews and the occasional sportsman, these forests and bogs are the realm of beaver, moose and more mosquitoes than seemingly possible.

But look at a satellite image of the area and you begin to see why this land – known as the Lower Penobscot watershed – topped the U.S. Forest Service’s national list of watersheds threatened by development.

The image also helps explain why the Forest Society of Maine, The Nature Conservancy and other groups are so intent on raising millions of dollars to protect this land.

Development in the Bangor, Old Town and Ellsworth areas glow white on the image. In between the white, however, is a swath of dark green representing unfragmented forests in Hancock and Penobscot counties.

To the Forest Society’s Alan Hutchinson, this land that he calls the “Great Pond and Lower Penobscot

Forest” has enormous economic, ecological and recreational potential – but only if it remains green.

“We are constantly on the lookout for lands where we think our help could be most beneficial to holding onto those values,” Hutchinson said Wednesday while driving down Stud Mill Road. “This is one of those areas that really jumped out at us because it is on the fringe of the development.”

On Wednesday, Hutchinson led more than a dozen people deep into the woods to help illustrate this vision of a corridor of conservation land stretching from the Bangor area to the coast.

The group visited remote ponds, talked about the ecological importance of bogs and witnessed the “For Sale” signs popping up on the forest’s edge. The tour also gave the organizers a chance to talk money with staff members from Maine’s congressional delegation, who are seeking federal financing for the projects.

As envisioned, the Great Pond and Lower Penobscot Forest is actually a patchwork of conservation land financed through private, federal and state funds. All but 12,000 acres would remain a working forest.

The Nature Conservancy and the Bangor-based Forest Society of Maine already have received $862,000 from the Land for Maine’s Future program to help preserve a 24,557-acre tract that stretches from Great Pond to the easternmost corner of Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge near Milford. Several thousand acres in the middle of the area would not be part of the deal, however.

The Bush administration also has recommended $2.2 million in Forest Legacy dollars for the acquisition, but that money is tied up in the congressional budget process.

The Forest Society is also negotiating to purchase 5,270 acres off Route 9 near Amherst that will preserve numerous peaks in the Penobscot-Hancock Highlands Region. Hutchinson said the Forest Society hopes to eventually receive public funding for the acquisition.

And The Nature Conservancy is negotiating to purchase an additional 12,700 acres for an ecological reserve connecting Sunkhaze to the Maine Department of Conservation’s Bradley Unit.

Once complete, the project would create a conservation corridor encompassing more than 63,000 acres from Milford to Amherst.

Group members got a glimpse of the development pressure facing the Lower Penobscot watershed early into their trip Wednesday while driving to the Sunkhaze. “For Sale” signs and new homes line County Road just outside of the refuge.

“Look at that,” Hutchinson said while pointing to a recently completed three-story home that backs up to Sunkhaze. “Those are not inconsequential houses.”

Aram Calhoun, an associate professor at the University of Maine who specializes in wetland ecology, said that while some people regard bogs as mosquito-infested wasteland, they are actually critical components of the regional ecology.

Many of the aquatic species found in upland lakes and ponds either live in bogs at some point during their development or depend on wetlands for survival. Bogs are also important habitat for bird species and mammal species, said Calhoun during a lunch break at a hilltop pond.

Calhoun, who serves on the Forest Society’s board, said she is not aware of any similar-sized, unfragmented wetlands in all of Maine.

“It’s very special, from my perspective, to have such a large, connected wetlands complex,” she said.

Rosemary Winslow, a staff member in U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud’s office, said the tour helped her better understand the need for conservation in the Lower Penobscot.

“This has been tremendous,” Winslow said. “It’s one thing to get the information and get the printouts [of the project]. Now, I can physically go back and I can walk my [Washington] D.C. staff and my congressman through what’s going on. Now I get it.”