Katahdin Lake fund drive $1.8M short

Backers of a plan to annex land surrounding Katahdin Lake to Baxter State Park are still about $1.8 million short of their $14 million goal as the campaign enters the final two-week stretch, state officials announced Thursday.

Fundraisers had collected $11.2 million in cash or pledges as of Thursday in their effort to purchase 6,015 acres around Katahdin Lake for the state. The Elmina B. Sewall Foundation has pledged an additional $1 million should the campaign reach the $13 million mark.

That means fundraisers have just 15 days to close the $1.8 million gap or risk losing a deal that Maine officials have championed as a “once-in-a-lifetime” land conservation opportunity.

Campaign leaders, who were forced to negotiate a deadline extension after encountering stiff political opposition to the deal, remained upbeat about raising the money before the Dec. 15 deadline.

“We are rapidly closing in on our target and picking up momentum every day,” Sam Hodder, project manager for The Trust for Public Land, said in a statement.

It’s safe to say that the Katahdin Lake campaign has not gone as smoothly as supporters originally anticipated.

State officials announced the lake campaign amid considerable fanfare last January during a ceremony in the State House. Standing near a bust of the late Gov. Percival Baxter, Gov. John Baldacci and others said the deal would complete Baxter’s vision of protecting the remote lake with unrivaled views of Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak.

The deal took several years to negotiate and involved essentially swapping 21,000 acres of prime timberland – including about 7,000 acres of public lots – to Lincoln-based Gardner Land Co. in return for the lake parcel.

But sporting groups and some rural legislators initially opposed the annexation, which would have closed off all the land to hunting and snowmobiling. Others criticized the state’s willingness to sell for likely harvest public lots that had been well-managed for decades.

After weeks of meetings, lawmakers brokered a compromise that adds 4,040 acres surrounding Katahdin Lake to Baxter. The remaining 1,975 acres would become part of the Bureau of Parks and Lands’ holdings and remain open to hunting and snowmobiling.

But the political wrangling delayed fundraising efforts and forced The Trust for Public Land, which negotiated the deal with the Gardners on the state’s behalf, to seek an extension of the original July 1 deadline. A representative of the Gardner family hinted in late October that the family is not interested in another extension.

“I think it delayed it … because there was a level of uncertainty around some points,” said Jim Crocker, spokesman for the Department of Conservation. “How much did it affect [fundraising], I don’t know.”

Crocker said that Hodder, Conservation Commissioner Patrick McGowan, and former Baxter park director Buzz Caverly were still bringing potential donors into the site as of last week.

Nearly 800 private individuals or groups have donated or pledged money to the campaign so far.