Conservation chief says 2006 a banner year

PORTLAND – The year 2006 is being called a banner period for land conservation in Maine, continuing the rapid growth of privately held lands held in conservation in the state.

Lands protected during the year ranged in size from 195,000 acres near Baxter State Park’s southern and western edges as part of the so-called Katahdin Forest Project to the extension of a walking trail in Portland.

Other highlights included a deal to add Katahdin Lake to Baxter State Park and the donation of coastal property in Phippsburg to the Maine chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

“I think it was a phenomenal year,” said Conservation Commissioner Patrick McGowan.

Maine is second nationwide in the amount of privately owned conservation lands, with more than 1.7 million acres, according to the Land Trust Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based network of conservation groups.

That’s up from just 136,712 acres five years earlier, the alliance said. California, which has five times the land area of Maine, topped Maine by less than 15,000 acres.

Conversely, Maine is near the bottom of the states for publicly held conservation lands. Maine has 1.2 million acres of publicly owned open space, while California has more than 40 million acres.

Nationally, private lands set aside for conservation grew 54 percent to 37 million acres between 2000 and 2005, according to the Land Trust Alliance.

A big reason for Maine’s leadership in the private conservation trend is the changing ownership of the 10 million acres of forest lands that cover the northern half of the state.

The single-largest private conservation deal in Maine, and the nation, was a 763,000-acre conservation easement signed in 2001 on Pingree family timberlands.

While most conservation projects in Maine protect traditional access, some people are wary of such easements. The Katahdin Lake deal almost unraveled because the land around the lake was made off-limits to hunters and snowmobilers, even though the state promised to protect access elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of us out there that are very concerned,” said Bob Meyers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association. “A lot of (projects) are starting to appear to be an ecological reserve for the sake of eliminating certain types of access, and that’s not right.”

McGowan said the concerns are unfounded, calling Katahdin Lake a special case. He said 99 percent of protected lands in Maine remain open to recreational users.