We are writing in response to your story about the organized opposition to the Plum Creek plan in Moosehead Lake, “Groups ramp up dissent against Moosehead plan (BDN, June 19).

Once again, environmental groups from Portland warn about how the Plum Creek plan is going to “harm wildlife populations and the region’s natural character.”

Statements like these conveniently ignore that development is happening here now and none of it offers the conservation that Plum Creek is proposing. And none of it offers the predictability and prosperity that the Plum Creek plan envisions.

Maine Audubon is saying that the new Plum Creek plan still poses an “unacceptably high threat to wildlife.” What about the people who live here? The people who struggle every day to keep their businesses afloat and our schools and hospital open.

The Plum Creek plan offers the hope of more people and more jobs for a region that has been losing both for two generations. Environmental groups who exaggerate the threat of the Plum Creek to the local wildlife are doing so at the expense of local people. These groups and the paid personnel who speak for them have a vested interest in painting the bleakest picture possible and ignoring any potential benefits of the plan.

The Natural Resources Council has been fond of opposing any development in the Moosehead Lake region by claiming, “Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”

The people assessing the merits of this plan need to keep something else in mind: the people who live in the region. Once we’re gone, we are gone forever!

Jennifer and Charles Aucoin

Greenville