In Plum Creek Timber Co.’s bid to win rezoning approval to build a combined 2,315 new residential lots and resort “housing units” across more than 20,000 acres of forest around Moosehead Lake (the largest real estate development proposal in Maine’s history), some are casting this as pro-economic development (if you support Plum Creek) versus anti-economic development (if you do not). This is not the case.

Investment in tourism development around Moosehead Lake deserves support but the plan Plum Creek has put forward lacks so much detail as to just what this massive real estate project will look like, what its real environmental impacts will be on wildlife and the North Woods, and just how much local people will actually benefit economically, that it runs the risk of becoming a case study of tourism development gone wrong rather than done right. It does not have to be this way.

The last decade has given rise to clear guidelines, principles and practices associated with successful sustainable tourism development that deliver tangible economic benefits to local communities, provide sound conservation of nature and support authenticity and sense of place, all while providing a great tourism product, including world class recreation and lodging. In my role as chairman of judges for the World Travel and Tourism Council Tourism for Tomorrow Awards, I have carried out many on-site evaluations of best practice resorts and destinations that are recognized as sustainable tourism models. Despite its revisions, Plum Creek’s plan still falls far short of articulating a sustainable tourism vision.

Moosehead Lake is blessed with plentiful nature, abundant wildlife, beautiful scenery and a rich cultural heritage – the very attributes that are driving the expansion of tourism today. But we have just one chance to get tourism right in a development of the magnitude that Plum Creek is proposing for Maine. Once large-scale tourism development takes place, you don’t get a do-over. What is gone is lost forever. It is critical to get Plum Creek’s proposed development right from the very start.

Plum Creek has stated that their project will result in more than 300,000 acres of conservation easements (which will net them some $35 million in land sales if their plan is approved). Yet the majority of this “conservation land” will remain under Plum Creek’s control including options on forest cutting, gravel extraction, commercial herbicide spraying and new road development. It is hard to consider this a conservation victory when the easement land does not have a clear conservation management structure but does have the option to spray industrial herbicides onto the forests that form part of the watershed that is home to the native brook trout I like to cast for each spring.

The Plum Creek plan is too large, too spread out and too ill-defined. Just one of the two proposed resorts – Moose Mountain at 800 units alone – will put it among the largest single tourism resorts in all of North America. That is before adding in the additional 1,515 house lots and resort accommodations, including employee and other housing. Why does it have to be this big all at once? Why has Plum Creek not provided more detail on just what the majority of the “housing units” will be – condos, villas, high rises? It took Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont – that state’s largest family year-round resort – 18 years to grow from 200 to its current 600 rooms. Yet Plum Creek wants rezoning approval all at once for over 2,000 resort units and house lots combined, forever altering the landscape and the wildlife habitat around Moosehead lake.

The current Plum Creek plan is akin to a blank check request to develop a huge swath of northern Maine. A sustainable tourism approach will scale back the size of Plum Creek’s plan, concentrate the economic benefits closer to Greenville and provide established standards for environmentally-friendly development into the concept plan at all levels.

Let’s welcome Plum Creek to invest in tourism development in our state, but not at the expense of the Maine way of life, our natural heritage and a sustainable tourism economy that is vital now and for our future.

Costas Christ of Brooksville is the global travel editor for National Geographic Adventure magazine. He is the former chairman of the board of The International Ecotourism Society and has advised governments and businesses on sustainable tourism development in 22 countries.