Jane and Sally McCloskey tend to keep to themselves. Sally, who is a lawyer, works in Ellsworth. Jane, an activist, devotes much of her time to environmental causes. Jane lives down a remote woody path in Deer Isle. Sally lives on Scott Island and commutes by boat each day for her drive to Ellsworth. They generally seem content to live quiet lives with their families and friends.

Just a few years ago, however, the McCloskey sisters found themselves in the middle of an environmental battle over the waters off Scott Island, where they spent significant portions of their childhood. In 2001, a Norwegian entrepreneur applied for a lease to establish 28 pens to raise salmon in East Penobscot Bay. That’s when the sisters became noisy. What would it do to the natural habitat? To wild salmon and other marine life? To pollution levels? To efforts to keep Penobscot Bay clean? To their childhood home?

The culmination of a two-year resistance that many local fishermen and other residents credit the sisters with commandeering ended with the application for the controversial pens being denied by the Department of Marine Resources. For now, the sisters say, the salmon-farming problem has gone away.

But the legacy of the McCloskeys goes on. Famed first for their father – they are the daughters of world renowned children’s book author Robert McCloskey and appear as characters in several of his stories including “Blueberries for Sal” and “One Morning in Maine” – the sisters have a reputation on Deer Isle as role models and conservationists. As role models, they upheld the island’s Down East tradition of independence and self-reliance. As conservationists, they set a high standard for protecting the island’s natural resources as well as its commercial interests, not to mention their own property. In short, they were not afraid to fight city hall – in this case, the state, the federal government and the aquaculture industry.

Under the auspices of East Penobscot Bay Environmental Alliance, of which Jane is the administrator and secretary, they joined with fishermen, property owners and environmental groups to commission studies, testify at hearings, propose amendments to regulations and generally to establish a unified voice for the issue. For the intensely private McCloskeys’ part in the triumph, Island Heritage Trust gave the sisters the Rowan Wakefield Award last month for outstanding work exemplifying the mission of the conservation land trust, which focuses on Deer Isle, Stonington and surrounding islands.

The salmon wars, as they are called by some, stand as the alliance’s biggest triumph to date. The group was founded in 2001 to conserve the coast and “to promote the environmentally appropriate use of East Penobscot Bay,” which extends south of Bangor and west of Mount Desert Island. But the work of the McCloskeys and their associates continues with a new set of goals regarding sustainable farming, commercial fisheries, development of new fisheries – all with an eye toward ecological awareness and long-term planning for the healthy future of their coastal region.

Earlier this month at Jane’s Deer Isle home, which she built herself, a handful of fellow alliance supporters and members gathered informally for iced tea, cheese, nuts and raw vegetables. In a wide-ranging conversation, the neighbors expressed both frustration and hope about the future of Deer Isle, whose population was recorded at just over 3,000 in the 2000 census. Would they be able to educate themselves, their neighbors and the island residents – year-round and summer – to care for Penosbcot Bay? To understand the implications of runoff? To assure a future for the island’s children, as well as vacationers, pleasure boaters and fishermen? They all agreed that the salmon wars changed them all in some profound and necessary way. It could be that the events helped bridge some of the traditional gaps between natives and summer people (the best known chasm), between government and residents (another sticking point) but also between Deer Isle and Stonington (the two island towns with old rivalries).

“What it did was raise not only that issue, but it pointed out how a lot of people on this island can work together for those common goals – keeping our clamming healthy, keeping our fishing healthy at all different levels whether it’s scallops or mussels or lobster,” said Kathleen Billings, town clerk in Stonington and a member of the Stonington Fisheries Alliance. She and her father Hubert have also been the recipients of the Rowan Wakefield Award.

Referring to the McCloskeys, Billings said: “What these two did here was remarkable in a way. They had the courage to say something. Sometimes some of the fishermen and even myself at the time don’t quite know what to do. You’ve been beaten down so bad with the fishing. They were certainly able to say there is another side to this. They raised an awareness around here and built a working network that I thought was encouraging.”

“Sally and Jane set an example,” said Jean Wheeler, who grew up in Long Island, N.Y., and is vice president of Island Heritage Trust. “We don’t give the award every year but we unanimously thought they should receive it this year.”

“It doesn’t matter really who you are,” added Billings, a Deer Isle native. “You have the same common goals. Certainly for me, in the past five or six years, there’s been a progression towards taking care of the natural resources. The government isn’t necessarily capable of doing that, or the people at the head aren’t aware of the things we are aware of here, as far as local knowledge. You’ve got to put your voice out there. If you don’t you’re just going to get something that may adversely affect you in the future.”

That same stalwart thinking drove – and continues to drive – Sally and Jane in their work. They grew up spending April through October on Scott Island, home-schooled by their mother, Margaret Durand, and living a secluded island life. In the remote setting, a sense of responsibility for the island, the waters and the environment settled into their blood.

“Growing up on the beaches. I spent every low tide turning rocks over and looking for crabs,” said Sally, explaining an early interest in nature. “I give a good deal of credit to my mother who was a zoologist.” Here she paused and smiled. “I’ll never forget the lecture about echinoderms.”

Then Jane smiled: “I remember the thorax.”

“The pieces and parts of the lobster – we learned every last one of them,” continued Sally. “It wasn’t just the starfish we were dealing with. What was it that was common to the starfish and the sand dollar? It was very evident to me that everything is very interrelated. What happened on the beach affected us, and everything we did affected the beach. Jane and I remember when the state decided we needed to recycle and my mother very carefully explained to us why this was necessary and why we’d be carrying certain things off the island and no longer dumping them in the bay. We began to see that there were no tin cans on the beach and you can hardly find sea glass on the beach anymore. It was very clear what we did impacted the environment.”

Through the years, a handful of hardworking groups have also taken up the task of managing Maine’s coastal areas. The salmon wars, however, seem to have marked a turning point for islanders here.

“I think we all have gone out and grabbed what we could,” said Jesse Leach, who is farming oysters – and keeping an eye toward the ecology – in the Bagaduce River. “We’re all guilty of that. Just like people who instead of going to the dump throw their stuff in the water. Now we finally have to slow down and say: What do we do? We’re all working at it. If you’re dependent on one thing, and that fails, you’re out of it. You better take care of it. So I think rich, poor, fishermen, whatever you are: It’s all about trying to work together now.”

Marsden Brewer, a fisherman working in the scalloping industry and president of EPBEA, added this: “We’re all stuck in one fishery – lobsters. The sustainable fisheries no longer look the way they used to. But if you’re going to be a fishing community, you have to have something to harvest. We’re beginning to take a look at the causeway to see if we can find a way to open it back up to scalloping. The most important thing is that we know there’s support here, that we’re not alone.”

For the McCloskeys, who have not used their iconic status to promote other causes or to seek celebrity, the final triumph is the network of concerned citizens that not only joined them but supported and embraced their efforts.

“I’m very grateful,” said Jane. “I had trouble envisioning what would happen. It’s our bay, our beaches, our kids. We’re really just beginning to think about this.”

If the McCloskeys have their way, generations of children will enjoy not just one but every morning in a cleaner, more sustainable Maine.

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.