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Land Conservation Efforts Yield Year of Success Stories

January 05, 2010 - AUGUSTA -- What began with low expectations and uncertainty about the economy ended as a big year for land conservation in Maine, with tens of thousands of acres of farmland, forest and lakefronts permanently preserved statewide in 2009, according to conservation advocates.

Land trusts had more trouble raising money, both because of a drop in donations and because of a lack of state funds. But, conservationists said, the downturn in the real estate market, timely financial support and other factors provided new opportunities and helped close some major land preservation deals.

"It was a really good year overall, and kind of surprising in that we entered the year with a fair amount of uncertainty," said Richard Knox, spokesman for the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, a statewide preservation group.

The Maine Bureau of Public Lands is even calling 2009 a breakthrough year because of large-scale conservation deals that pushed the agency over 1 million acres of protected lands for the first time.

"We increased by 6 percent the acreage that the bureau has under conservation," said Alan Stearns, deputy director of the bureau.

The deals range from landscape-scale purchases in the North Woods to strategic protection efforts in the more populated southern part of the state.

In York, for example, a coalition of land trusts raised more than $3 million and preserved the 151-acre Highland Farm, a tract of fields and forest habitat near the York River estuary and a pond that supplies drinking water to three communities.

The farm had long ago been identified as one of the last large undeveloped coastal tracts in the region. But when it was put on the auction block in 2003, a developer beat out conservationists and bought it, said Wolfe Tone, state director for the Trust for Public Land in Maine.

The developer submitted plans for 38 building lots on the property and already had permits to begin the first phase before agreeing to sell to conservationists.

"We got another run at it, and we turned it right around," Tone said. "He was going to go ahead (and build) if we didn't get it."

It's unclear whether the stalled real estate market in 2009 played a role, but Tone said the conservation sale allowed the developer to generate a quicker return on the investment than the development project would have.

"There are blessings to this market to some degree," Tone said. "Landowners are willing to stay with us. They're willing to give us more time than they otherwise would because the market just isn't there. Where else would they go?"

The Maine Coast Heritage Trust closed on about 40 conservation projects in 2009, a 30 percent increase from 2008, Knox said. The total includes 10 coastal islands, such as Treat Island near the Canadian border and Ash Island, a prominent 67-acre island off Owls Head.

In many cases, longtime owners donated land or agreed to sell far below the market value, he said.

"This year, for whatever reason, was one of those years where we had a lot of (land) donations happening." And, he said, "It certainly didn't hurt that prices weren't going up 10 percent a year like they were earlier in the decade."

The group was able to take advantage of buying opportunities in part because an anonymous donor promised to add 20 percent to any conservation donations in 2009 as a way to sustain the momentum in a tough economy. The Pew Foundation ended up adding another 20 percent.

"We had some good support," Knox said.

Many of the projects that closed in 2009 had been in the works for years and benefited from state and federal funding that was promised long before budgets ran dry. The Land for Maine's Future program, for example, issued its last round of funding for standard conservation projects in 2007, although voters will decide next fall whether to put new money into the program.

Some of Maine's biggest deals of the year also were the indirect results of development projects. Large wind power projects and the rezoning approval for Plum Creek's development plans around Moosehead Lake included land conservation benefits to balance out the environmental impacts.

"It was a big year because state and federal funding was in the pipeline (from previous years) and because development projects continued," said Stearns at the Bureau of Parks and Lands.

The bureau, which oversees state parks as well as other conservation lands, acquired ownership or conservation easements to protect 58,000 acres in 2009. Stearns and other officials plan to unveil some of the newest projects Monday.

The projects include 13,363 acres next to Grafton Notch State Park in Newry, and 2,256 acres around Seboeis Lake near Millinocket and Mount Katahdin, according to the bureau and the Trust for Public Land, which worked with the state.

More than half of the acres that the bureau helped conserve in 2009 were preserved as the result of development projects, Stearns said.

When Plum Creek's rezoning application was approved in the fall, for example, the company sold a 29,500-acre tract near Moosehead to the Appalachian Mountain Club. It also sold 15,000 acres around the Moose River to The Nature Conservancy.

Rezoning approval for Plum Creek also triggered a conservation easement on about 400,000 acres of working forest around Moosehead Lake. That deal is not yet permanent, however, because Plum Creek can revoke the agreement if pending appeals of the development plan are successful.

While many of the deals that closed in 2009 had been in the works for years, conservationists also said they made progress on new projects that they hope will result in big deals next year and beyond.

The Trust for Public Land and the Scarborough Land Conservation Trust, for example, recently negotiated an option to buy the Benjamin Farm, a tract of open land and valuable wildlife habitat next to Pleasant Hill Road in Scarborough.

The land trusts and the landowners have yet to agree on a price and other details, but the tentative agreement could result in a purchase next year.

"We've been involved in negotiating with the family for several years, so we're very happy that there's a potential for a deal. This is much closer than we've ever been to being able to preserve that property," said Doug Williams, treasurer of the Scarborough trust. "It's one of the few large pieces of land on the east side of (Route 1) that remain undeveloped."

Williams said fundraising has clearly been more difficult in 2009. But the town's voters continue to put money into conserving key pieces of land. And, he said, it turns out that the slow economy also can be helpful.

"People are willing to look at conservation because the perception is not that the (property) values will skyrocket every year," he said.

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, January 3, 2010


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