Jim Collins

“This is a hundred-year moment,” says Sandra Neily of Greenville, Maine. “We get to decide what the future will look like for the next several generations.”

That may sound like gross exaggeration. But here is what the Seattle-based Plum Creek Timber Company has proposed for the picturesque Moosehead Lake area in west-central Maine:

• A 3,000-acre resort complete with golf course, in-ground swimming pool, horse stables, and marina,
• A 500-acre commercial lakefront lodge,
• 975 residential lots,
• Three RV campgrounds,
• An industrial lumber mill,
• And more.

Developers have been turning New England’s timberland into real estate at a rapid pace over the past decade, but the scope of the Plum Creek proposal is unprecedented. The plan, submitted to the state of Maine in April 2005, would remake an area running about 46 miles east to west and 34 miles north to south.

The plan also called for a 30-year no-development zone of 382,000 forested acres, permanent protection of 180 miles of waterfront, and easements on 55.5 miles of hiking trails and 71.3 miles of snowmobiling trails. Plum Creek officials claimed it was the largest voluntary conservation proposal ever offered by a single landowner, with the most restrictive cap on growth ever proposed in the unincorporated forestland of Maine. The company considers it balanced, large-scale, comprehensive planning. Environmental writers and organizations around the state were quick to point out that much of the land in Plum Creek’s conservation package turns out to be slated for protection already as wetlands or is designated as “remote” ponds and thus conserved by state statute. Other proposed conservation land in the Plum Creek proposal has already been earmarked by the state for railroad rights of way so couldn’t be developed anyway, and the “no-development” zone is filled with contingencies and exceptions that make conservation—even for 30 years—far from certain. In fact, the state’s attorney general issued an opinion stating that the initial plan did not represent any significant conservation that wasn’t already in place by law and regulation.

“It’s smoke and mirrors,” says Jeremy Sheaffer, The Wilderness Society’s Maine projects director. “Maine law intends that a development such as Plum Creek’s proposal be offset with permanent conservation to strike a publicly beneficial balance. Plum Creek is trying to meet that requirement mainly by putting its name on conservation steps that would be taken anyway.”

At stake is nothing less than the future of Maine’s great northern forest. “It isn’t whether other developers are waiting in the wings for the decision to be made…. It’s how many are waiting,” Lauren Ritchie of Greenville said at the first of four public “scoping sessions” in August. The prime location of the development, along with Plum Creek’s history of aggressive land development in the West, amplified the news, sending shock waves beyond New England and throughout the national environmental community. It wasn’t only a vision of Maine’s north woods in the balance; it was a vision of wilderness itself. And it was coming at a time when state funds for preserving land were drying up, and when federal funding (primarily the Forest Legacy program and the Land and Water Conservation Fund) was sharply declining.

Moosehead Lake is the magnificent gateway to the Allagash and Katahdin wildernesses to the north. Thirty miles long, Moosehead is the state’s largest lake, and its coldwater fishery is world-class. For more than a century fishermen, hunters, campers, hikers, and paddlers have sought solace and adventure on the lake and in its surrounding backcountry. Henry David Thoreau paddled Moosehead in a birch bark canoe in the 1850s. Classic Maine sporting camps dot remote outlying ponds. Guides and outfitters work year-round.

Plum Creek’s map identifies dozens of “highest value” parcels: ridge tops with expansive views, shorelines of pristine ponds, long empty stretches along the big lake itself. The acreage encompasses 29 unincorporated townships. These “townships” are essentially industrial timberland rather than human settlements; though they make up more than nine million acres, about half the state, the townships’ total year-round population is believed to be a mere 8,000. Most of the zoning and land-use regulations are the responsibility of the state’s Land Use Regulation Commission. “LURC” is charged with ensuring well-planned multiple use and the protection of natural resources over nearly half the state. Observers worry that the magnitude of the Plum Creek proposal has simply overwhelmed an already overworked, underfunded agency.

In effect, the proposal was a request for a change in zoning—to allow commercial and residential building in areas where only logging is currently permitted. Despite the stubborn belief throughout rural Maine that a landowner has the right to do anything he wants with his own land, LURC’s guidelines require large-scale petitioners to offset their development with guarantees of conservation elsewhere. The nuances and complexity in Plum Creek’s 570-page document were a planning board’s nightmare. The state legislature hastily approved two additional staff positions for LURC, just to help with the analysis and planning required by such a mammoth proposal.

The approval process will be greatly influenced by both politics and local response. With so many devils lurking in the details of this daunting document, Plum Creek—and its opponents, notably the Natural Resources Council of Maine—understood the need to shape public opinion. Plum Creek’s lobbying began years in advance. Before submitting its plan, the company retained the services of the state’s top law firms and marketing consultants, courted legislators, and met with more than 30 interested parties, including conservation and economic development groups. Plum Creek also made sure to quietly sit down with the town fathers in Greenville, the gateway community at the southern tip of Moosehead Lake and the largest town in the region.

Greenville, and, to a lesser extent, the smaller town of Rockwood 15 miles up the western shore, depend on the money brought in by outdoor recreation, but they also depend on the timber industry, manufacturing, and real estate development. The local population, tax base, hospital admissions, and school enrollments have all been in decline. Most of the long-term residents have ties to the timber and paper industry. They’ve grown up in fear of, and with appreciation of, the large companies that have controlled their livelihood and the land around them. More than anything else, they worry that the logging roads into the backcountry could be gated and the land posted with “No Trespassing” signs at any time.

So it was not hard to understand why a number of people reacted positively to Plum Creek’s initial presentation in Greenville in December 2004. (The designation of 100 acres for affordable housing and a $50,000 check to the local snowmobiling club certainly helped the company attract support, as did the plan’s promise to attract more residents, more tourists, and more jobs to the region.) Local outfitters who might privately worry about the plan have been careful not to voice their concerns, for fear of reprisal. They cannot afford to have Plum Creek shut off access to the land.

But some concerned citizens spoke out right away. Loren Ritchie, a retired high school principal who served for years on Greenville’s economic development committee, says, “A sense of place has to come into play. People hear me say that, and say, ‘Things ain’t going to stay the way they were.’ But there is something about the place, and the tradition, and what we are going to leave to our grandchildren. We’re seeing piecemeal development slowly killing this place. Plum Creek’s proposal will do in 30 years what will happen over the next 100 years, anyway, unless we get more of this land conserved.”

”I’m not anti-development,” says John Willard, the second-generation owner of The Birches, a commercial wilderness lodge outside Rockwood. Willard himself went through the LURC planning process to get approval for shorefront subdivision on part of his land. “But Plum Creek’s plan is simply too much, too fast.”

Sandra Neily, a former rafting guide, worries not only about the scale of the development, but about the siting of so much of it in key areas for wilderness recreation: along the rollicking whitewater of the upper Moose River, along the trout-and-salmon-rich Roach River and East Outlet, along the wild western shore of Brassua Lake. “Nowhere in the East can you experience the feeling of such wilderness just 20 or 30 minutes from town,” she contends. “That experience is what the future of tourism here will depend on. I wish Plum Creek had left more of the special places alone, and concentrated the development where some development already exists. For example, a lot of us would love to see the Lily Bay resort plan moved to Squaw Mountain, where there’s a struggling resort and ski area already, and huge potential for more, located right between Greenville and Rockwood.”

She and Willard have raised their ideas within the Moosehead Region Futures Committee, a broad-based coalition of area residents they have brought together to serve as a master plan steering committee for the entire region. As of late August, critics seemed to have the momentum, and in response to a local hearing, Greenville’s Board of Selectmen voted to rescind its initial support and to remain neutral during the LURC process.

From the perspective of John Willard’s float plane, the scope of what’s at stake is stunningly clear. The forest surrounding Moosehead Lake is even vaster than can be imagined from the ground. The dark green canopy of trees stretches to the horizon in every direction, seemingly without limit. The clusters of development scattered along Moosehead and other lakes are dwarfed by the surrounding landscape. It’s not pristine; there are haul roads, clear-cuts, and logging yards stacked with pulpwood ready for the mill. Railroad tracks skirt the same stretch of the Moose River that Neily worries about. But you can see, better than you can from the maps in Plum Creek’s glossy proposal, how much the wild character of the waterfront would be changed—forever.

What's harder to see is the impact that such widely scattered and dense development would have on fish and wildlife. Fishermen worry about the effects of fertilizer and other runoff that comes with clearing, golf courses, roads, and mowed lawns. Trappers and hunters in Greenville have complained that the plan will disrupt traditional deer winter habitat and game corridors. And any time that large, unbroken ecosystems are fragmented, many species suffer.

It takes Willard the better part of an hour to fly his plane around the perimeter of the plan’s 426,000 acres. The permitting process that’s underway will take months, maybe years, and it’s only the beginning. Far to the west, in the disappearing green and blue haze of the forest, Plum Creek has another 400,000 acres of land south of Jackman.

Jim Collins of Orange, New Hampshire, is the former editor of Yankee and author of The Last Best League. His articles have appeared in Outside, Backpacker, and other magazines.