Down East Magazine 2006 Environmental Award  

 Few would have guessed as they headed down the stairs that evening that a new land trust would one day emerge. Nor that in just five years that fledgling organization would become the largest local land trust in Maine in terms of acres owned outright.

And no one was anticipating that this project to conserve the land around the village would merge, like streams flowing into a river, with other conservation projects in the region. Almost without notice, this unaffiliated assortment of private and public groups — both American and Canadian — have independently carved out more than a million contiguous acres of forestland in eastern Maine and western New Brunswick that will now remain free of development.

The political thunder and lightning has made for great melodrama in the Moosehead Lake and Katahdin regions - with the Plum Creek and Maine Woods National Park proposals loudly clashing amid much heat and noise. But here in little noticed eastern Maine, it was as if a gentle rain produced an almost unimaginable flowering of conservation.

The one-store village of Grand Lake Stream sits on a three-mile river between two large lakes, precisely where ten miles of pavement abruptly runs out. In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, nearly five hundred people lived and worked here, many running the bustling tannery that availed itself of abundant hemlock bark that produced the tannins to cure hides. The tannery staggered after a devastating fire in 1887, then was shuttered forever in 1898 after the owners sold it to the International Leather Trust. The town population dropped to below two hundred, where it has remained ever since.

After the hemlock bark came fish, and the town soon flourished as a destination for sportsmen hooked by the mania for fishing. Trekking here in search of landlocked salmon and brook trout, tweedy, turn-of-the-century fishermen set up tenting villages along the stream, which soon gave way to log sporting camps near the outlet of West Grand Lake. Guiding visiting fishermen and hunters became a way of life and an economic lifeline for Grand Lake Stream. A salmon hatchery was built where the tannery once stood.

Today, Grand Lake Stream still depends in large part on its reputation as a sporting mecca. It is home to several historic sporting camps, a large salmon hatchery, and nearly three dozen registered Maine guides - said to be the highest per capita concentration in the state. And it was that link to the town's outdoor heritage - and ongoing connection between the economy and the forest - that brought out many of the guides to that basement gathering in late 1999. "I think the biggest concern was fear of change and uncertainty of the future,' says

Stephen Keith, a Grand Lake Stream resident who attended that first meeting. "We didn't know who owned the land, but we knew it could be split up and developed, which would put both guiding and lodging out of business."

Out of that first meeting a more formal committee was formed, which evolved into the nonprofit Downeast Lakes Land Trust. Soon, a letter was sent off to the Wagner Timberlands, which managed the lands in question, requesting that they meet to address concerns.

In some ways this was all an echo of 1992, when Georgia-Pacific announced plans to build vacation homes on 260 acres along the banks of the river. Town residents recoiled, rallied, and raised enough money to buy the land, ensuring it would remain wild [Down East, July 1997]. Residents already knew the drill.

So it was no surprise that one of the possible solutions put forth was equally simple if rather more daunting: ask Wagner Timberlands how much would the owners take to sell the lands. The land trust commissioned a study to get a handle on which parcels would make the most sense for an acquisition. Eventually, a delegation met with Wagner, and returned home with a starting figure: for about 27,000 acres just west of the village, including sixty-two miles of lakeshore and riverfront, Wagner said that around $15 million would probably do the trick.

By 2001, the land trust began raising funds for the acquisition and refined its mission: to buy the land and manage it as an economic engine to keep the village afloat. The forest would be harvested sustainably, the land also managed to benefit wildlife, and the shorelines kept open for public recreation. Keith, who had first visited on a fishing trip in 1972 and had been a summer resident since 1991, became the trust's executive director and set himself up in town year-round.

Wagner suggested that the new nonprofit might want to find a partner that had a little more experience in raising the millions necessary. So the trust connected with the New England Forestry Foundation, which was founded in Massachusetts in 1944 to advocate sound forest management and permanently protect key New England woodlands by acquiring them. NEFF currently owns 128 properties totaling more than 122,000 acres throughout the northeast, and oversees conservation easements on tens of thousands of additional acres.   CONTINUED >