The Land for Maine’s Future program has provided a means to preserve land for private and public use.

One of the most profound balances society must maintain is that between property rights and public values. While some jump to the conclusion that these must somehow be in conflict, as they were in the recent Supreme Court ruling, the opposite is more often the case.

In the ideal world, a world I like to think can be found somewhere north and west of the Maine Turnpike, property rights and public values support each other. In fact, that is just the way several Land for Maine’s Future investments have played out in places such as Casco, Parsonsfield and Raymond.

In Casco, a major area employer, Hancock Land Co., saw a growing threat to the flow of raw materials to its lumber mills. Sale, subdivision and conversion of working forests to non-forest uses in southern and western Maine had left the company concerned about future supplies. Hancock decided it was time to take destiny in hand and expand its forest holdings.

To free up capital to invest in additional forestland, the company sold a conservation easement on some 3,300 acres of forestland in Casco. The easement was purchased in large part with Land for Maine’s Future funds. Held by the Department of Conservation, it stipulates that these lands will be employed for sustainable timber management – and the economic stability that brings to the area – while ensuring that a wide spectrum of public recreational uses continue, among them hunting, fishing, hiking, bird-watching, skiing, biking, horseback riding and canoeing. All that and it protects wildlife and rare plant habitat, too.

In Parsonsfield, the threat to the local and regional economy was even more imminent. The Leavitt Plantation Forest happens to be Maine’s largest contiguous tract of managed timberland south of Sebago Lake. Several years ago, this 8,600-acre working forest was on the verge of being auctioned off into a dozen parcels.

Thanks to the willingness of a forest management company to work with the state, that fate was averted. With Land for Maine’s Future funds anchoring the purchase, a conservation easement was acquired that keeps the forest intact and means these lands will continue growing saw log, pulp and fuel wood on a sustainable basis. As in Casco, these lands will also remain open to the public for traditional recreational uses. In short, the forest will continue to provide a foundation for jobs and recreation in southwestern Maine.

In each of these cases, the landowner balanced the property rights it needed to retain against those values it could provide the public in perpetuity. It proved a smart trade all around. And in each case, the Land for Maine’s Future program was the key.

In Raymond, the town manages Tassel Top Park on Sebago Lake. Most people who enjoy this 1,000-foot sand beach with swimming area, picnic tables and trails would be surprised to hear that it is state-owned, or that the Land for Maine’s Future Program had a hand in saving it from becoming a private enclave. Like many LMF projects, what the state purchased as Sebago Lake Beach has now been adopted by area residents. Local Boy Scouts maintain the trails under tall pines, and the town spends its own money to keep this remarkably unspoiled parcel available for public use.

These are clear successes borne of some very clear guidelines under which the Land for Maine’s Future program operates. The program will deal only with interested sellers while working with communities to fulfill their visions of the future. It has balanced state dollars contributed to these projects by matching them with far more funds from private and federal sources.

To my mind, it is an unassailable balance of the very things we value here in Maine: economic vitality, public access, recreational opportunity and healthy habitats.

In these examples, I think it is very evident how the Land for Maine’s Future program helps people balance the pressures of growth against those things which define our lives and sustain our traditional economy here in Maine. Too often we have seen our residents stand by helplessly while others take control of our lands. While we need to welcome and encourage free enterprise, we as residents of Maine must also have a way to participate in decisions that affect us so directly. I believe a great way to do that is through the Land for Maine’s Future program. It is time to provide this cash-strapped program the funds it needs to help us do so.

Richard A. Bennett, a former president of the Maine Senate, is a corporate governance adviser. He lives in Oxford with his wife and two children.

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