Environmentalists are attacking Plum Creek’s Moosehead plan when they should be giving it all their support.

More than eight years ago, I stood before the Land Use Regulation Commission discussing the issues of long-range planning and zoning for Maine’s larger landowners, the stewards of the forests of northern Maine.

At the time, I was the lawyer and later the executive director of the Maine Forest Products Council. I have worked on numerous environmental issues, served on my local planning board and had the opportunity to teach a class at Colby College on sustainable development. Today, I am speaking out as an environmentalist, farmer and concerned citizen who cherishes our rural landscape.

Update plan

Ten years ago, LURC was required by law to update its comprehensive land use plan. One of the main issues commissioners expressed over the plan was the need for a new approach that allowed for zoning of large tracts of undeveloped land so that development would be planned and not scattered. This was also the position of the environmental groups – the same groups that, today, are opposing Plum Creek’s proposal to rezone 426,000 acres to restrict development to appropriate areas on less than 2 percent of the land for at least the next 30 years.

The environmental groups had argued back then that the larger landowners should be required to provide information about the long-term plans for their acreage. Now, the same groups are attacking one brave landowner for doing exactly what was asked of it.

Zoning change

What is key in the debate over Plum Creek’s Moosehead plan is that the landowner is doing exactly what the state agency asked for a decade ago – provide a comprehensive proposal that will control and plan development and protect the working forests. What is lost in the debate is that the proposal is simply a zoning change that will take place over a long period of time and restrict development to a small fraction of Plum Creek’s land. The plan has been mischaracterized as a large development. A more accurate description of the Moosehead plan would be a comprehensive conservation plan that allows for limited development.

Offering to do more

Plum Creek has done more than most to conserve the precious areas of Maine. And now it is offering to do even more – placing 86 percent of lakefront property in permanent no-development easements. The environmental position should be supporting Plum Creek’s long-range conservation plan because it will stop sprawl and unplanned, incremental development, which is so destructive to our environment and our working rural landscape.

I was married to a great environmentalist. My husband, Andrew Weegar, died this spring in a tractor accident on our own farm in Fayette. He had been an environmental reporter for The Maine Times for many years, and, more recently, worked for a national foundation providing educational programs for environmental journalists. Andrew and I shared our love for Maine and its working rural landscape. We acted on our belief by saving an old dairy farm from development. We believed that Maine was losing the very essence of what makes our state such a wonderful place to live and raise a family – our working fields, forests and coastline. Plum Creek’s plan will help preserve one part of Maine.

Rural landscape

Maine environmental groups should be outraged by the loss of our working rural landscape. Rather then spend their energies attacking a landowner for laying out a long-term conservation plan, they should be waging war on Maine’s most pressing environmental issue – sprawl and the loss of our rural environment. Instead of battling Plum Creek, they could be leading the fight for fishermen who are losing access to their coastline. They could be urging support of tree farmers who are barely holding on under pressing property and excise taxes. Or they could be assisting our dairy farmers whose milk prices collapsed. But they aren’t. Instead they are focusing on increasing conflict with a corporation to drive up their membership. Where is our outrage at them?

Maine is changing. And it will continue to change for the worse if we don’t start supporting our working rural landscape. With the U.S. population growing, our incomes lagging behind neighboring states and jobs remaining scarce, we will be faced with more unwanted changes.

A solution

So how do we solve this dilemma? One landowner at a time works. That was LURC’s plan eight years ago. Plum Creek is offering a solution for its land, and better still, it is not at the taxpayers’ expense and the state is not taking its development rights.

It is my sincere hope that the people of Maine won’t be blindsided by the negative campaign against one large landowner’s conservation plan. The landowner and the plan should be treated with respect because it did exactly what the state asked of them.

If those who embark in setting out a vision and long-term plan for their undeveloped land are treated unfairly by their government or special interest groups, we are sending a message to those stewards of our rural landscape that planning for the future will be punished. This misdirected approach will doom the future of our working rural landscape and continue its demise at the hands of our real environmental enemy – sprawl.

Abby Holman is a Lewiston native who lives on a farm with her daughter in Fayette. She is a member of the Board of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources, the vice chair of the Fayette selectmen, an attorney and conservationist.