LEWISTON — More than 50 people gathered Monday evening at a panel-discussion style forum titled The Future of Maine’s North Woods at the Franco-American Heritage Center.

“Birders, snowmobilers, hunters and hikers — all share a love of Maine’s forests,” moderator and Lewiston Public Library Director Rick Speer said during his introduction. “It’s something we all treasure and would not want to lose.”

The event, sponsored by the Stanton Bird Club, the Androscoggin Land Trust, and Bates College’s Harward Center for Community Partnerships, featured four speakers representing some of those diverse interests: Bob Meyers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association; Patrick Strauch, executive director of the Maine Forest Products Council; Lisa Pohlman, executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine; and Bryan Wentzell, Maine policy director for the Appalachian Mountain Club.

The discussion focused on whether Maine’s current balance of public and private land is appropriate and who should regulate land use. Roxanne Quimby’s controversial proposal to create a federal North Woods National Park, mainly from land that she owns and the existing Baxter State Park, loomed large.

It was neither a debate nor a meeting where any final decisions were to be reached. The speakers covered a broad range of perspectives and frequently countered each other.

Meyers, the leading voice in opposition to Quimby’s National Park plan, highlighted Maine’s unique access laws, which give snowmobilers and others the ability to use private land for recreational purposes while protecting landowners from liability.

Ninety-four percent of Maine is privately owned, he said, and “from our perspective, Maine’s private lands work — they work well. We’re very pleased to keep things the way they are.”

Pohlman, head of a conservation organization with 12,000 supporters, noted that Maine has the lowest percentage of public land in New England, and among the lowest in the country. She warned of the need to balance the state’s forest use, between consumptive and non-consumptive purposes and motorized and non-motorized recreation.

The North Woods are the largest tract of contiguous forest east of the Mississippi, she said, and incremental “forest sprawl,” including ostentatious second homes where humble hunting camps once stood, threaten the balance. A national park might offer new economic opportunities, she said, and feasibility and economic impact studies to see if such a project makes sense for the region and the country’s parks system would be worthwhile.

Strauch lobbied for protection of Maine’s 9.5 million acres of commercially used forests. Maine’s current model allows for “all sorts of activities on private working forests,” he said, and responsible harvesting at the same time, with much of Maine’s forested lands under some type of sustainability certification.

Underlining forestry’s $4.5 billion contribution to the state economy, Strauch spoke in favor of even more regional control over local resources. “We think Quimby’s model of federally owned land is a threat to that model,” he said.

Wentzell of the AMC seemed to take a less rigid stance to the public-private land debate. He noted that while about 6 million acres of the North Woods have changed owners in the last decade, mostly moving from paper companies into the hands of investors, the amount of land set aside for conservation in Maine has tripled in the last 15 years, from about one million acres to three million.

Much of that increase has come via conservation easements, he said, where private owners agree to give up their rights to develop the property. But, “sometimes public land is a really important tool to protect certain public values,” he said.

Members of the audience dawdled after the 90-minute presentation ended, many of them discussing the topic amongst themselves.

“It opens your eyes to the various possibilities,” nature artist David Footer said. While depending on a healthy forest for his art’s inspiration, Footer also supports sustainable commercial use. “Forestry is an important factor that keeps things balanced,” he said.

To others, the North Woods are a product that doesn’t need to be reshaped or repackaged. With Maine’s mills on unsteady footing, “We have to think about what we have to offer,” said Bonnie Soper, who camped in the North Woods for decades. “And what we have to offer is a beautiful forest. For me, a national park is to die for. I think this is an opportunity we can’t pass up.”