The Androscoggin River Valley is known not only for its revitalized downtowns and village centers, but also its traditional landscape of rolling farmlands and vast forests that set the backdrop for our strong history in natural resource-based industries.

Through research conducted by organizations such as the Brookings Institution, we recognize that as we transition into the 21st century, the Maine’s unique “quality of place” will be our calling card, and a central component in differentiating living, working, and playing here rather than anywhere else in this mobile society.

Investments in natural resource-based infrastructure have been the primary way Maine has been forward-looking to protect significant sections of this region for future generations and to support economic growth. This investment introduces us to what it might look like if we planned, as a state, to leverage the places that make us unique.

This region along the Androscoggin has been successful in securing projects through Maine’s most well-known investment program, the Land for Maine’s Future Fund.

In the late 1980s, a group of local residents helped acquire over 2,200 acres of forestland along Gulf Island Pond in Turner and Leeds, just after the creation of the award-winning LMF program. Known today as the Androscoggin Riverlands, LMF helped create a significant resource for enjoying the outdoors through hiking, biking, fishing or hunting.

Due to the popularity of this particular state-owned nature preserve, an additional 326 acres were acquired in 2006, through a partnership of many organizations – including LMF – to allow for the development of southern access in closer proximity to Lewiston-Auburn.

Without that assistance in the late 1980s and again in 2006, access to the river would be severely limited in that region and traditional outdoor recreation would have been lost.

Evident to those in this region, Lewiston-Auburn has focused greatly on trasitioning its downtowns into a strong commercial hub that brings people to the banks of the river.

A downtown changing from industrial use of a river to uses complementing residential and commercial development requires investment on multiple levels. With the nearly $500 million in public and private investment in Lewiston-Auburn since 2000 came an investment from LMF to open a 14-acre section of the Androscoggin River just north of downtown for paddlers or people just looking for a scenic walk on their lunch break.

It may sound hard to believe, given the history of the Androscoggin, but tools exist to make recreation and tourism an economic draw for this region of Central Maine and buoy the growth of downtowns in places like Lisbon, Lewiston-Auburn or Livermore Falls. But we must make aggressive and sustained investments in natural resource based public infrastructure if we are going to support growth and investment from the business community.

The diversity of support LMF provides goes beyond forestland and water access and includes efforts to support agriculture in Maine. With Maine’s second-largest metropolitan area in the heart of our region, the fragile dance of keeping local farms viable in the face of development pressure calls for public-private partnerships.

With creativity, farmland protection can be leveraged in innovative ways. For example, the Packard-Littlefield Farm, protected with assistance from LMF, has led to an agreement with Coastal Enterprises and their New American Sustainable Agriculture Project.

This project is introducing immigrant families, in particular Somali residents of Lewiston, to farming practices in Maine and affording them land in to grow produce and sell at local markets.

Utilizing farmland protection for job retention and creation in our region, leveraging conserved lands to promote nature-based tourism, and developing riverfront amenities to complement private-sector investments in our downtowns clearly lay out the returns on Maine’s investment in its natural resources.

This region’s farms, forests and waterways support jobs, bring healthy food to our table, provide recreational benefits and are integral to building prosperity for future generations. The Natural Resource Bond, Question 4 on the Nov. 6 ballot, supports programs that pair conservation and economic development as a means to improve quality of life and our regional economy.

Jonathan LaBonte is board president of the Androscoggin Land Trust. He lives in New Auburn.