Downeast Lakes Project Draws SAM’s Support

            A huge 342,000-acre conservation project called the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership has drawn SAM’s enthusiastic support.

            Including some of Maine’s wildest lakes, free flowing rivers, extensive wetlands, and forest wildlife habitat, this project provides an exceptional opportunity to protect and enhance hunting and fishing in an area of the state that has always been a big part of Maine’s storied outdoor heritage.

            Readers of Edmund Ware Smith’s hunting and fishing tales, published in the 1950s, will recognize much of this land.  Smith was one of Maine’s most famous and popular outdoor writers.  His beautifully written “Saga from Third Chain Cabin” was one of many stories set in this part of Maine.

            This land is also strategically positioned between 600,000 acres of conserved lands in New Brunswick and 200,000 acres of state, federal and Native American lands in Maine, delivering an overall conservation impact of more than one million acres of essentially uninterrupted habitat across an international boundary.

            The project includes three purchases.  The Spednic Lake/St. Croix River shoreline conservation corridor (3,019 acres) has now been acquired by the State of Maine.  SAM helped achieve that purchase by providing a strong and active endorsement, including participation in a television special about the project produced and aired throughout the northeast by NECN.

            The Farm Cove Peninsula lands (27,080 acres) westerly of Grand Lake Stream will be purchased and managed by the Downeast Lakes Land Trust that includes strong participation by the Grand Lake Stream Guides Association.

            New England Forestry Foundation will purchase a conservation easement over the “Sunrise Tree Farm” and acquire an easement over Farm Cove from Downeast Lakes Land Trust.

            The New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) is leading this project.  SAM’s executive director serves on NEFF’s advisory committee and is working with the NEFF staff to advance this exciting project.  Partnering with NEFF on this project are the Woodie Wheaton Land Trust, the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and the St. Croix International Waterway Commission.

            In its letter of endorsement, SAM noted, “Conserving these lands assures perpetual habitat for fish and wildlife and ensures a locally available wood supply, public access for recreational activities including hunting, fishing and trapping, and the continuation of an economy tied to the natural resource base of the area.  All of this is good news for sportsmen, guides, lodge owners and outfitters.  All of this is good news for members of SAM, present and future.”

            This project also strongly supports Governor John Baldacci’s initiative to enhance and expand Maine’s traditional natural resourced based industries, including hunting and fishing.

            In all of its land conservation work, SAM pays particularly close attention to access issues including easement language that guarantees access to these conservation lands for hunting, fishing, trapping, and other traditional outdoor recreation.

            In this downeast project, access is going to be donated in a separate document by the landowner, rather than purchased as part of the conservation easement.  SAM will be reviewing the language of that donation when it is ready for review.

            A total of $35 million must be raised to complete this project, plus endowment funds to assure the long-term management and monitoring of the land.

            To make a donation, or learn more about the project, visit www.newenglandforestry.org or www.downeastlakes.org, or write Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership, 50 Forest Falls Drive, Yarmouth, ME 04096.

            Edmund Ware Smith concludes his “Sage of Third Chain Cabin” with these words.

            “There isn’t much more in the saga of Third Chain Cabin.  Just the way it looked with the shutters on as we pulled off shore in the canoe on the way down to Dobsis;  just the strange feeling of putting the cabin key in the milk bottle, and putting the milk bottle in the hole under the big pine root near the porch; just thinking of it now and then, in winter with the snow on the roof, and the pines moaning in the wind, and the mice snug inside… and maybe the Little Man, too.

            “But there is a little more, at that.  When Pop Dennison died, in 1952, he willed the Dobsis Camp and Third Chain Cabin to his son, Jim.  And Jim gave Pop’s old deer rifle – the Winchester .44-40 that downed The White One – to Pappy Thornton, and tears came to Pappy’s eyes.  One of the big pines fell in a gale across the roof of the cabin, and crushed it like a shell, and so Third Chain Cabin is sinking back, down, molding into the earth in the wilderness from which it grew.”

            That wilderness – and all it has, does, and will mean to sportsmen – is still there, ready to be protected forever by the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership.