The paperwork was filed Friday, and 78,000 acres of western Maine are now permanently conserved [1].
The structure matters more than the headline acreage, because it is what keeps the land useful rather than merely untouched. Of the total: 62,500 acres stay a working forest under easement - still logged, just never developed. An 11,200-acre wilderness preserve sits at the headwaters of the Magalloway. A 4,400-acre recreation parcel is now owned outright by the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust [1].
Public access is preserved for hunting, fishing, paddling and snowmobiling [1]. That is not a small clause in a state where those are how people actually use the woods.
The price was $62 million, $55 million of it to buy the development rights. Partners were the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust, the Forest Society of Maine, the Northeast Wilderness Trust and The Nature Conservancy [1].
The trust plans to restore native brook trout habitat on its parcel [1].
What the deal actually completes is bigger than its own acreage: a contiguous conserved corridor of roughly 500,000 acres running across Maine and New Hampshire [1]. About $1.9 million remains to be raised for stewardship and legal costs.
