Sporting camp owners, Maine guides, forest managers and residents of the Grand Lake Stream region Down East joined Gov. John Baldacci and conservation group officials last week to celebrate the completion of one of the most ambitious land preservation efforts in the last decade.

It was a well-deserved party.

The numerous partners in the effort raised $35 million and used it to protect 342,000 acres of forest, 1,500 miles of riverfront and hundreds of miles of lakefront in the sparsely populated and environmentally noteworthy region. The project, called the Downeast Lakes Forestry Partnership, started as an effort by local residents seven years ago to maintain what is best about the area -- an intact, working forest used for timber production and recreation as well as sparkling cold lakes and roaring rivers that support world-renowned populations of salmon, trout and bass.

And by conserving the land, project partners have contributed a significant portion of what is now a block of more than 1.3 million contiguous acres preserved on either side of the Maine-New Brunswick border.

The governor hit just the right notes when he said, "This project is noteworthy for the depth and vigor of local support and the many economic benefits it brings to businesses, guides, loggers and residents in the region." The partnership managed to be almost all things to all people as it conserved land for wildlife protection, sustainable forestry and outdoor recreation while preventing the kind of scattered and damaging development that now threatens so much of Maine's storied forest landscape. Much of the credit for such a comprehensive protection effort goes to organizers who successfully engaged the local community in planning for the future of the lands that provide their homes, their heritage and the livelihoods for many.

We hope that we will be writing about a similarly successful effort years from now in the high mountain peaks region of northern Franklin County. That's where the Appalachian Trail Land Trust has begun an effort to conserve the remote region around the Appalachian Trail, an area notable for some of the highest mountain peaks and one of the largest roadless areas in the state.

The boundaries of the region are marked by the Bigelow Range to the north; Spaulding, Redington, the Crockers and Sugarloaf mountains in the middle; Saddleback Mountain on the west and the towns of Rangeley, Phillips, Kingfield and Stratton. A land trust representative told Franklin County commissioners recently that the trust wants to buy conservation easements on large tracts of the land in the region in order to preserve traditional public access on those private lands.

But the region is not only marked by notable landscape elements, it's also been marked by conflict of late.

From complaints by former owners of Saddleback Mountain that their business plans were stymied by environmentalists to the recent fight against the siting of a large windpower development in Redington, conservation and development have not easily co-existed in the area.

And misconceptions about the meaning of an easement were very much in evidence when the Appalachian Trail Land Trust's Director Christopher Beach made the presentation about land conservation to the county commissioners. Commissioner Fred Hardy's response was, "Any time you draw a line where there can be no development, that greatly changes the value of that person's land and what he can do with that land."

Of course it changes the value of that person's land -- that's the point of an easement purchased from a willing seller, which generally protects a parcel of land from development while at the same time lowering the taxable value of the land.

Thus, there are significant differences between the successful Down East conservation effort and the effort now under way in northern Franklin County. While there are many models for land conservation in Maine, the Down East project can prove instructive. It will likely take a similarly focused effort to engage northern Franklin County residents, to provide for both economic development based on natural resource exploitation and the hard-and-fast protection of certain irreplaceable parts of the landscape.

Yet if they do it right, there will be much to celebrate.