Owners of Stunning Part of Maine Resist Selling Land to U.S. : Environment: Some have held property in family for hundreds of years and like it that way. Others may wish to sell wildlife habitat to developers.

Pauline and Joe Turner’s home overlooks Young’s Cove, an inlet on Cobscook Bay, a stunning stretch of coast where the tides flow up to 24 feet, the highest in the United States outside Alaska.

Their 30 acres of land, where the fragrance of balsam fir and spruce mixes with the smell of the sea, is part of a coastal forest near the Canadian border that is a magnet for wildlife.

Bald eagles nest along Cobscook Bay in higher numbers than anywhere else in the Northeast. Black ducks, whose numbers are declining, find refuge here in the winter. Fox, coyote, bobcat, even an occasional moose roam the woods.

The land has been in Pauline Turner’s family since 1786. She considers it her heritage and wouldn’t part with it for anything. But the Turners fear that the federal government may pressure them to sell their property or seize it under eminent domain if they refuse.

The couple’s land is part of a 2,665-acre chunk of Washington County, most of it around Cobscook Bay, targeted for acquisition by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to expand the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge.

But the Turners and several other property owners don’t want to sell and have accused federal officials and environmentalists of conspiring to grab their land. The Turners are on the front line of a battle between environmentalists and a landowners’ rights group over the future of Maine’s wildlands, an area of 10.5 million acres covering half the state.

Federal officials deny that there is a conspiracy and say they don’t have any plans to seize the Turners’ land or the property of others who don’t want to sell to the Moosehorn.

“We have said in many, many places that we are only going to buy from willing sellers,” said Douglas Mullen, the refuge’s manager. “We’ve told the local landowners we will not take and condemn their land. We will be a bidder for their land if they ever want to sell it.”

Joe Turner isn’t so easily reassured.

“They say they only want to buy from willing sellers. But if we become the main stumbling block, they could come in here tomorrow and start a condemnation proceeding against us, and then we’d become willing sellers,” said Turner, 74, a native of Massachusetts who has lived in Pembroke year-round since 1984 and part-time since 1940.

The Maine Conservation Rights Institute, a group formed to lobby for landowners’ rights, contends the Moosehorn expansion is one piece of a larger plan to ban development on millions of acres of forest in Maine and three other states, and strip property owners of their rights.

“It’s all part of the same preservationist plot to buy up as much of Maine as possible,” said Robert Voight, the institute’s president. “They want to turn it into a wilderness museum. That’s their ultimate goal.”

Government officials and environmental groups deny those allegations and portray Voight’s group as a tiny, but vocal, minority.

“Because they’re vocal doesn’t necessarily make them right,” said James Bernard, director of natural resources policy in the Maine State Planning Office. “If they want to prove their allegations, they need to back them up with facts--not just conjecture. . . . They do not represent the mainstream or the interests of Maine people.”

Environmentalists say they are working to protect prime wildlife habitat and scenic areas of the North Woods and eastern Maine’s craggy coast from residential development.

“The development pressure is very clearly there and is not diminishing in spite of the recession,” said Catherine Johnson, a staff attorney for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the state’s leading environmental group. “So I think it is critically important to take action now.”

Voight’s group began drawing attention this summer by rallying opposition to the proposed Northern Forest Lands Act. The federal bill proposes developing a conservation strategy for the largest expanse of forest in the Northeast--26 million acres in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and New York.

The Natural Resources Council also has proposed creating a conservation area in an estimated 7 million to 9 million acres of Maine’s North Woods. Construction of residential subdivisions would be banned in this area, but traditional uses, such as timbering, farming and public recreation, would be allowed.

The wildlands being studied for conservation stretch from the state’s western mountains to far northern Maine and into Washington County, the area of the state known as Down East.

Washington County, with a population of about 35,000, is the easternmost part of the United States, the spot where the sunrise first touches the country, and the tidal range is the longest outside Cook Inlet, Alaska. The county’s 1.77 million acres cover verdant forest, shimmering blue lakes and an 887-mile coastline with cliffs that rise up to 100 feet from the surf.

It’s also home of the Moosehorn. As a refuge rather than a national park, the Moosehorn’s primary mission is to manage and preserve wildlife habitat. Established in 1937, the refuge’s 23,000 acres of woods, marshes, streams and lakes are a haven for 216 types of birds, from woodcock to osprey, and at least 35 species of wildlife, including black bear, river otters and white-tailed deer.

Congress has approved allocating $2 million this year for the Moosehorn expansion. If President Bush signs the measure, as expected, the wildlife service will begin buying property in the next two to three months, said Mullen, the Moosehorn’s manager.

Mullen said the refuge must be expanded to include more of pristine Cobscook Bay before it is bought up for real estate developments.

“It’s just a really classic high-value wildlife area,” Mullen said. “If the area is developed, I think a lot of that quality habitat will be compromised.”

The expansion was triggered by Mt. Holly Corp.’s attempt two years ago to develop a nearly 60-acre tract of land along Bellier Cove in Cobscook Bay into 12 lots for homes.

“That was the first sort of signal that there was going to be major acquisitions in the area for housing developments,” Mullen said.

Mullen and representatives of several environmental groups testified against the project at a hearing in July, 1989, before the Land Use Regulation Commission.

In the face of that pressure, the commission’s staff--which had three times previously recommended approving Mt. Holly’s rezoning application--reversed its position and recommended denying the project.

The company ended up withdrawing its proposal and selling the Bellier Cove land to the Nature Conservancy, which in turn plans to sell it to the Moosehorn as part of the expansion.

The environmentalists’ tactics angered James Haskell, who worked as a planning consultant for Mt. Holly. “To me, that’s extortion. There’s no other word for it,” he said.

Joe Turner and several other landowners whose property has been targeted for the expanded refuge fear they will be pressured to sell--just as Mt. Holly was.

Mullen insists that won’t happen. He said landowners that don’t want to sell will be left alone. “Our main thrust is to assure that the land will never be developed.”

Joe Turner and a neighbor, Mark Madden, say they have no plans to develop their land and are conservationists themselves. But they’re angry because federal officials refused to honor their requests that their property be left outside the boundary targeting lands for future acquisition by the refuge.

“We want to keep the land for our children’s children,” said Madden, who owns 83 acres of land adjacent to the Turners and whose wife is Pauline Turner’s niece. “But we’re fighting all these environmentalists who want to take all this land over, without regard to the landowners, so they can come up here and enjoy it.”

Mullen believes Joe Turner and Madden are well-intentioned, but said most of the 35 property owners whose land has been targeted want to sell to the Moosehorn.

The battle has left some property owners caught in the middle. Allen Gillespie, who lives down a dirt road from the Turners’ house, doesn’t know which side to believe.

He just wants to be left alone to enjoy the dream house he has built on 24 acres along Cobscook Bay. His 500 feet of shoreline command what Gillespie believes is the best view in Washington County.

But Gillespie fears that he will be forced to sell eventually--either to the refuge or to developers who think his land would make a nice spot for vacation condominiums.

Gillespie stood on his bluff, looking out across the sun-dappled water to Burnt Island, where he’d earlier spotted an eagle soaring overhead and a blue heron poking about among the seaweed.

“We call it God’s country,” he said, “but I don’t know what it’s going to be in a few years.”