MAINE MONITOR • March 17, 2024
The Trust for Public Land is working with the Penobscot Nation to return 30,000 acres near Mount Katahdin to the tribe. The parcel would create a contiguous stretch of conserved land from existing Penobscot Nation holdings near the East Branch of the Penobscot River all the way to Jackman and Moosehead Lake, combining to form 1.2 million acres. This move in northern Maine fits into a nationwide effort to return ancestral lands to Native tribes. The federal Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, a decade-long initiative that concluded in December, restored nearly 3 million acres to tribal ownership and paid over $1.69 billion to individuals. Within the nonprofit realm, The Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund and the Trust for Public Land have worked to return hundreds of thousands of acres to Indigenous groups.