SKOWHEGAN — A land trust’s plan to acquire 1,845 acres along the Appalachian Trail for the National Park Service remains in jeopardy after a majority of Somerset County commissioners continued to object to the proposal.

An hourlong debate Wednesday in Skowhegan among the Board of Commissioners and members of the public grew heated at times, but the vote ultimately came out the same as it did a few weeks ago: Three of five commissioners said they would not support signing a “no objection” letter.

The commissioners revisited the topic Wednesday after receiving more information to their questions since their last meeting.

They were considering again whether to issue the letter of no objection to the project — a requirement from the federal government — but one that included their objection to the prohibition of hunting on National Park Service land.

But the same three commissioners — Joel Stetkis, Scott Seekins and Cyprien Johnson — rejected that as well.

“I am not comfortable with turning over the sovereignty of Maine land to the federal government,” Stetkis, of Canaan, said during the meeting.

What happens next for the long-planned land acquisition is now unclear.

The Trust for Public Land, the organization seeking to buy 1,845-acre parcel near Moxie Pond, was lined up to receive a $2.1 million grant from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, according to Lynnette Batt, a Farmington-based senior project manager for the trust.

Before final approval, federal officials added a new, last-minute requirement that local and state governments express their lack of objection for an upcoming round of land acquisition projects funded under the program, Batt said previously. The deadline to get the “no objection” letter had been set initially for May 22.

The trust has been working as a middleman of sorts to acquire the land for the National Park Service. Once protected, the trust says the land would become part of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

Also as part of the project, an easement protecting a key north-south ATV and snowmobile connector trail would be conveyed to the state.

Weyerhaeuser Co. is selling the land, which is in Bald Mountain Township T2 R3, a remote area east of Caratunk.

Batt said Wednesday the land trust has a purchase option with Weyerhaeuser that is valid through July 2026. That means if the federal funding falls through, the organization would have only until then to seek other funding, which would be unlikely to come from the public sector, she said.

“They’ve given us two extensions, and they have said no more extensions,” Batt said of the purchase agreement.

Since the last Board of Commissioners meeting May 21, Ben Towle of The Forks Area Trails Club submitted a letter in support of the land acquisition, County Administrator Tim Curtis said.

The commissioners also heard Wednesday from Mark Leathers, the president of the Lake Moxie Camp Owners Association, who spoke in favor of the project on behalf of that group.

Leathers said his family has owned property in the area for four generations, since 1929, and he has always wanted to see the area conserved. He asked the commissioners to leave politics out of their decision and consider the people who live near the proposed project.

“I’m not a liberal from out of state. I’m from here,” Leathers told the board. “And I’ve wanted this all my life — and I love to hunt.”

Scott Thrasher, a Madison resident who owns land in East Moxie Township to the north of the proposed acquisition, also spoke in favor of the acquisition.

Thrasher, who works as a game warden sergeant in Franklin County, said his chief concern was that if The Trust for Public Land is not able to complete the purchase, a private developer may buy the land instead.

“If this project does not go through, who will end up with the 1,800 acres?” Thrasher said.

Asked for his opinion as a game warden regarding the amount of hunting in the area, Thrasher said he estimated there is “some” but not “a lot,” based on his knowledge of the geography and road access. There are two commercial bear baits on the land, he said, and there may be some moose, deer and rabbit hunting.

Stetkis, who represents District 5, said he would prefer the land be purchased by another group or with other funding that allows for hunting.

He also read off pages of National Park Service polices for land and natural resource management that he found online.

Leathers, of the camp association, interrupted Stetkis partway through his remarks, saying the Appalachian Trail has run through Maine for decades and federal regulations have not had any significant impact.

“This is a huge threat and a false narrative,” Leathers said. “It’s a false narrative! … I just stood here and admitted to a federal offense of spreading my parents’ ashes on top of Bald Mountain. Nobody came after me, and nobody is going to come after me. OK? This is a lot of fear tactics. That’s why I asked you not to put in your politics.”

Batt, of the land trust, said she agrees that some federal rules are “crazy.” But Batt, like Leathers, pointed out that there is nearly a century of precedent as to how the trail land has been managed.

Seekins, the District 3 commissioner from St. Albans, said he shared Stetkis’ concern about the federal government taking over Maine land.

“I will adamantly oppose it forever, no matter how you try to rewrite it, because I don’t want that to keep happening,” Seekins said. “We’ve lost enough already.”

District 4 Commissioner John Alsop, of Cornville, took issue with Seekins’ assessment.

“The federal government — I’m not a great fan of it, but it is not acquiring large amounts of land in Maine,” Alsop said.

He said the commissioners should develop a policy for making such decisions, rather than basing them on their own opinions.

“I think it’s unfair to … Ms. Batt’s organization, and the players in this particular proceeding to just willy nilly say ‘no,’” Alsop said, “when they have spent two years putting this together with no expectation that they’d have to run this gauntlet at the very last minute.”

Alsop also said the commissioners should value the opinion of county staff. At the May meeting, David Spencer, manager of Somerset County’s unorganized territories, and Christian Savage, executive director of the Somerset Economic Development Corp., both suggested the economic benefits of the easement for the motorized trail that is part of the acquisition project outweighed the closure of the area to hunting.

Chairman Robert Sezak, the District 1 commissioner from Fairfield, said the benefits of the ATV and snowmobile trail, along with the protection of Moxie Pond water quality and deer habitat, were his reasons for supporting the “no objection” letter.

“I think, in the long run, doing this is the thing to do today,” Sezak said.