More than a year after a company led by Donald Trump Jr. bought a prime northern Maine hunting plot, it is preparing a private nature preserve and a hunting camp.
The president’s son and his company, Trump Timberland and Wildlife Management, bought 3,900 acres from the family of former state Rep. Austin Theriault, R-Fort Kent, in Crystal and Island Falls in November 2024. Trump Jr. is an avid hunter who shot a moose in the area on a guided hunt two years earlier.
More than a year later, there has been relatively little activity on the property. But roads have been cleaned up and fences erected to lay the groundwork for what Trump Jr. hopes to turn into a wildlife preserve and hunting ground over the next two to five years, Anthony Fratianne, the co-president of Trump Timberland, a Florida company formed around the purchase.
“We want it to benefit not only the property itself and the people around us, but, eventually, it’ll be open by invitation for hunting,” Fratianne said, adding that he expects to see more work on the land in the next two to five years. “It’s really a long term thing for us.”
The Maine purchase drew national attention at a time when the president was returning to office following the 2024 election. It is his family’s first major foray into the state that Trump prioritized more than any other president in the modern era in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Town officials in Crystal and Island Falls confirmed that they have not received any permitting material that would allow Trump Timberland to build on the property, which was previously owned by Steve Theriault, the father of Austin Theriault, who narrowly lost to Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of the 2nd District in the 2024 elections.
Fratianne said the land’s prior ownership was “a total coincidence.” Steve Theriault said in 2024 that his family had worked with the Trumps for more than a year on the deal, and he told The Boston Globe that his son had no input on transactions.
Trump Jr.’s plans for the site are limited in scope, Fratianne suggested. He said the company was in early talks with a nonprofit about a possible conservation easement but may at some point build one or more cabins on the property.
“It’s all about a wildlife preserve, really. Always has been since before we bought it,” he said. “No shiny gold Trump tower is going up anytime soon.”
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
