Maine lawmakers try to thread the needle on forest protections
Late last year a team of ecologists came to a dire conclusion: without new conservation and management initiatives, half of the oldest forests in Maine's unorganized territory could be gone in the next 35 years.
A bipartisan bill introduced by state Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) aims to reverse that trend while also protecting Maine's undeveloped lakes and ponds through prescriptive conservation measures.
After overcoming initial opposition from state officials and forest industry groups through multiple compromises, the bill was unanimously voted out of committee and approved by the state Senate this week. Although the version of L.D. 1529 the full legislature received is drastically different from what Bennett originally proposed, it now has support from both conservation and forestry groups.
In Bennett's original draft, agencies under the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry would have been tasked with prioritizing the acquisition of mature forest stands for conservation and placing dozens of undeveloped ponds and lakes into a new management classification, further shielding them from development.
By instructing the Land for Maine's Future Board — the state entity that funds conservation land acquisitions — to place parcels with mature tree stands at the top of its acquisition list, Bennett said his original bill would have provided protective actions without regulatory processes.
The bill also included measures to promote the study of Maine's oldest forests, intended to spur new conservation strategies down the line and entrench late-successional, old-growth forests at the center of forest management plans.
And the bill went beyond forest protections. Bennett also included a provision directing the Land Use Planning Commission, which oversees Maine's unorganized territory, to reassign undeveloped lakes and ponds to a more protective class that limits development near shorelines.
Such proposals won approval from conservationists and environmental nonprofits across Maine, but drew criticism from DACF officials and forestry groups like the Maine Forest Products Council.
DACF official Judy East testified that the proposals were developed without input from key stakeholders and would be a costly addition to the department's already heavy workload.
Similar criticism arose from the Maine Forest Products Council, a trade group representing landowners, loggers, truckers, paper mills and foresters across the state.
In his testimony, MFPC Executive Director Patrick Strauch wrote that L.D. 1529 'establishes predetermined outcomes for forest stands on private land without any consultation with the landowner community.'
Instead of jumping forward to land acquisition policies and reclassifying Maine lakes, Strauch said the state should first work with stakeholders to determine how and where to conserve older forests and lakes while acknowledging the multiple uses, like recreation and timber production, that state management plans allow for.
John Hagan, who co-authored the 2024 report from environmental nonprofit Our Climate Future that surveyed the state's unorganized territory, encouraged both sides to come to the table the same way they did to support his team's mapping project.
'I hope we can all come together, work together, support this bill, and come up with a practical plan to conserve (late-successional or old-growth) forest before it's gone and the question of saving it becomes moot,' Hagan wrote in his testimony.
Ultimately, both sides did.
The amendments added across two committee work sessions removed more immediate, sweeping development restrictions but maintained and fine-tuned instructions for state agencies to study and incorporate forest and lake protections in long-term management plans, all for an estimated cost of $75,000.
Instead of reclassifying undeveloped Maine ponds and lakes in the near future, the new version now instructs the Maine Land Use Planning Commission to evaluate the decades-old Lake Management Program and determine whether reclassification is needed.
It also instructs the state Bureau of Forestry to conduct research that follows the work done by Our Climate Future and sets a 2026 deadline for the DACF to compile statewide strategies to enhance its conservation.
The end result is a bill that the Maine Forest Products Council and environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Council of Maine both support.
'Mainers recognize that these are really unique resources that we have,' said Luke Frankel, director of NRCM's Woods, Waters, and Wildlife Division, and the bill is 'a promising path forward to protecting older growth forests.'
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This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
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