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About BwH |
Beginning with Habitat (BwH) provides objective and comprehensive plant and wildlife habitat information to equip local decision-makers with the necessary tools to make informed and responsible land use decisions that mesh wildlife habitat conservation with future growth needs. |
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Contact Us | |
Beginning with Habitat
284 State Street
41 State House Station
Augusta, ME 04333
207-287-5878
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Upcoming Presentations |
Oct 27- Milford
Oct 27- Merrymeeting Audubon
For the most up-to-date schedule, visit the BwH website. |
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Map Updates |
Between March and September, maps were updated for the following towns:
Appleton, Arrowsic, Baldwin, Bath, Belmont, Bowdoinham, Brewer, Bridgton, Buxton, Canaan, Carrabassett Valley, Cushing, Denmark, Dexter, Dover-Foxcroft, Dresden, Eastbrook, Exeter, Falmouth, Fort Kent, Frenchboro, Gardiner, Georgetown, Gorham, Greene, Greenville, Harpswell, Hope, Jonesport, Leeds, Liberty, Linneus, Mars Hill, Mechanic Falls, Milbridge, Milford, Montville, Newfield, Newry, Old Orchard Beach, Owls Head, Parsonsfield, Rangeley, Rockland, Rumford, Saint George, Searsmont, South Thomaston, Starks, Thomaston, Topsham, Union, Vassalboro, Warren, Wells, West Bath, Westbrook, Winslow, Wiscasset, Woodstock, Woolwich.
To view these maps, visit our website or contact BwH. |
 Featured Focus Area |
Kennebec Estuary
The Kennebec Estuary contains more than 20 percent of Maine's tidal marshes and a significant percentage of Maine's sandy beach and associated dune habitats and globally rare pitch pine communities. These habitats support numerous rare plant and animal species.
BwH Focus Areas of Statewide Ecological Significance are natural areas that contain unusually rich concentrations of at-risk species and habitats. They are intended to build awareness of these exceptional areas and provide momentum for strategic conservation efforts. |
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 Adapting to Climate Change: Incorporating Future Species Needs into Planning and Conservation
We are already experiencing changes in Maine. Rising temperatures have caused growing seasons to expand ten days in four decades and USDA Plant Hardiness Zones have crept northward. Updates to breeding bird atlases in several northeast states, originally compiled during the 1970's, reveal notable northward shifts in the distributions of many northeastern bird species and several recently arriving southern species are now well-established throughout the region. Sea level rise has pushed Maine's beaches inland, in some cases by ten's of meters, over the past few decades.
Additional significant changes as a result of climate change are on the horizon. In order to be effective, our planning and conservation approaches need to respond to and incorporate these changes and future species needs into today's land protection choices. But how? The Spring 2009 Beginning with Habitat (BwH) newsletter outlined four very general steps for developing a local climate change adaptation plan for species and habitats. These steps included: 1) Maintain Terrestrial Habitat Connectivity; 2) Maintain and Restore Aquatic Habitat Connectivity; 3) Protect Undeveloped Low Lying Coastal Areas; and 4) Retain Examples of Habitat Diversity. Over the past year, BwH partners have been working diligently to translate these basic tenants of climate change adaptation planning into products that can be delivered through BwH to best inform local conservation efforts.
Mapping Terrestrial Connectivity:
 BwH partners still have work remaining before our new format Map 3 will be released, but we have completed GIS modeling efforts and the result is a new data layer that offers local planners with an initial assessment of where intact habitat connections between blocks of habitat likely remain. This effort involved the compilation of multiple GIS models developed to represent multiple species that each has specific connectivity needs. Through this process we have also identified likely road crossing hotspots to assist the Department of Transportation in their continuing efforts to minimize traffic and wildlife conflicts. Models have also been run using habitat specialized endangered species including Blanding's turtle, New England cottontail, and northern black racer. Our next step will be to adapt local connectivity results to a regional scale and work towards a prioritization of connected blocks across regions of the state.
Bringing Aquatic Connectivity Partners Together:
Statewide, aquatic habitat conservation partners have been working watershed by watershed, stream system to stream system evaluating road crossings, dams, and other structures that could impede fish movement. By the end of the 2011 field season, it is expected that more than 25% of existing structures in Maine will have been visited, evaluated, and entered into a database. This information will provide resource planners with a much better understanding of the statewide aquatic habitat connectivity issue. Over the past year, the Maine Interagency Stream Connectivity Working Group has been meeting to identify data needs and next steps necessary to strategically advance aquatic habitat restoration and conservation in the state. This group is now working to fund a comprehensive plan for statewide aquatic resources that will guide future restoration investment. BwH will be helping to advance these efforts by including stream barrier information in data packages delivered to towns and land trusts to better inform our local partners of habitat restoration opportunities. Additionally, the fisheries staff of MDIF&W is wrapping up efforts to map eastern brook trout and other significant fisheries habitat. This data will also be added to BwH outreach materials to assist local partners in prioritizing aquatic and riparian habitat protection efforts.
What Species and Habitats are Most Vulnerable?:
This past spring, the BwH Climate Change subcommittee convened a meeting of more than 60 species experts from around New England to review the results of Maine's on-line climate change vulnerability assessment survey. Scientists from state agencies, universities, conservation organizations, and consulting firms have assisted BwH in the vulnerability scoring of close to 500 species of Maine's plants and animals. This number includes all of Maine's Species of Greatest Conservation Need and many of Maine's rare plant species. The purpose of this effort is to benefit from the collective regional expertise in determining which species will be most impacted both negatively and for some somewhat positively, by the variety of ecological stresses likely to result from a changing climate. Once all the data is in, BwH will draft an update to Maine's Wildlife Action plan detailing likely species and habitat vulnerabilities and outlining adaptive actions that can be incorporated into internal species planning efforts and those actions that partners can assist us in implementing at the local and regional levels. |
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Workshop Opportunity |
What: Adapting to Climate Change in Northern New EnglandWhen: November 16, 2010Where: Haraseeket Inn, Freeport, METhe purpose of this conference is to promote shared understanding among the natural resource and land use planning sectors regarding practical and cross-cutting approaches that will help safeguard natural resources against climate change. For more information and to register:www.manometmaine.org/conference3.html. |
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Planning Regionally to Protect Shared Resources
Most land use decisions in Maine are made at the local level. However, Maine's plant and wildlife populations, natural communities, watersheds and other resources certainly don't recognize local boundaries like town borders or land trust service areas. Towns share rivers and streams with neighboring communities, lakes are bisected by town lines, species migrate between municipalities, and towns depend on the open space, outdoor recreation, and natural resource industry opportunities provided by their neighbors. Planning for natural resources, especially given the challenges of climate change adaptation, requires not only assessing the resources present within your jurisdiction, but also considering the natural habitat connections that feed local diversity and influence local habitat quality. However your town pictures its future, more than likely it will find that it cannot achieve its natural resource related goals without the assistance of its neighboring communities. Regional planning is an important approach to maintaining our habitats.
Beginning with Habitat (BwH) is involved in several regional planning efforts underway in Maine:
Lake Region Greenprint-
The Trust for Public Land and Loon Echo Land Trust, among others, are collaborating with local municipalities to undertake a Greenprint, or regional open space plan, for the Lake Region, a 320 square mile area that includes the seven towns of Bridgton, Casco, Denmark, Harrison, Naples, Sebago and Raymond.
Developed by TPL, a Greenprint is an open space planning process that is designed to collectively assess regional priorities and identify opportunities and strategies for open space use and natural resource protection that will meet community open space, park, recreation and conservation goals. The process results in a set of color-coded maps depicting community identified open space priorities, interactive web-based tools, and action strategies related to the natural environment, open space protection, and land use planning. The Lake Region communities will be able to use these tools to identify lands that are most important for conservation, to help inform local land use decisions, to implement strategies for open space use and natural resource protection and to maintain the Lake Region's "quality of place." Beginning with Habitat is providing the underlying resource data for the Greenprint model and technical assistance to this exciting regional open space planning effort.
For more information contact Jim Gooch, Trust for Public Land (jim.gooch@tpl.org) or Carrie Walia, Loon Echo Land Trust (carrie@lelt.org).
Piscataqua River Estuaries Partnership-
As we have reported in previous newsletters, Beginning with Habitat has been working closely with the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership (PREP) and several others to develop a comprehensive, science-based regional land conservation plan for the Maine portion of the Great Bay Estuary. This plan, completed in 2010, identifies and prioritizes local conservation focus areas within the towns of Acton, Berwick, Eliot, Kittery, Lebanon, North Berwick, Sanford, South Berwick, Wells and York and it offers strategies for maintaining diverse wildlife habitat, abundant wetlands, clean water, productive forests and outstanding recreational opportunities. The local focus areas identified in this plan corroborate with the BwH focus areas of statewide ecological significance identified in the region, but also highlight additional areas of local significance. Together the focus area identification and prioritized actions will serve as a valuable guide, tool and information resource for landowners, communities, land trusts and public agencies that are interested in strategic land conservation.
In fact, towns and organizations are already putting this plan to work and taking advantage of grant funds now available through PREP. PREP's Coastal Land Protection Transaction Grant Program awards funds to assist with transaction costs for permanent land protection projects (conservation easements, full fee acquisitions, donations) that address plan priorities. PREP's Local Grant Program awards funds for projects that relate to the action items identified in PREP's Management Plan. Eligible activity areas include water quality, land use and habitat protection, shellfish resources, habitat restoration, and public outreach.
Projects underway thus far with PREP funding include: non-point source pollution projects completed by the Wells Reserve; a study of how build out of could potentially affect shorelands in 10 Maine towns, and an open space plan for the town of Eliot.
For more information on this planning effort or grant funding available through PREP contact: Derek Sowers, (Derek.Sowers@unh.edu).
Mahoosucs Initiative-
BwH is working closely with Maine Audubon, the Mahoosucs Land Trust and the Mahoosucs Initiative to assist in the development of a resource co-occurrence model similar to that developed for PREP. The model will highlight the highest ranked areas based on steering committee scores within each of the 23 towns from Upton south to Stoneham and east to Hartford. Initial results will help the initiative to prioritize conservation efforts and hopefully inspire local appreciation of high value resources and provide a more focused starting point for development of local conservation strategies. The GIS modeling effort is now underway.
For more information on this planning effort contact: Barbara Charry at Maine Audubon, (bcharry@maineaudubon.org).
Sagadahoc Region Rural Resource Initiative -
Congratulations to the partners of the Sagadahoc Region Rural Resource Initiative! The Sagadahoc Region Rural Resource Initiative (SRRRI) was awarded Project of the Year by the Maine Association of Planners and recognized as a model of collaboration among towns and their partners in the public and private sector. SRRRI partners (Bowdoin College, Midcoast Council of Governments, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, State Planning Office and the towns of Arrowsic, Bath, Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Brunswick, Georgetown, Harpswell, Phippsburg, Richmond, Topsham, West Bath, and Woolwich) worked together to develop a Conservation Blueprint for the region. The Conservation Blueprint includes a series of maps depicting regionally identified high value rural resources and an accompanying guidebook presenting strategies that can be used to help guide growth in a way that maintains the region's valued rural resources and quality of place. It is intended to assist people working in the twelve municipalities with their efforts to strategically preserve open space and protect natural resources and working landscapes. The SRRRI Conservation Blueprint builds off of Beginning with Habitat's mapping and technical assistance program. Congratulations to all the partners involved! Note: SRRRI maps are available on BwH web-site under respective towns and also as a set under watershed and regional maps. |
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Beginning with Habitat Partners |
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