Maine Audubon Perspective

Audubon Wins for Wildlife

Through your membership in Maine Audubon, you have helped achieve two recent victories for wildlife conservation—one at the national level, the other in Maine.

In Washington, D.C., Audubon played an important role in advocating for the United States Senate to remove a budget-package provision that would have opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Our efforts paid off March 19 when 52 senators voted to remove drilling provisions from the budget bill. Included were eight Republican senators, among whom Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were the first to support the amendment that removed the drilling provision. In fact, Senator Snowe cosponsored the amendment. (For further details, see page 20.)

Staff members in Audubon’s legislative office in Washington said members’ letters, e-mails and phone calls to their senators have been critical to protecting the Arctic’s one-of-a-kind wildlife haven. Members’ continued advocacy is crucial as action on potential drilling now moves to the House of Representatives.

Only one day after the Arctic vote in the nation’s capital, news of another Audubon victory came from Maine’s capital city. Late in the day of Thursday, March 20, Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection, meeting in Augusta, voted 5-3 to deny the building permit sought by New York state-based Widewaters Stillwater LLC to construct a 24-hour Wal-Mart “supercenter” adjacent to Bangor’s ecologically remarkable Penjajawoc Marsh.

For more than two years, Maine Audubon and BACORD (Bangor Area Citizens Organization for Responsible Development) lead the charge to defeat Widewaters’ proposal. It would have developed over 18 acres of habitat used by declining grassland species and potentially degraded the most ecologically valuable freshwater wetland in the state.

The organizational process that led to this victory is an affirmation of the value of Audubon’s local chapter model. Two years ago, Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley chapter alerted the state office to the development proposal’s threat to marsh wildlife. Maine Audubon’s state staff was able to marshal the resources to make the matter a top priority of the organization. Continuing close work with the Penobscot Valley chapter was crucial in helping Maine Audubon build a convincing case, made during an unprecedented six days of hearings in front of the Board of Environmental Protection.

Three Maine Audubon staff members made the argument that paving over rare grassland habitat and exposing much of the remaining habitat to round-the-clock noise and light would cause a decline in the total number and diversity of birds. They also argued that the limited conservation easement the developer offered did not offset the negative environmental impacts that a paved, 18-acre complex at its edge would create for the wetland. Thanks for informed and emphatic testimony during the hearings go to Maine Audubon staff members Judy Markowsky, director of Fields Pond Audubon Center and an ornithologist and staff naturalist; Jody Jones, wildlife ecologist and Aram Calhoun, wetland scientist.

Maine Audubon’s additional great fortune on behalf of the marsh was the Portland-based law firm of Verrill & Dana, which lent us, pro bono, attorneys Jamie Kilbreth, vice president of Maine Audubon’s board of trustees, and Hope Jacobson. Their brilliant defense of the marsh evolved from hundreds of hours of legal time.

Our case was further strengthened by Tom Saucier, who evaluated the potential effects of storm-water runoff from the complex; Larry Bartlett, who reviewed the developer’s proposed lighting plan and Travis Longcore, who researched impacts of light and noise on wildlife.

Over and above membership support, additional support and encouragement for Maine Audubon’s work in this challenging struggle for Penjajawoc’s wildlife has come from our members and supporters across Maine and in 16 other states.

Having significantly raised awareness of how valuable Penjajawoc Marsh is, Maine Audubon looks forward to the next challenge related to the marsh: working with all interested parties to ensure that, well into the future, this spectacular Maine resource continues to support a diverse and rare group of species.

Among early-spring headlines about war, these two pieces of good news for conservation were bright spots. From the mid-Atlantic to mid-Maine—and at local, state and national levels—Audubon’s science-based work on behalf of wildlife habitat continues to be highly effective.

Kevin P. Carley, executive director