WOODS & WATERS

Protecting Maine’s

NATURAL RESOURCES

THE MAINE DEPARTMENT OF INLAND FISHERIES AND WILDLIFE’S ROLE IN MANAGING OUR CO-EXISTENCE WITH NATURE

BY BOB DUCHESNE

IN THE NATURAL WORLD, human beings are an invasive species. Homo Sapiens tip the balance of nature their way wherever they go, often crowding out the creatures that once lived there.

Science documents six mass extinction periods since life began on Earth. Five occurred due to natural phenomena. The most recent occurred 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, when an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.

The current mass extinction time frame is called the Holocene Epoch, and nearly all of the extinctions are a direct result of human-related activities. Species are disappearing from the planet at a rate up to 80 times faster than normal.

Extinction is natural. Around 98 percent of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. It’s today’s rapid rate of extinction that is both ominous and preventable.

In Maine, the task of managing our co-existence with other creatures falls primarily to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. In one way or another, virtually every animal species in Maine is managed.

Game management makes most of the headlines. Populations of Maine’s four big game species — deer, moose, bear and turkey — are monitored carefully. Wildlife biologists set harvest limits annually to ensure that hunting is sustainable. Likewise, seasons and bag limits regulate the sustainable hunting of small game, upland birds and waterfowl. Trapping is monitored closely in order to avoid harm to threatened species, such as Canada lynx.

Nongame management often flies under the radar, but it shouldn’t. Everybody’s somebody’s lunch, and the entire food chain matters when managing human interactions with wildlife. Birds eat pests. Insects pollinate crops. Black fly larvae nourish brook trout. DIF&W produces one set of plans for game species, and another whole set of plans for managing nongame species.

Scarce and vulnerable species get special attention. These include mammals such as New England cottontail rabbits, northern bog lemmings, and Maine’s six species of bats.

Birds endangered by a loss of habitat are monitored and protected, such as piping plovers and Bicknell’s thrush.

Piping plovers nest on busy beaches. Bicknell’s thrushes nest on mountaintops, where they were generally safe from development … until windpower came along.

Wetland habitats have been especially vulnerable to encroaching development over the last century. Whole classes of fish, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates depend on wetlands. Such critters are often small and go unnoticed. It’s only in the last 30 years that they’ve gained enough attention to be protected by Maine’s Natural Resources Protection Act. Dragonflies, damselflies and a host of other insects depend on wetlands, and these species are also monitored by DIF&W biologists.

Humans have a habit of accidentally spreading toxins around. DDT insecticides famously poisoned ospreys and peregrine falcons, nearly driving them to extinction. Mercury poisons fish. Lead shot poisons ducks and eagles. Lead sinkers poison loons. Now widespread contamination from a class of chemicals called PFAS has led to local restrictions on consumption of venison.

Humans also spread invasive pests.

A century ago, chestnut trees dominated the eastern forest. Chestnut blight, accidentally introduced from China, destroyed nearly all of them. Shortly afterward, Dutch elm disease decimated the stately elms that once graced many neighborhoods. Nowadays, wooly adelgids threaten Maine’s hemlocks, emerald ash borers threaten Maine’s ash trees, and Asian long-horned beetles threaten multiple hardwood species. These pests grip the attention of Maine’s Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. So do invasive plants such as purple loosestrife, originally brought into Maine as a backyard ornamental.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources has its own invasive species to monitor. Green crabs arrived in the ballast water of ships more than a century ago. Without a natural enemy, the crabs have feasted relentlessly on Maine’s shellfish ever since.

In the last few decades, humans have had to accept another reality. Animals migrate, and human developments often impede them. Millions of migrating birds are killed every year in collisions with skyscrapers and towers. Dams block searun fish. Whales journey from their calving grounds in tropical waters to the food-rich North Atlantic every year, risking collision with maritime shipping in both directions. Even many of the smallest critters migrate. Some salamanders will travel over six miles to reach their breeding areas in vernal pools each spring, a journey made more perilous wherever pavement creates barriers.

Maine is blessed with an abundance of wildlife. It may seem like we coexist well. If so, it’s because virtually every creature is state-managed, to ensure that we don’t crowd them out of existence.

BOB DUCHESNE is a local radio personality, Maine guide, and columnist. He lives on Pushaw Lake with his wife, Sandi.