After over an hour of back-and-forth between lawmakers and environmental regulators at a work session in February, Maine state Sen. Denise Tepler (D-Sagadahoc) began to question the intentions of a bill that would loosen habitat protections near municipal airports in the name of aviation safety.
A Maine wildlife official had just testified that the bill, L.D. 138, was the first indication his agency received that habitat protections were putting airplanes in danger of striking wildlife, a concern they take seriously, he told Tepler and the committee on environment and natural resources.
“If in the past any of our recommendations through the permitting process have led to any sort of new public safety concern, that is not something we were aware of,” said Nate Webb, wildlife division director for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. “And I think that can largely be addressed with just really good communication moving forward.”
Why then, Tepler wondered, were Maine airport officials looking to rollback regulations before they even consulted state officials about possible compromises?
“I want to be honest, I am really losing track of what’s going on here and what this bill is about…. and getting very kind of fed up,” said Tepler, the committee chair. “It does seem like there’s some kind of mystery here that prompted this bill, and I’m truthfully getting quite frustrated about it.”
At that moment, Tepler’s suspicions mirrored those of Maine wildlife and environmental advocates who had testified in opposition to the bill, claiming that its passage would spur airport development and hurt endangered species. They saw an ally in Tepler.
But when legislators paused the meeting to caucus privately, the version of L.D. 138 that they returned with satisfied neither side — not the airport officials, nor environmentalists.
Under current state regulations, developing land that is home to any of the 57 species Maine lists as endangered or threatened requires developers to pay the state eight times the market rate for the land or set aside an equivalent parcel that will not be developed elsewhere.
The amendment reduces the cost in half, to four times the value of the land, and expands eligibility to all municipal or quasi-municipal agencies, not just municipal airports, so long as state environmental officials determine the development is for “public health or safety” and would be cost-prohibitive for the developer without the reduction.
The amendment also broadens the bill’s original target to include the habitat of Maine species of special concern, more than a hundred other sensitive Maine fish and wildlife species, along with the original 57 species.
The committee’s decision to unanimously approve the amendment shortly after the caucus left both groups baffled, wondering what occurred behind closed doors. While airport officials say the amendment will do little to reduce their current development restrictions and safety concerns, environmental groups like Maine Audubon say it goes too far in opening up sensitive habitat for development.
“There was no apparent science in this decision and no discussion on how they arrived at that figure,” said Allison Navia, manager of Fryeburg and Sanford’s municipal airports and chair of the Maine Aeronautical Advisory Board, a group that advises the state on aviation matters. “Are we 50 percent safer in the air or on the ground now?”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Maine Senate Democrats said that Tepler is “satisfied that the bill as amended meets the objective of supporting projects to improve airport safety while maintaining protections for endangered species.”
The committee’s unanimous approval of the amendment appeared to make the bill a shoo-in for corresponding approval from the full legislature. However, on the morning of March 28, the committee scheduled another work session for L.D. 138 in early April — sending it back to the drawing board after a whirlwind of disapproval from wildlife and aviation advocates.
Airport wildlife strikes
As originally introduced by Sen. Richard Bennett (R-Oxford), L.D. 138 would have exempted Maine airports from a section of the Natural Resources Protection Act intended to protect the habitat of species the state lists as endangered or threatened from development.
Bennett and Maine municipal airport officials tied the need for the exemption to a pair of incidents at the Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport in 2017, when two planes struck and killed deer on the airport runway within a month.
Although the strikes didn’t cause any human injuries and the aircraft incurred minimal damage, Bennett and Navia testified that the strikes could have been avoided if it weren’t for a management plan for the state-endangered grasshopper sparrow.
The bird’s grassland habitat is rare in densely forested Maine but thrives near Sanford Airport and the Eastern Slope Regional Airport in Fryeburg.
Although common elsewhere in the United States, the grasshopper sparrow’s limited habitat in Maine lands it on the state’s endangered species list, requiring both municipal airports to limit mowing and manage the grasslands under guidance of state environmental agencies or pay a development fee.
Deer commonly crossed Sanford Airport’s runway at night to bed in the lush grasses in the buildup to the 2017 incidents, according to Navia, which she cites as proof that Maine habitat regulations put both wildlife and humans in harm’s way rather than protect them.
The incidents in Sanford were two of 441 wildlife collisions at Maine airports between 2017 and 2023, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration. None resulted in human injuries and only five others involved mammals; the rest were birds.
Navia and Bennett argued that federal airport regulations alone are adequate for considering wildlife impacts and overall aviation safety.
“It is essential to allow airports to bypass some protections and prioritize the safety of passengers and the integrity of air travel,” Bennett testified. “Put simply, airports cannot foster safety while encouraging the presence of wildlife.”
Habitat concerns
The Eastern Slope Regional Airport in Fryeburg is not only in a prime location for local aviators and medevacs from the nearby White Mountains, but also a mix of ecosystems that thrive on the land’s arid soils and patchwork of streams and ponds.
Beyond the grasslands favored by grasshopper sparrows are pitch pine and scrub oak barrens that host a number of rare Maine species, like the Edwards’ Hairstreak, a state-endangered butterfly whose wing tips are dotted with orange-brown spots.
Local wildlife advocates have been concerned for years about the airport’s encroachment on these species’ habitat, most recently with an ongoing 802-foot runway and hangar expansion project and the unpermitted removal in 2019 of five acres of vegetation and sensitive habitat around Round Pond, which sits at the base of the runway.
Though Fryeburg leases town-owned land to the airport and is responsible for its oversight, day-to-day operations are carried out by board members for the Eastern Slope Airport Authority and Navia, the airport manager.
Authority officials have described the runway project as necessary to keep up with modern airport standards and explained to town officials in 2019 that the Round Pond cut was carried out to maintain eligibility for FAA funds that were about to lapse.
Fryeburg resident Sherri Billings, however, cited them as examples of the authority’s prioritization of airport expansion over habitat protections in testimony opposing the bill.
The “authority has failed to be a good steward of the land, as evidenced by illegal clear-cutting of endangered habitats and encroachment on valuable ecosystems,” Billings wrote.
Habitat loss is the primary cause of dwindling biodiversity in Maine, according to a 2024 assessment from the Maine Climate Council, which projects the state will lose 386 species by 2100 under the highest greenhouse gas emissions scenario. Billings and Maine environmental groups argue that opening up additional habitat for development will imperil even more species than already projected.
And although airport officials argue the total land area that the bill could exempt from protections, less than 10,000 acres, is a relatively small parcel, wildlife advocates say it’s the rare habitat on the open land around airports that makes it so valuable for biodiversity.
“These areas are part of a…mosaic of essential habitats for vulnerable wildlife because they provide the specific conditions and resources they need to survive, recover, and thrive,” testified Ches Gundrum, director of advocacy for Maine Audubon.
Regulators weigh in
Maine environmental officials were also skeptical of the bill in its original form, with both the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife testifying against it.
For one, the development that occurs around airports tends to be far more taxing on the land than the single lot residential developments that are already exempted, testified Rob Wood, director of the Department of Environmental Protection’s land bureau.
Wood pointed to the current expansion project at the Fryeburg airport as a prime example, explaining that department officials required the airport to minimize impacts to the habitat of several state endangered and threatened species in their development plans.
A caravan of bulldozers trotted across towering soil mounds at the Fryeburg airport on a recent Tuesday in mid-March, grooming the land adjacent to the runway for its expansion. Crowns of pine and oak trees poked out just beyond the soil mounds and heavy machinery, revealing just how close the development is to the rare habitat and species that local residents are concerned about.
If the bill and its exemptions are enacted, however, Wood noted that the department’s permitting through the state’s Site Law would retain Maine’s broad authority of regulating development.
Both Wood and his counterpart at the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife were also adamant that the Natural Resources Protection Act already allows leeway for developers in its current form.
Out of 10,000 applications that the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has reviewed over the past 10 years, the department determined only five would have unreasonable habitat impacts, proof that it’s possible to permit development while curtailing collateral habitat damage, according to Webb, the department’s wildlife division director.
“It is noteworthy that MDIFW has never made a finding of non-compatible development due to the related disturbance and resulting displacement of functions and values on protected habitats and species at an airport,” Webb testified.
The amendment
Looking for compromise, Bennett, the bill sponsor, said he met with Maine environmental officials to address their concerns while maintaining the exemptions he and airport officials believe are necessary for aviation safety.
The outcome produced two different amendments: one from Bennett and one from DEP.
Bennett’s amendment rephrased the original bill’s exemption eligibility to only include 35 “public use” airports in Maine (rather than any airstrip in the state) and eliminated monetary habitat compensation requirements.
Wood and DEP, meanwhile, proposed expanding eligibility beyond public airports to all municipal and quasi-municipal entities, like the Maine Port Authority, while giving the state discretion to reduce monetary compensation so long as the project pertains to “public health and safety.”
Wood told legislators at the Feb. 26 committee meeting that the changes were derived from airport officials’ concerns that the current compensation amounts can hinder an airport from pursuing projects they say are necessary, like altering or expanding a runway for medevac flights.
Because DEP factors in safety through other permitting processes, Wood said the department already has an understanding of what projects would qualify, despite the lack of a specific definition.
The amendment legislators ultimately approved most closely resembled DEP’s version, but would instead require Maine regulators to reduce habitat compensation for public safety projects and give officials less discretion.
Bennett told The Maine Monitor that although the amendment doesn’t resolve the original issues that he and the bill’s proponents sought to address, it has started a conversation around airport safety they hope to continue.
He tied concerns others have raised about the committee’s private caucus to a separate bill he introduced earlier this year that would open up caucuses under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.
The bill, L.D. 12, died in the Judiciary Committee earlier this month.
“Our constituents deserve to know how and why their elected officials come to their decisions,” Bennett wrote in support of the bill. “Concealing the reasons leads to distrust and discourages public participation.”
The new committee work session for L.D. 138, the airport habitat bill, is scheduled for 10 a.m. on April 2.
