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Birding, politics to collide on Dec. 1

By Bob Duchesne, Special to the BDN

Posted Nov. 25, 2011, at 2:26 p.m.

Courtesy of Bob Duchesne

Wood ducks are among the species that don’t nest in marshes, and prefer tree cavities.

I lead birding tours, volunteer for Maine Audubon and write about birding. For the last seven

years, I’ve also served as a legislator in the Maine House of Representatives. Sometimes my worlds collide. They will collide on Dec. 1.

While writing this fledgling column, I hope my forays into state policy debates are rare. However, Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection is about to consider a proposed new rule. It will relax the process by which the Department of Environmental Protection reviews development in areas where wading birds and waterfowl may be nesting.

This all springs from a law that has been on the books for 22 years. The Natural Resources Protection Act designates safeguards for certain landscape and wildlife features in Maine, ducks among them. For better or worse, this is something I know a lot about. I was a freshman on the legislature’s Natural Resources Committee when the law was updated in 2004, and a senior this year when we required DEP to update the law again.

Here’s the problem: Ducks don’t stay in the marsh. Most of our resident waterfowl nest in the

woods. Wood ducks, ring-necked ducks, hooded mergansers and common goldeneyes all nest in tree cavities. Mallards and American black ducks are ground nesters, but require concealment from predators, usually away from the water. When it’s time for the chicks to leave the nest, mom often leads them a surprising distance to the marsh.

Unfortunately for mama duck, homes near water are exactly where humans like to feather their own nests. As a result, if Maine is going to continue to be a state where wildlife is cherished and our hunting traditions are defended, some additional regulation is necessary.

Thus, in 2004, the Legislature came up with a flexible solution. Landowners desiring to build in a sensitive area could do so as long as they consulted with experts at DEP and got a permit. If necessary, biologists from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife would help the landowner avoid or minimize adverse impacts. With the passage of the bill, the Legislature went home thinking it had protected both public values and private property rights.

But that’s not what happened. As the law was implemented, problems occurred that created

more development restrictions than intended. So the Legislature corrected the hitches this year, and it further directed DEP to streamline the permitting process where appropriate. Landowners who met certain standards could henceforward apply for a Permit-By-Rule, a simplified application that allows a landowner to develop a certain portion of the property without further review.

But that’s not exactly what happened, either. As currently proposed, the new rule would apply to more than just homeowners. The relaxed permitting would also apply to larger commercial businesses and residential subdivisions of up to 14 units. Some of Maine’s wildlife experts fear that’s too much. The hearing in front of the BEP on Dec. 1 will begin the latest process of trying to find the right balance. That’s the day when residents may weigh in with their own opinions.

There’s a side story here. At one time, birders and hunters often found themselves on opposite sides. Over the last few years, both have discovered that they have much more in common than they realized. Many of us came to our love of wildlife and the outdoors because, years ago, some adult put something in our youthful hands. It might have been binoculars; it might have been a shotgun. In either case, it meant a walk in the woods and a learned appreciation for nature.

We now find ourselves collectively worried about the conservation of the same wildlife resources, as sprawl nibbles away at waterfowl habitat.

I can think of no better example than my friend, George Smith. For almost two decades, Smith was executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine. He is still one of the most avid outdoor sportsmen that I know. Smith can tell you what each species of duck tastes like. About three years ago, Smith discovered birding. He is now captivated by warblers. He has chased birds in Texas and Costa Rica. He bought a spotting scope — the first optical equipment he has ever owned that didn’t have cross hairs.

It turns out that wildlife is important to all of us. It’s part of what makes us Mainers.

Bob Duchesne serves in the Maine Legislature, is president of the Penobscot Valley Chapter of Maine Audubon, created the Maine Birding Trail and is the author of the trail guidebook of the same name. He may be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.

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Anonymous

The new law imposing ‘bird habitat’ overlays certainly was intended to take private property. Audubon Executive Director Ted Koffman was House chair of the Natural Resources Committee at the time and slipped the oppressive restrictions into law without telling anyone what he was doing. He used the device of an indirect reference to regulations imposing controversial “mapping” that had not been previously allowed, allowing the activists inside state government to target what they wanted.

Audubon colluded with DEP and IFW, hiding the new maps until after they had slipped the law through. They knew exactly what they were doing. Audubon subsequently boasted to its members that it had pursued this agenda for a decade incrementally adding more provisions to get to the end result. It led to the predictable outrage and explosion as soon as DEP began enforcing it and was required to publicly release the maps. DEP immediately began denying normal building permits. At the first public meeting on this DEP announced that it was treating the habitat overlays as “Resource Protections Zones”. Duchesne’s whitewash is false; this was intended from the beginning to seize control of private property for preservationism.

There is no “scientific” basis for this oppression at all, only apocryphal stories made up to emotionally manipulate people with images of birds falling out of the sky for lack of food claimed to be caused by private homes. A “study” posted on the USFWS website intended only for insiders revealed that private homes had nothing to do with birds out on the mud flats, nor is there any “scientific” basis requiring seizure of private property. That is a political agenda, not “science”.

The BEP rule by permit procedure is its an Orwellian nightmare. There are no objective standards, yet property owners are required to notify DEP in advance, with detailed plans, fees, and before and after photographs for the vaguest “human activity”. There are enormous fines for not complying, which the state can impose anytime it wants in accordance with discretionary interpretation of the vague regulations. This is non-objective law at its worst, the kind of law that is a prescription for dictatorship, a strategy designed by the preservationist lobby to make the state a ‘partner’ in private property through rule by bureaucracy.

This entire travesty of justice could have not have been a more cynical and political assault on private property rights run by the Audubon lobby activists in collusion with state agencies. Duchesne himself has been compiling his own maps for ‘birding trails’ he wants designated by state and national government. He is not just an Audubon official, he is paid to take people to these areas of private property he wants locked up.

The entire cynical scheme should be outright repealed just as quickly as Koffman imposed it. The Audubon lobby should not be running state government.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

You wanna “save” birds that’s great I give a good donation to ducks unlimited every year myself. The difference between the two ways in one buys land and maintains it. Your way tells people who bought land with there money to build on it that they cant or only can on certain parts or percentage of. If that’s the case then they should not be taxed on that land. Personal property is just that . If you can not buy a piece of land and build your home on it and use the land the way you wan to then it should not be sold. Why is it so many of the folks who make these rules ans laws like this do not live or own land that would be effected?

You wanna save land for the animals I am all for it but use your money to buy land to do it with and stop stealing land form the owners to support your views. Du owns millions of acres but never demand people do the same with there land nor do they support any legislation that would impede land owners rights.
Anonymous

I guess I’m from a more nitty-gritty part of Maine, most folks I know, while many feed them, do not have time or money to go chasing birds half way round the world. Nor, for the most part, do most have the luxury of setting aside sizable portions of their working lands to create permanent bird sanctuarys so that Mr. Duchesne can trample through with paying crowds of concerned citizens from Falmouth in quest of the next check mark in their field guides. But a persons ability to donate their worth doesn’t matter anyway, through his work in the state legislature this Audubon executive has helped Audubon take it from us. Through their benevolence the 75′ limited use buffer that separated me from the swamp I border, became in 2009, a 250′ buffer some of which I cannot use at all. And like it seems is often the case, Mr. Duchesne, a waterfront homeowner apparently not subject to these rules himself, is either understating known affects to further his cause or simply does not know the consequences of the regulations he helped to impose. As one of those unfortunate enough to live near these recently classified “significant wildlife habitat” areas who has testifyed before him as he sat on the Environment and Natural Resources Committee, I don’t think its the latter. The rule changes made in 2006 that enabled the 2009 buffer change as well as takings for vernal pools should be entirely repealed, not just tinkered with. These “duck protections” have taken use and value from thousands of rural Mainers for whom their land is their 401k, their nest egg, their income and their insurance. Look out rural landowner, they’re not done yet either. They’re already well on their way to adding ”Deer Wintering Areas and Travel Corridors” to the list of sanctuaries. What’s next, all grassy areas for Eastern Blue Birds, Horned Larks and Eastern Meadowlarks? If the state wants to protect wildlife without causing resentment and backlash they should do it through education, voluntary measures, incentives and in cases of true critical habitat, outright purchase. Simply stealing it from rural property owners because the people of Maine will not support protection with their own hard earned money is just plain wrong.
Anonymous

Thanks for making a contribution to saving other species.
When is the last time you visited http://www.heatisonline.org or http://www.realclimate.org/
Big paradigm shift coming and I am afraid your ducks may not survive,eh?
Anonymous

Ducks Unlimited is part of the wealthy lobby promoting Federal land acquisition. Please don’t give them money.
Anonymous

So is it your non-cynical view that this law has nothing to do with protecting species from the juggernaut of human induced habitat destruction and is only intended to “take private property”?
Anonymous

Audubon is not “bird watchers”; it is a radical anti-private property lobby that has been pushing for all kinds of sweeping land use prohibitions on behalf of its very wealthy preservationist membership. It represents wealthy elitists and political insiders who have what they want and are trying to suppress everyone else around them and elsewhere in rural Maine that they regard as their playground. They have a feudalist mentality and a lot of political power, including their own representatives in the state legislature and insider connections in state agencies.

Audubon has openly promoted the National Park Service taking other peoples private property on a massive scale as well as the 26 million acre Federal Greenline land use prohibition scheme across Maine and three other states — it was Audubon VP Brock Evans who made the infamous “take it all” speech at Tufts University in Massachusetts which is so revealing.

Audubon has been taking outside money for decades to map and “study” other people’s private property targeted in Maine. They have been collaborating with the State Planning Office promoting and planning for restrictive “habitat” schemes that go far beyond the scope of the ”bird habitat’ takeover. The Koffman ‘bird habitat’ scandal is a morally reprehensible intrusion intentionally and cynically seizing control of private property for an arrogant, wealthy lobby of political elitists, but it is only the tip of the iceberg for the rest of their ‘habitat’ plans.

Audubon’s elitist Duchesne posturing as a supposed expert and “neutral” arbiter in the legislature and in the media, now with a BDN column, is preposterous. Get the Audubon corruption out of Maine.
Anonymous

Koch brothers are worth a combined 50 BILLION dollars yet they continue to complain that the market is unfairly rigged against them. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Anonymous

It is a well known fact that birds and their advocates are enemies of property rights generally and part of a insidious “Orwellian nightmare” conspiracy to subvert the republic. It was probably right up there on Stirling Haydens list of concerns in his role as Gen. Torgession in Dr. Strangelove. Thanks to all on this string for alerting us to the dangers involved in drawing breath in Maine. Tin foil hats may amplify the signals these filthy avian’s use to communicate among themselves and with their human co conspirators. Give it a spin, another benefit is real patriots can recognize each other.
Anonymous

Duchesne is “contributing” other people’s private property to Audubon bird zoos imposed and enforced by the state on his behalf.
Anonymous

Ducks Unlimited has done more to promote waterfowl habitat than any organization in history. As an avid duck hunter I can assure you that waterfowl numbers have rebounded due to their efforts. That being said I do agree that we need to keep some wild spaces. I don’t understand the appeal of say Phillips Lake, with every scrap of shoreline developed, living on top of your neighbors just so you can say you “live on the lake”
Anonymous

Fear mongering much? Nothing wrong with conservation. Why do people even want to build so close to marshes and water, they all complain about the black flies and mosquitoes for half the year anyway.
Anonymous

But they lobby for land for public use as well as land for conservation protection.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

You may want to read up on them.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

Yes.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NXPTPFL746OV2VGR5WBOEUF6W4 Roger

If it is your land and you paid for it and pay taxes on it then you should be able to build YOUR house on it where you please. Just because some college kid says bird may nest on your land takes your right to use your land then it is a HUGE issue.
Anonymous

So does that mean you can drain any swamp you want too, should you be able to store toxic waste on your own land when you’ve got neighbors and a stream that leads to a common use water source. It may be privately owned land, but with everything else there should be restrictions. Granted small landowners with camps and houses should have more freedom in how they build, the permitting needs to reach a balance. It’s not the little guy that is making problems most of the time, it’s big development, and our waterways and wetlands should be afforded some protection. I was being facetious by the way.
Anonymous

My home impacted by this is over 100 years old and is not “destroying habitat”, neither are the owners who wanted to build on their own property who have been screwed by you. We happen to like the birds — or did before you made them a threat. Go make your own bird sanctuary at your own expense if that is what you are interested in. Your preservationism does not justify seizing other people’s private property or your cynical back door sneak attacks no matter what you think of “habitat”.
Anonymous

Duck’s Unlimited is one of the wealthy lobbies that promotes the Federal government seizing private property. That is exactly what happened, for example, at the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge — they said they wanted more birds so that hunters could shoot them down in the mid Atlantic region. Isn’t that nice? Who cares that you want ‘waterfowl numbers’ so you can shoot the birds when you do it by trampling private ownership rights. ‘Waterfowl numbers’ are not the standard.
Anonymous

You did.
Anonymous

“Pave paradise and put up a parking lot . . .”
Anonymous

wow you are paranoid!
Anonymous

nope.

Outdoors

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