Maine lawmakers have sent a bill to Gov. Janet Mills to bolster protections for seasonal wetlands that provide critical habitat for imperiled amphibians, insects, turtles and other wildlife.

The bill would establish a 100-foot no-development zone around vernal pools that support an at-risk species, like a spotted turtle or a ringed boghaunter dragonfly, or that qualify as significant due to the abundance of fairy shrimp, wood frogs or spotted salamanders that use it.

If this bill becomes law, no development could occur within 100 feet of a significant vernal pool, even after the pool dries out. About 20% of Maine’s 5,100 surveyed vernal pools are deemed significant and would qualify for extra protection. Most of Maine’s vernal pools remain unmapped.

“Vernal pools are small, but the role they play in our environment is huge,” said Francesa Gundrum, Maine Audubon’s advocacy director. “New federal wetland rules leave most without any protections. Climate change and development are threatening them, too. They need this extra protection.”

Opponents argue that Maine’s vernal pools are already protected by state regulations that offer some flexibility for developers. The bill would increase costs and decrease opportunity for Maine gravel pit operators, housing developers and contractors, according to the Maine State Chamber of Commerce.

“We feel it would impact development in the state at a time when Maine faces a housing shortage, growing infrastructure needs and a desire to attract new businesses,” Ashley Luszczki of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce said in legislative testimony last month.

The Legislature adopted the bill, LD 497, along party lines last week: 77-70 in the House and 18-14 in the Senate. In a brief floor debate, Republicans said creating a 100-foot protection zone inside a larger 250-foot habitat buffer was confusing, and that current regulations already protected important pools.

Mills has until Monday to act on the bill. If she doesn’t, the bill will become law without her signature the next day, June 24. The administration didn’t take a position on the bill during committee debate. A Mills spokesman said Monday that she is reviewing the bill.

Response to the bill is falling along traditional lines, with strong support from Maine environmental groups like the Lakes Environmental Association and the Natural Resources Council of Maine and opposition from the Maine Real Estate and Development Association and the Associated General Contractors of Maine.

Certain species rely on these fish-free pools, which are caused by snowmelt and spring rains, as safe places to feed, breed, rest and hibernate. When they dry up, the rich soil and leaf litter that remains serve as a foraging site for terrestrial animals and contribute to decomposition and nutrient cycling.

Maine Audubon describes them as “veritable fast-food stops” for forest birds, reptiles and other amphibians in the spring. The wood frogs, spotted salamanders and mayflies and midges that eventually emerge from the pools will later feed larger wildlife, from snakes to hawks to moose. 

The temporary nature of vernal pools puts them at risk from development and climate change.

This bill shortens the amount of time that a vernal pool has to be wet to be considered worthy of state protection, allowing for the increasing likelihood that they will dry out earlier as Maine’s climate warms. A hotter Maine means less snowmelt to feed the pools and more drought.

The bill also rolls back a vernal pool regulation initiated under the Paul LePage administration that allows property owners to build on the edge of a protected pool, or develop more than 25% of a 250-foot pool buffer, if the pool itself is on a neighbor’s property and not their own.

Philip deMaynadier, the biologist who oversees wildlife diversity at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said the change will better protect the terrestrial habitat that pool-dependent amphibians use outside of the breeding season.

“Of course migrating wildlife are blind to property lines,” DeMaynadier told state lawmakers during testimony in May. “To our knowledge, there is no other protected natural resources in Maine where setbacks and other regulatory standards end at a property boundary.”

But opponents claim Maine’s environmental laws need to be made more flexible, not less, if the state hopes to resolve Maine’s housing shortage, or at least keep it from getting worse.

Larry Grondin, the owner of a Gorham excavating company that employs at least 130 people a year, said: “Doing business in Maine is already hard enough with all the barriers we tend to put on ourselves.”