Sanford Airport’s manager was one of a group of aviation business leaders who spoke in support of a bill to exempt airports from the state protections afforded the 57 fish and animals listed as endangered or threatened in Maine. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

In 2017, two small airplanes collided with white-tailed deer crossing the runway in separate incidents at Sanford Airport.

No one was injured, but if they had been, airport officials would’ve blamed the endangered grasshopper sparrow.

It wasn’t the small birds that hit the planes, but the white-tailed deer that are attracted to the 70 acres of tall grass near the runway where the sparrow likes to nest. Because of the bird’s status as a state-designated endangered species, the airport can’t mow the grass that draws in the deer during the summer breeding season.

Grasshopper sparrow

“It does not take a degree or years of experience to understand that wildlife and aircraft do not mix, but that is precisely what our state law currently mandates,” said Allison Navia, the manager of regional airports in Sanford and Fryeburg. “Do not wait for there to be loss of life before change occurs.”

Navia was one of a group of aviation business leaders and officials who spoke Monday in support of a bill introduced by Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, to exempt airports from the state protections afforded the 57 fish and animals listed as endangered or threatened in Maine.

Maine wildlife officials and advocates have come out against the bill, arguing it is unnecessary and could put the state’s imperiled wildlife at risk, noting that habitat loss remains the No. 1 threat to at-risk species and that animals are rarely the cause of aviation accidents.

Pilots reported 142 collisions with Maine wildlife in 2023, the last full year of data available in the Federal Aviation Administration’s wildlife strike database. Records reveal a single coyote collision. The rest of the collisions — none of which resulted in human injury – involved birds, often a kestrel, gull or killdeer.

A review of 564 Maine-related incidents in the database dating back 10 years shows no human injuries from aircraft-wildlife strikes. All but 17 involved birds. In those cases not involving birds, pilots reported hitting five red foxes, four white-tailed deer, three bats, two skunks, a porcupine, a woodchuck and an unidentified land mammal.

Bennett said he considers himself a champion of the environment and an advocate on behalf of wildlife protections. But he said his bill is intended to limit the public safety impacts caused by animals that move to an airport after it is built, like the deer that followed the nesting sparrow into the tall grass.

Maine’s wildlife and environment agencies oppose the bill, saying they already collaborate with airports to work around wildlife habitat of even the most endangered species and have approved all 100 or so airport construction permits submitted over the last dozen years, albeit with conditions.

Conditions have ranged from short-term steps, such as hiring a wildlife spotter to make sure a listed species isn’t nearby when construction is underway, to more substantial measures, such as paying for land acquisition elsewhere to compensate for habitat that will be compromised by an airport project.

In Fryeburg, one of the communities in Bennett’s district, Eastern Slope Regional Airport couldn’t afford the $600,000 the state expected it to spend to buy other grasslands to accommodate grasshopper sparrows that would be displaced by its proposed expansion, airport officials said.

“We do recognize the permitting process can be burdensome in some circumstances and we are committed to working with the (Department of Environmental Protection) to make the process as efficient as possible,” said Nathan Webb of Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

The agency is asking for a budget increase to address staff shortages and improve customer service during the environmental review process, Webb told lawmakers during a public hearing before the Legislature’s Environment and Natural Resource Committee.

Environmental groups say states must fight to protect imperiled species now more than ever as the newly elected Trump administration appears likely to weaken federal environmental laws and as an accelerating extinction rate is raising the risk of biodiversity collapse.

The bill, LD 138, aims to fix legislation that isn’t broken, said Matt Cannon, the Sierra Club’s state conservation director, and would set a dangerous precedent that would invite other developers to seek exemptions, especially those who could cite public safety as a blanket reason.

“While we acknowledge the legitimate concerns raised about deer management, we question the conclusion that the only possible solution to a conflict over mowing schedules is complete elimination of protection for all endangered species,” Cannon said.

Bill supporters and opponents debated various strategies to keep wildlife out of the path of air traffic, from pouring grape juice on grass and hosing earthworms off runways to keep birds away to mowing the grass before and after imperiled birds build their ground nests.

But sometimes even the most well-intentioned efforts to save an imperiled animal fails.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection years ago tried to move a group of endangered New England cottontails when a Portland International Jetport expansion ate into its territory, but none of the relocated population survived the transition, said Rob Wood, the director of DEP’s land resources bureau.

Note: This story was updated Jan. 29 to correct the spelling of Allison Navia’s last name.