APPROVED CHAPTER
MARCH 29, 2022 516
BY GOVERNOR PUBLIC LAW
STATE OF MAINE
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IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD
TWO THOUSAND TWENTY-TWO
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H.P. 541 - L.D. 736
An Act To Enhance the Ecological Reserve System
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Maine as follows:
Sec. 1. 12 MRSA §1805, as enacted by PL 1999, c. 592, §3 and amended by PL
2011, c. 657, Pt. W, §7 and PL 2013, c. 405, Pt. A, §24, is further amended to read:
§1805. Designation of ecological reserve
The director may designate ecological reserves on parcels of land under the jurisdiction
of the bureau that were included in the inventory of potential ecological reserves published
in the July 1998 report of the Maine Forest Biodiversity Project, "An Ecological Reserves
System Inventory: Potential Ecological Reserves on Maine's Existing Public and Private
Conservation Lands.". The director may designate additional ecological reserves or
remove the designation of a parcel of land as an ecological reserve only in conjunction with
the adoption of a management plan for a particular parcel of land, and the process for
adoption of that management plan must provide for public review and comment on the
plan. When a proposed management plan includes designation of an ecological reserve,
the director shall notify the joint standing committee of the Legislature having jurisdiction
over matters pertaining to public lands matters of the proposal. When a proposed
management plan includes the removal of a parcel of land of 10 acres or more as an
ecological reserve, the director shall submit a report to the joint standing committee of the
Legislature having jurisdiction over public lands matters prior to the bureau's updating the
accompanying management plan for the parcel of land. The report must include a
description of the parcel of land, the reasons for the removal of the designation as an
ecological reserve, the intended uses of the parcel of land and the benefits to the public as
a result of the removal of the designation as an ecological reserve. The joint standing
committee of the Legislature having jurisdiction over public lands matters may report out
a bill relating to the subject matter of the report.
1. Allowed uses. Allowed uses The director may within an ecological reserve must
be allow uses that are compatible with the purpose of the ecological reserve and may do
not cause significant impact on natural community composition or ecosystem processes.
Allowed uses Uses that the director may allow include nonmanipulative scientific research,
public education and nonmotorized recreation activities such as hiking, cross-country
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skiing, primitive camping, gathering of materials for cultural and traditional use by a
member of a federally recognized Wabanaki Indian nation, tribe or band in this State,
hunting, fishing and trapping. For the purposes of this subsection, "primitive camping"
means camping in a location without facilities or where facilities are limited to a privy, fire
ring, tent pad, 3-sided shelter and picnic table. The removal of trees and construction of
facilities associated with these allowed uses are allowed. The director may allow other
uses when their impact remains low and does not compromise the purpose of the ecological
reserve. Recreational use of surface waters is under the jurisdiction of the Department of
Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
2. Trails and roads for motorized vehicle use. The director shall allow the
continuing use of an existing snowmobile trail, an all-terrain vehicle trail or a road if the
director determines the trail or road is well designed and built and situated in a safe location
and its use has minimal adverse impact on the ecological value of an ecological reserve and
it cannot be reasonably relocated outside the ecological reserve.
A new snowmobile or all-terrain vehicle trail or a new road is allowed only if the director
determines all of the following criteria are met:
A. No safe, cost-effective alternative exists;
B. The impact on protected natural resource values is minimal; and
C. The trail or road will provide a crucial link in a significant trail or road system.
3. Incompatible uses. Uses that are incompatible with the purpose of an ecological
reserve are not allowed. Incompatible uses include timber harvesting, salvage harvesting,
commercial mining and commercial sand and gravel excavation. For the purposes of this
subsection, "salvage harvesting" means the removal of dead or damaged trees to recover
economic value that would otherwise be lost.
4. Resource protection measures. The director shall take action to control a wildfire
occurring on an ecological reserve or spreading to bureau lands. The director may
authorize a prescribed burn in an ecological reserve if necessary to replicate natural
processes that maintain specific natural communities or rare species populations. The
director may implement predetermined wildfire tactics to protect the integrity of the
landscape and shall use minimal impact suppression tactics to the extent possible.
The director may use pesticides, including herbicides, and sanitation harvests to control
insect and disease outbreaks only in response to:
A. A specific threat to the functioning of a native ecosystem or managed wildlife
habitat;
B. A specific threat to human health or safety; or
C. A condition that is likely to result in significant damage to adjacent lands if control
is not exercised.
For the purposes of this subsection, "sanitation harvest" means the removal of trees that
have been attacked or are in imminent danger of attack by insects or disease in order to
prevent these insects or diseases from spreading to other trees.
5. Limits on total land acreage designated as ecological reserves. The total land
acreage designated as ecological reserves may not exceed 15% of the total land acreage
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under the jurisdiction of the bureau or 100,000 115,000 acres, whichever is less. No more
than 6% 8% of the operable timberland acres on public reserved lands and nonreserved
public lands may be designated as ecological reserves. For the purposes of this subsection,
"operable timberland" means land the bureau considers viable for commercial timber
harvest operations and does not include inoperable lands, which are lands not suitable for
timber production due to topography or hydrologic setting. Inoperable lands include
ledges, steep slopes, nonforested barrens, mountaintops, nonforested wetlands and other
nonproductive sites. Lands donated or acquired after the effective date of this section with
the condition that the donated or acquired land be designated an ecological reserve are not
included when calculating acreage limits under this subsection.
The designation of land as an ecological reserve may not result in a decline in the volume
of timber harvested on land under the jurisdiction of the bureau. For the purposes of this
subsection, "a decline in the volume of timber harvested" means an annual harvest volume
of less than the average annual harvest volume for the preceding 10 years sustainable
harvest level on land under the jurisdiction of the bureau to less than the average annual
harvest for the preceding 10 years. For purposes of this subsection, "sustainable harvest
level" means the amount of forest products that can be harvested over time without
reducing timber inventory and is determined by the operable timberland acres of land and
the forest growth rate.
6. Reporting requirements. The bureau shall report the status of ecological reserves
under the reporting requirements of subchapters III 3 and IV 4.
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