 Welcome everybody to the seventh in our new online climate climate series climate spotlight where we're featuring some of the most innovative thinkers businesses conservationists in Maine. With an aim to help the main people understand how climate change impacts our state. Today is a special one. It's our last climate spotlight series presentation of the year. You can tell I'm in celebration mode because I'm wearing a tie. This is the first tie I've worn in 2020 I had to watch a YouTube tutorial to remember how even tie these things. Since July 14 we've completed six climate spotlight presentations, focusing on the state of Maine's climate, community solar rooftop solar forests as natural climate solutions, transportation and home energy efficiency. So you can watch them all at main autobahn.org slash energy and I'm going to go ahead and toss that in the chat paste. My name is Nick Lund. I'm the network and outreach manager for main autobahn. Thank you for joining me. If you're not a member of main autobahn, you should be a great organization come on over to main autobahn.org and and join us. Today is our presentation called the latest from the main climate council and we've got some updates on the most important environmental work being done in the state right now. The main climate council a bipartisan group of manors from all walks of life coming together to find solutions to our climate crisis. Today we're joined by two folks in the middle of that work. Dr Cassandra Rose from the main climate council from the governor's office of policy innovation in the future. And Amanda Cross from the department of inland Maine, excuse me the department of inland fisheries and wildlife. Unfortunately, my colleague Eliza Donahue who was scheduled to join us today cannot join us. She's sick she's feeling better, not COVID, but she's doing well but just couldn't join today. I will say a few things in her stead. Let's do some more introductions in a moment but just a few housekeeping items. First, of course, the reason that we are hosting these presentations is to raise awareness of the main climate council, which is deliberating now on a climate action plan set for release in early December. The climate council is meeting later in this month, October 21 to continue the discussion of the contents of their action plan, and the public is invited to listen in. I may not have on strongly encourages you to click on this link which I will post right now. And I am pretty sure Cassie and Amanda will probably be talking about this a little bit more but click on that link to register and to attend that meeting which is scheduled for Wednesday, October 21 at 9am. Dr. Cassandra Rose is the senior science analyst and climate council coordinator at the governor's office of policy innovation and the future, which has the delightful acronym of go PIF. She holds a master's of science degree in geology from the University of California Riverside and a doctor of philosophy degree in earth and environmental science from Columbia University, and came to Maine and go PIF after working at the American Geosciences Institute. Welcome Cassandra. And welcome to the cat was the name of the cat again I forgot. Hi everybody. This is Max. Okay, and those of you who joined our second meeting in September may recognize him he has a penchant for joining me in my public presentations. Thank you everybody. I'm going to keep going on some introductions actually before you get started. Yeah, absolutely. I was I was alerted from the chat that the links that I was sending are not coming through I apologize I was sending him to the wrong people. So that should come through that is the link to register for the climate council meeting on October 21. And here is the link to watch the rest of the climate spotlight presentations that we've been doing since July. Thank you for letting me know about that folks, and hopefully those came through. I'll continue with introductions first and do a quick technical thing and then we'll we'll get started with Sandra so Dr Amanda cross works at the main department of inland fisheries and wildlife. She's got several titles or email signature is like paragraphs long, including wildlife resource supervisor, beginning with habitat coordinator and mains 2015 to 2025 wildlife action plan coordinator. So we'll get a little lesson things out. Of course, also among her important duties is serving on the science and technical subcommittee and the coastal and marine working group for the main climate council. She's coming to us from hearts well. Welcome Amanda. Okay, so just a few. Welcome. Just a few. And we'll turn it over to Cassandra is the correct pronunciation I've been screwing it up the whole time I apologize. Few technical notes before you get started Cassandra will go first followed by Amanda. We will wrap things up by about 1145 ish or so and leave plenty of time for questions. This is a zoom webinar which means if you haven't seen it already that the all the attendees are muted and their videos are off. If you have a question please type it into the Q amp a box you see down in the middle center of the screen that if you put them in the chat will lose them with other chats and it's much easier to organize in the q amp a so if you could please do that, you can enter them in the chat as well as any time will save them for the end and answer them together. That's all I think we're ready to go so Cassandra rose if you could get started, take it away. Thanks Nick, and thank you very much for inviting us to speak with you today. And you see my screen. Yes. Fantastic. Thank you. As Nick mentioned, I'm the main climate council coordinator in the governor's office of policy innovation in the future if you are on our newsletter you've gotten a lot of emails from me. It's a real pleasure to be here with you today. And you, many of you may already be fairly familiar with the main climate council I believe Nick said that you have had some presentations on it in the past. But I'll give you a little bit of introduction to orient you and we'll be talking today about where we're at in the climate action planning process and some recent reports that have come out to help inform the main climate council as it operates on the strategies to go into the climate action plan. We're here today to talk about climate change but I want to first acknowledge that the coven 19 crisis that we're facing in communities and a nation has absolutely been a huge impact on all of our communities this year. The pandemic is front of mind for all of us. And it can be tempting to push climate to the back burner. It's not a result of climate change, but it is a tragic example of the kinds of multiple overlapping crises that communities and states will face in a climate altered world. These crises can't be ignored and neither will be solved without collective action. Unfortunately this year we've seen a lot of these multiple overlapping crises with a lot of natural disasters, like wildfires and hurricanes and tropical storms, impacting the hazards of our nation at the same time as we're facing the coven 19 pandemic. So we're already starting to see how these multiple overlapping crises can make it really hard to adjust to and plan for either. Furthermore, like coven 19 climate change has outsized negative impacts on people with the least means to protect themselves, especially poor and marginalized communities. Coven 19 Council is tasked with ensuring that our most vulnerable communities are prioritized and that the benefits of new policies and programs are equitably distributed. When governor males came to office she may tackling climate change a priority for her administration. In my office, the governor's office policy innovation in the future, otherwise known as go PIF with leading the state's efforts to address climate change, but we can't do this alone. We're really fortunate to have very dedicated partners like the Department of Inland, inland fisheries and wildlife and made on a body and key offices around state government and private sector throughout the entire climate action plan process throughout the last year. Coven 19 climate council was established in 293 2019 through bipartisan legislation, and it was tasked with producing a statewide climate action plan every four years that both addresses the need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the need to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change. The legislation established two ambitious greenhouse gas reductions targets a 45% reduction by 2030, and at least 80% by 2050. And the legislation also included instructions to ensure that the state also builds out resilience to the impacts of climate change. Governor Mills laid out an additional goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 in line with the intergovernmental panel and climate change is recommendation of ensuring global carbon neutrality by 2050 to keep global temperatures from rising above two degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. The climate council is charged with developing the plan to meet these targets and goals, which is due to the legislature and governor this December 1. I apologize I'm going to pause one moment just to plug in the battery of my laptop, which I should have done before this so I do apologize, and thank you for bearing with the minor interruption. The main climate council is currently considering and selecting among many excellent strategies recommended by its six working groups and the scientific and technical subcommittee. They're considering these strategies in the context of public feedback and several recent reports and analyses which I'll be talking about in the next few slides. Once they'll be finalizing with strategies recommended by the working groups, or strad additional strategies recommended by climate council members will be included in this first four year climate action plan, which as I mentioned before will be delivered to the legislature and governor on December 1. The next main climate council meeting will be held Wednesday, October 21. And it's open to public observation. Please feel free to visit climate council dot main dot gov for the registration link and details. And this is also the same links that Nick put in the chat before. So this is a maybe a familiar chart to some of you but just in case nobody seen it before I thought I'd go over briefly. The main climate council is a 39 member assembly of scientists industry leaders, bipartisan state and local officials representatives of Maine's youth and tribes and many more, who are responsible for developing a climate action plan for these folks are have been appointed by the governor, and they've been assisted by the work of six fantastic working groups and the scientific and technical subcommittee over the last year. Dr. Amanda Cross, who is speaking right after me is a member of the scientific and technical subcommittee as well as. I think at last count at least two working groups so she's had a really interesting and unique perspective working across a lot of these groups. So these working groups and the climate council to all together comprise about 230 volunteer members who did a great deal of research on public stakeholder engagement and public and stakeholder engagement and development of draft strategies to reduce our emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change which they presented to the climate council in June. The scientific and technical subcommittee worked over the last year to produce a report that identifies the impacts of climate change in Maine, as well as a few other deliverables that I'll talk about on the next slide. So as I mentioned the STS was charged with providing a summary of the impacts of climate change in Maine, as well as some specific projections like estimates of sea level rise over the next century. The report was comprised of over 30 volunteer scientists from government and non government organizations around the state, plus bipartisan state legislator involvement. Their report cover subjects, including broad climate change impacts, hydrology, biodiversity on land and at sea, public health, the economy, agriculture and more. The scientists came from the University of Maine, as well as other non university non state organizations like Bigelow Labs, both main research institute and many more. And we had helpful input from over 50 additional individuals that really helped to improve the report. So this diverse group of scientists volunteered a great deal of time and effort and expertise over the last year to provide the state of the science of the impacts of climate change in Maine, which is helping to inform the climate council as it considers strategies to tackle climate change in our state. I think this is a really interesting example of collaboration between a state policy making process and scientists from around the state that's pretty unique in state level climate planning efforts around the United States. And throughout the entire process of the last year, the STS and working groups have had frequent and continual dialogue about what scientific information is helpful and needed for the development of good state policy, as well as what data gaps remain that need to be filled in order for better policy and decision making in the future. This is also set up to be an ongoing collaboration, not a one time effort that I'll talk more about in a few slides. The legislature recognized when it created the climate council that the state of climate change will naturally shift and sometimes in unexpected ways. And the climate council and the STS will help keep the state surprised at the latest science and solutions to help better adjust our state level policy making and adaptation efforts in the future. The STS report is an essential component of the state climate action plan. And it'll be a part of that final plan. As I mentioned, the sea level rise productions are a specific deliverable that will help the state plan for the impacts of sea level rise now and in the future. And these must also be updated every four years. And this plan included not only a chapter reviewing how climate change will impact biodiversity, but also identified some science based based methods for building resilience for our state species. Amanda will be talking more about those conclusions and right after me is one of the co authors of that chapter. So I mentioned that there are several reports informing the climate action, the climate council right now. And the one of the other big reports recently finished was produced by Eastern Eastern research group and synapse energy economics. And to help inform the climate action planning process by providing economic analysis and greenhouse gas modeling of the draft strategies from the working groups. In addition, they produce vulnerability maps to some of the major impacts of climate change, as well as a cost of doing nothing or a cost to the state from climate change with our current status quo policies. One of the largest findings from this cost of doing nothing analysis including the fine included the finding that if sea level rises up to 8.8 feet by 2100 main could lose 97% of its dry beach area. Almost all of its sand dunes could be inundated and the main beaches region alone in southern Maine may lose up to $1.67 billion in tourism spending annually due to the loss of that dry beach area. And the loss of dune ecosystem services could lead to an additional $71.8 million or more in losses annually, plus the loss of essential habitat for endangered shore bird species like piping plover and leased turns. There's a lot of great detail and information in the reports that I can't even begin to cover today. So I really encourage you to download the chapters at climate console dot main dot gov for more information. My office also worked with the University of Maine's Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions to assess the recommendations of the six working groups from an equity perspective. For each working group strategy the assessments thought to understand how it would affect vulnerable populations, and to suggest improvements to the strategies that would help improve the equitable distribution of the benefits. Jeff delivered their final report to the climate council a couple of weeks ago, which is also available on our website. The recommendations in their report will be used to strengthen the climate strategies currently being considered by the climate council to improve them and to ensure that the benefits and costs of those strategies are distributed as equitably as possible across marginalized and vulnerable people all around Maine. The overarching recommendations from this report including include ensuring that our engagement with climate equity issues continues throughout the entire climate action planning process and beyond into the implementation of the plan. As well as trying to continue to improve and support our participation include and inclusion from a variety of stakeholders, especially from those communities who will be most impacted by climate change. In addition, the governor's energy office and my office are required to develop a plan to identify pathways and strategies for the advancement of Maine's clean energy economy. While Maine's 10 year economic plan which was concluded last year highlighted the opportunity to grow our clean energy economy with positive impacts reaching across many sectors. The strategies in this clean energy economy transition plan in combination with the climate action plan will help provide some specific strategies to leverage our renewable energy resources and energy efficiency services to recover and grow our economy, particularly with recovery from coven 19. The final report is still in the process of being developed, and will be released later in October, but an executive summary is currently available on our website. We have performed a great deal of public and stakeholder engagement. Since the delivery of the draft strategies in June, including doing a series of public feedback surveys. And I know that a number of Maine Audubon members filled out those surveys which we really thank you for sharing. And we received over 4400 responses from around Maine and over three quarters of main zip codes to these public feedback surveys. Now, in addition to that we received a great number of letters memos and comments from different organizations and people from around the state. So the public feedback surveys was not meant to be a scientifically robust public survey, but we did receive a great deal of really interesting and helpful feedback from the survey respondents, and I thought it was particularly interesting to see that when people were asked about what aspects of their communities they're most concerned will be impacted by climate change. The top three things that they indicated were that they indicated were people's health, wetlands, coastlines and intertidal zones and wildlife. In addition, preserving the environment was by far the most important co benefit of climate change strategies that survey respondents selected. So I think the survey respondents clearly showed that preserving the health of Maine's people species and environments is going to be a really important plant part of any plans tackle climate change. So right now my office has been taking all of the draft strategies and putting them into a larger framework that pulls similar strategies together for the main climate council to consider. We're currently in the process of considering these six overarching strategies that we identified through this process. So you can look at the draft framework on our website. I'm going to just very quickly go through this here, but I would highly recommend taking a look at the framework on the website, which really builds on these very detailed reports that the working groups put in place to support their strategy recommendations. So these strategies include themes like using less energy through efficiency electrification of both our heating and transportation, and ensuring that our energy sources feeding the grid are also clean energy sources so that the energy that we do use is coming from non carbon sources, as much as possible. The three adaptation working groups recommended a number of great strategies that we pulled together into these three overarching buckets. And some common themes here where that science and monitoring are really important to track the impacts of climate change and be able to adapt to them. So a lot of helpful assistance to our communities to both strengthen our natural natural and working lands and waters is also really important. Nature based solutions can be a very cost effective way of addressing the impacts of climate change and also improve improving the amount of carbon that we're sequestering environments and updating state laws and programs as well. So there's a lot of information I think I may have gone a little bit over but I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Amanda now to talk a little bit more about her experiences and some of the conclusions that the SDS and the working groups came to throughout this process. Great. Thank you very much, Cassie. That was a really, really excellent overview of what has been a tremendous and many parted process over the last year. There's so many folks doing a lot of excellent work as part of this team and at under the leadership of Cassie and others there at Gopiff it's been a really interesting process to observe and participate in as a scientist as a representative of a public agency. And as a main citizen, it's just been fascinating. So I'm going to share with you my screen I'm going to be talking about sort of one component of the main climate council process really looking at biodiversity and the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. We're talking a little bit about some of the conclusions we came to as part of the science and technical subcommittee, some of the recommendations we've made, and then kind of what can we do now. It is fantastic to have the statewide effort resulting in an action plan here in December that gives us sort of that statewide backing to take some steps that need to be need to be taken to help conserve biodiversity. But there are things that we can do right now, even before that those results are finalized. So bear with me for a second while I share my screen and hopefully get the correct one in front of you. Amanda is working on a fancy to monitor setup. I'm trying I'm trying here. All right. You know what it's funny it worked perfectly when we practice didn't it. Okay. Nick, can you see just my slide screen there in front of you. Yeah, looking good. All right, sorry guys took me a couple seconds there. Okay, so like I mentioned I'm going to I'm going to talk today really sort of about one component of the main climate council. And I think this is one that will resonate with this audience obviously conserving biodiversity, whether it be fish, deer plants, butterflies would have you is obviously a very important topic to the main Audubon community. And so it's a huge topic, of course. And so much of what I present today is going to be drawn from that biodiversity chapter that Cassie referenced before of the recently published scientific assessment of climate change and its effects in Maine. And while I co-authored this chapter with Sally Stockwell of Maine Audubon, we obviously could not do this assessment on our own. And so I presented here kind of a list of smattering of some of the resource experts that helped craft this chapter with us there are many, many people out there with expertise in all sorts of different topics when it comes to biodiversity so it was really truly a group effort to try to do an assessment of biodiversity in Maine and the impacts of climate change. So before I delve into Maine though I want to set the stage a little bit in terms of global climate change and sort of how Maine will likely mirror a lot of the trends that we're already seeing at a global scale. So many of you, particularly those of you who are in the birding community likely saw this report that came out last year and science Rosenberg et al. documenting this huge decline in birds since the 1970s so 3 billion birds is the sort of the short hand version of that report that you see in the news media. And this study reported that one in four birds have been lost since the 1970s. In addition, we're seeing trends in other taxonomic groups, such as a 75% decline in insects in Germany, even in protected areas. So in areas where there's no development no management in those areas we're still seeing large steel declines of insects. I promise I won't leave you completely depressed but we do have to be realistic to set the stage here. And, and other studies have looked at sort of what's going to happen in the future so we have observed declines and species now, what are we likely to see. And basically we're looking at something that that is unprecedented perhaps if we don't take action now. We're looking at a decline of 34 to 58% of species globally, faced with extinction, if species cannot move and shift on the landscape in response to changing climate conditions. Even if the species can shift and move on the landscape and when I say species I'm using that broadly to mean plants as well as wildlife fish and wildlife. Even if those species can shift it may not be enough, and we may be looking at a loss of somewhere between 11 to 33% loss of species. What does that look like in Maine, what do we stand to lose here in Maine. So this graph you see here on the left is a breakdown of what we have or at least what we know of here in Maine. Over 33,000 species fish and wildlife species here in Maine. Most of those represented in blue here on the graph are invertebrates, and you can see taxonomically how it breaks down 423 bird species 85 mammals, etc. We also have about 2100 plants, a variety of phytoplankton fungi, etc. So that's the stage that's what we're dealing with right now in terms of what we stand to lose. And then relatively we have quite a bit of diversity here in Maine when you compare us with other New England states. And why is that it's because we're at an ecological transition zone, we're at the northern edge of northern hardwood forests and the southern edge and more alpine or sorry more boreal type systems. We have this this edge of these two different systems and so we're going to see representative species from each of those kind of mixed together here on our landscape, and that holds true both for our terrestrial systems, as well as our aquatic systems and our ocean systems to. And just to kind of put that again into a global context, what we have here in Maine is really really interesting over the, the two degrees of latitude change that we have here in Maine. Sorry, the 20 degree latitude change here that we have in Maine, there's a similar change in Europe that exists we have sorry let me back up we have a three degree latitude change here in Maine. Compare that with Europe, we see the same change over 20 degree latitude. So what we have over three degree shift here in Maine in terms of climate is spread out over 20 degree latitude change in Europe so that's the distance of like two California's all of that huge huge latitude change, all the distributions of species that would occur throughout that 20 degree change in Europe is all squished and compressed down to a three degree change here in Maine. So we have quite a quite a bit diversity here. So, of those 33,000 plus species fish and wildlife species plus plants and everything else that we have here in Maine. What is it that makes a species vulnerable to climate change versus not. And so, generally, studies have shown that there are about six characteristics that can make a species vulnerable to climate change to not doing well in a changing climate. I have them listed here. So things like habitat specificity so species that can only occur in one kind of narrow area, the Katahdin Arctic butterfly is an example of that it's only occurring at the highest highest elevations on Mount Katahdin, nowhere else. Edge of range is another characteristic so species where I said again we're right at the northern northern edge for some species in the southern edge of others, those species that are at the edges of their range with shifting and climate conditions can get bumped out of Maine, either in the south. And things like that may, you know, include moose and mink frogs species that have kind of a narrow ability to to be able to tolerate different temperatures so Brook trout are a great example of that they really need those cold cool water streams to persist. So with large temperature fluctuations. Also, species that that are in systems that are really kind of the phenology is really specific so when things happen in that system are tied closely to what that species is doing so vernal pool organisms for example, really need a certain timing of spring rains to be able to to lay their eggs and develop and get out of pools before they dry changes to those systems can make those species that bring in vernal pools vulnerable species that have limited mobility plants plants are a huge group of organisms that have limited mobility in, you know, compared with something like a moose or a bear, and also species that are sensitive to pathogens will talk a little bit about moose as an example of that in a minute. And so, to better understand the state of Maine species in light of climate change. We had a very timely process, and sort of leading up to this main climate council process. Every 10 years we do an assessment of all the species in Maine through a process called the wildlife action plan, every state does it. We had our last one in 2015. And at the time we had just completed the state had just completed a statewide vulnerability assessment of all the plant and animals and habitats in Maine. And we took that information combined with other risk factors to determine which species in Maine were at risk. This particular plan deals with fish and wildlife species so I'm going to speak to those right now. So looking at all the different factors that are affecting species we came up with 378 species in Maine that are at risk of declining to the point that they would require some sort of additional action needed if we don't do something now. When we looked at all of those different species and looked at all the issues that are affecting them from habitat fragmentation disease. And so when we looked at the climate change review and climate change, we found that a third of those species a third of the 378 are affected negatively by climate change. So I want to give you some examples of some of these species that are in the action plan that are for, I think many of us iconic species that are likely to be impacted by climate change. I am a frog person, frog and salamander person and so the mink frog is one of our least studied frogs I think here in Maine it's one of the least known they're very secretive. They have a very kind of secretive call that that peaks at like three in the morning. And so many people haven't heard of them and they're associated with cold deep water ponds. They're at the very southern edge of their range. They're one of these species that's highly vulnerable to climate change because of being at the southern edge of the range and needing a habitat that stays cold. But here's another one. You may have heard of this species, and I'm sure you've seen this in the news recently. So moose a very iconic species for our state. Maine has the largest most population of the lower 48 states. That being said, our most population has experienced declines over the last 10 years or so. So, excuse me the winter tick is a species that has persisted here for a very, very long time it is not the same tick that causes Lyme disease, or other types of illnesses this is a species that is specific to things like deer and moose. They're not you're not going to find them on yourself. So this species what it does is it winter tick, as its name suggests, is alive and feeding throughout the winter. And as an invertebrate, it's depends activity is dependent upon the external temperature and conditions around it. And so as you can imagine, warmer temperatures, less snow, shallower snowpack ends up killing less of these. So what we've seen is that more and more outbreaks of really big populations of these winter ticks, especially in the wintertime and what happens is you can get many, many, many of these feeding on an individual moose. So this example I'm showing you here and research that was done here in Maine, and in New Hampshire is up to 70,000 ticks on a single calf on a single animal feeding over the winter. So what we're seeing and feeding and feeding vampire ticks is the way to think about it. So that when spring comes. Basically, the moose calf is suffering from anemia blood loss and a bunch of other conditions, basically due to this, this tiny little tick. And what we've seen over the last few years is 70% of our calves are moose calves dying, in part because of the condition that is caused by this constant feeding of ticks over the winter. And we've seen out and what's happening is while these these ticks of are always sort of been around and persisted with moose, what we're seeing is outbreaks more and more numbers of these ticks on our moose that are causing this really intense feeding blood loss. And you can see in this if you're hopefully not too squamish there's a pretty gross picture right here of of showing basically the density of these winter tick larvae that are feeding on a calf over the winter, and they're just they're just packed in like that. Other animals that are iconic are many of our bird species. Cassie had mentioned in her portion about the loss of dry beaches, and the expectation that if we do nothing we could expect to lose 97% of our dry beach area by 2100. Well, many of our some of our threatened and endangered species use those areas for nesting piping plovers are a fantastic example of that. They are already suffering from increased washouts of their nests because of stream events and erosion, increased recreation, things like that. Couple that with the loss of the habitat from increased seas and they're getting basically narrowed out in terms of where they can actually breed on beaches. Another kind of coastal species to consider is the salt marsh sparrow, and this species breeds in the in the high salt marsh area kind of just above where the high tide will go. And so as as tides are getting higher storm events are often coupling with the high tide, their nests are getting are getting flooded and basically the chicks are getting drowned out and can't get out of the nest to escape that rising tide. So, you know, in this case we have to think about some of the vulnerability characteristics of these species, they're tied to these really specialized habitats, they have limited mobility when they're nesting and so they're really vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Eastern brook trout another really iconic example and I'm going to try to go quickly through some of these require, you know, really cold water habitats here in Maine we have the last, you know, 95% of the lake and pond habitat left for the species. And you can imagine with droughts and warmer stream temperatures, the habitat that these guys can can persistent is limited. But it's not bad. Some species are expanding some species are moving in things like possums which we didn't see here in Maine, you know, a decade or so ago, or seeing more frequently now. Things like Eastern bluebirds and red bellied woodpeckers are expanding and red belly woodpeckers for example or have expanded all the way up the coast to bar harbor. So, where we might be shifting some species north and losing those others are coming in. So what can we do. So, many of these recommendations we provided in the scientific and technical subcommittee assessment as well as coming through the natural working lands group and the coastal and marine working group. But I do want to talk about these a little bit here in the context of what we can all do because I know sometimes it feels really overwhelming you see photos of dead moose calves you see photos of dead salt marsh barrow chicks and it's depressing. And you see a photo of like, of this from my colleague Kristen prayer at the main natural areas program of a huckleberry stand kind of on the edge of a salt marsh that's dying because that salt marsh is rising and flooding out that huckleberry. And so, you know, sometimes you look at this and this is how I feel what I feel about climate change. The forces are huge right, but we're not helpless there are things we can do and there are things that we can do now. One of the most important steps that we can take is to conserve and connect diverse landscapes. There's multiple reports out there multiple studies that show this, if we're conserving a diversity of landscapes, lakes, mountain tops right on the landscape, hardwood forest mix for a softwood forest if we're conserving that diversity and connecting those areas, things can move on the landscape, as they will, by allowing working for us to continue by allowing conservation to continue by doing it in a strategic way that links up areas, we can create basically the matrix in which these things these animals, these plants can move about on the landscape. There are a lot of examples here that I've shown of habitats that are connected, including this one here, where the main DOT installed a wildlife crossing structure up in northern Maine, we actually have Canada links moving through it. A lot of the science I won't go into too too much detail in the interest of time, but I do want to give you sort of the scientific basis of this. The basis is this concept of the, the resilient and connected landscape, conserving the stage. This comes from Mark Anderson's work out of the Nature Conservancy, and basically what it, what this work says is that a lot of the diversity we see on the landscape is tied to the underlying geo diversity. So what is the underlying geology the landforms aspect all that kind of stuff, the diversity of that is directly tied with biodiversity. So if we can conserve the diversity of habitats on this or the diversity of underlying geology and landforms. Everything that's on top of that stage, the players, the fish, the turtles, the plants, that stuff can move around that will as long as we're conserving the underlying stage that supports those species. And so there's this this theory of, you know, this resilient and connected landscape conserves a variety of geo diverse landforms connects them up and allows things to move as they will. That addresses a lot of things it doesn't address everything for species that can't move for species that can't shift. Obviously we need to focus a little bit differently. This is sort of a global initiative that many many different organizations are focusing on, including here in Maine and the Eastern Canadian provinces have a resolution to look at connectivity habitat connectivity as an adaptation strategy for conserving biodiversity, but other initiatives as well the Yellowstone to Yukon initiative, the staying connected initiative, all use this as sort of an underlying tenant to approach conservation. And you might ask, well, is it main connected. We're pretty good. We're 90% forested for the most forested state in the US. But if you look at the pattern of development so this is a map from the main mountain collaborative, overlaying the road network on top of forested areas. We end up looking pretty fragmented, because that imprint that that footprint of the road extends way beyond the road the footprint of a house extends way beyond the house, because of all sorts of different factors run off dogs barking what have you. And so, if you look at it with that lens, our landscape is somewhat fragmented, and we continue to lose about 10,000 acres annually. The Eastern Research Group that Cassandra talked about in her presentation, estimated that we are losing about 10,000 acres of natural working forest land every year. That's expected to increase to about 15,000 acres annually in 2030 and continue to climb. So what do we do, how do we do this, we can take steps now, take the stream for example, an effort was made to allow stream water to flow through there, but it probably doesn't pass a lot of fish. So replacing structures like that with structures that allow for stream flow allow for organisms to move through, not just things in the water but things that are using the riparian areas along the stream bank. There's been many many things turtles fish aquatic organisms, even sometimes more common species that we see on the landscape and maybe don't think about having any impediments to movement but even things like black bear will use structures these big big structures underneath to move about on the landscape. Doing things like planting wildflowers and pollinator diverse plants along road sides and in backyards helps create that connectivity among different patches of landscape that can allow different species to move. And also putting in things like large structures has multiple co benefits, not just to the species moving under them or near them but also in terms of flooding. If you can put in a structure that allows the stream to move as a stream, you're likely also going to prevent things like what happened here in the Valley when basically the sugar loaf was cut off because of major flooding associated with tropical storm Irene. And so I want to just kind of jump ahead a little bit and finish up here so we have time for questions, but you know we can talk about sort of large scale statewide planning, and we can look at things like where resilient landscapes are occurring this map here on the left shows that those places of bright green or where where it's modeled to be the most resilient, geodiverse places on our landscape, and we can approach statewide planning in terms of making sure we're conserving those a diversity of those and connecting those. And that's really important and that's part of what this main climate council process will help us do. And it also does come down to what we want to do in our own backyards, and as community, how do we want to manage and conserve our lands locally. So the Bethel community for us as an example of, of a collaborative approach that connects habitat patches between the Bay River provides recreational opportunities protects drinking water and supports working forest. And so we need to think at different scales. How do we approach us at a large statewide planning scale, how do we approach it within our communities and how do we approach it in our own backyards. And just to offer this up I coordinate this beginning with Habitat Program at IF&W, and we offer assistance to communities landowners land trust that are considering these questions of where the habitat patches in my area, how can I connect them, what uses them, what are the best practices. So if you feel free to reach out with any questions, or if you need support on any of that, that's what we're here for. And we're celebrating our 20th birthday so I wanted to put that on the screen, we're the longest running collaborative conservation program of its kind in the northeast so please reach out with any questions. And so I want to leave you with this. Conserving lands obviously helps a variety of things. It helps wildlife. It helps us have opportunities to recreate, but it also sequesters a ton of carbon. 75% of Maine's carbon emissions are sequestered in our forests. We get a lot of economic revenue from our natural working lands, 620 million from the forest products industry, 8.2 billion in outdoor recreation that's tied to these areas, and most of us recreate about 70% of us recreate so there are multiple multiple co benefits. But I also want to put this in the context of sort of the global responsibility that we have. Cassie mentioned how our climate goals fit into global climate goals as well. Our forests, our natural working lands are the lungs of this region. We often think about the rainforest being so important and they are, but right in our backyards, I think we forget this. We have the northern Appalachian Acadian region. We have the most intact temperate broadly forest in the world, right here. And Maine within the circle bears a big brunt of that in terms of land that is still forested and still intact. I won't go into this but please reference the report for additional recommendations we provide to protect biodiversity and to adapt for changing conditions. But sort of my final take home is that you know as a conservation scientist obviously I'm interested in doing whatever we can to conserve biodiversity and the systems that that need to need to underlie things for biodiversity to persist. But you know honestly it really comes down to what I have here in the slide here comes down to my kids, and it comes down to thinking about the legacy I'm leaving behind for them. And so if there's one take home I can leave you with today it's that, you know, don't be like the dying huckleberries along the salt marsh. There are things that we can do. There are things that we can do today, whether it be planting a pollinator garden in your backyard that helps connect habitat patches around you, or managing your wood lot for birds in mind. Audubon has a great program to help you do that serving on your town comprehensive planning board and making those sort of land use decisions at a town scale. All of that collectively does make a difference. And so be in touch. We're here to support you. And with that I'm going to turn off my presentation and be here for questions. Thank you Amanda very much. We are pushing on time so we have a few more things we want to get to before we get to questions. I want to say very quickly, Eliza Donahue my colleague cannot join us today but she wanted to send her regards. She wanted to send a note about how important the climate council process has been for her and for main Audubon. Eliza was on the natural working lands working group. My colleague Sally Stockwell was also on the science and technical subcommittee as well. Main Audubon is excited about this plan due December 1 and we're excited about the next steps in the plan itself we are there's a lot of recommendations that are up for deliberation for in there we are focusing on a small subset. There are lots more important ones out there but we're focusing on the ones most aligned with our mission which is you know what protective wildlife and habitat. You know very very briefly that means working obviously we know we need additional renewable energy site in the state. We're strong supporters of renewable energy. We also know that it needs to be cited properly so that we're not losing habitat or not losing connectivity as those things those things are installed and so main Audubon has a number of resources about solar sighting on our website that you could check out. We also know that local town planning as Amanda discusses really important so we are very supportive of specific actions from included in the climate action plan that that bring more land planning support to towns. And as well as change basically and use regulations to keep development out of areas out of vulnerable areas for wildlife. So and then there are some next steps so the plan is just a plan right then we have to take it and actually put into action and that means legislation and means regulation. So we need to be there throughout that to make sure that the recommendations are put in place and our and our follow through and acted upon. So stay tuned to main Audubon for that. I have a question in the Q&A about the next steps. And so I want to turn it over to Cassandra Rose to talk about what's going on at the Climate Council and I should say to we're going to get to questions right after she's finished. So if you have additional questions for afterwards please put them in the Q&A and we'll get to them as soon as we're done. So Cassandra if you could take it away. So we can get to questions. I placed the dates of the next two Climate Council meetings in the chat. And like I said before they're welcome. They're all open to public observation. You're welcome to join us. So as Nick said exactly the Climate Council is is working towards the December 1st plan. And it's really in the process of looking all of the not only strategies but the actions that have been recommended to achieve those strategies right now. And so they're really digging into the details and having great discussions in the context of all the information and modeling that I mentioned before to really select the recommended actions to achieve those strategies as well as those actions that might take a little bit longer or more study or stakeholder processes to achieve. So you can see the details and recordings from recent meetings on our website and to get a fuller understanding of where they're at. But moving forward I'm going to jump straight into a good question that asks you know what happens once the action plan is delivered on December 1st. Well really this is a plan for the legislature and the governor and state agencies to implement. So the climate action plan will require some legislation and and rulemaking. But in many cases that the state agencies right now are reviewing to see where some of these recommended actions can actually fit into existing programs or where existing programs might be strengthened to achieve these actions. So there's a great deal of review going on at the state agency level to help provide some context of the climate council as well as to what existing programs there are to achieve the recommendations and where there are still some some gaps. So that's all I wanted to add on I'm going to turn it to back over to Nick to moderate the Q&A. Great. Thank you so much we have a few minutes left before noon, unless people really need to jump on I'm happy to stay until all our questions are answered. Amanda there you go. So thank you again if you have questions please type them into the Q&A box down there and we'll get going. So the first question was from Tom. And I think it's for probably Cassandra or anyone who wants to speak to speak about the bipartisan nature of the council's work. You know what it was in a bipartisan group was there. You know what was the nature of the debate discussion. Yes, it's actually quite a bipartisan effort. So the legislation passed out of committee unanimously and passed with really broad bipartisan support in the state legislature. And the climate council was set up was that the climate council and each of the working groups and the scientific and technical subcommittee would have bipartisan legislative involvement. So, each of these groups had both representatives from the two major parties as well as a representative from the state house as well as the state senate. And the bipartisan bicameral involvement in all of the groups, and generally the public feedback that we've received has been overwhelmingly positive and very supportive. I think there's very broad understanding that the time for action is now we don't have a lot of time to waste to start reducing our emissions and planning for the impacts of climate change. The science is very, very overwhelming. And I think here in Maine, there is such value placed on and pride based on preserving and protecting our communities and our environments. That's a really big value to everybody we've heard from, and folks are really willing and energetic about getting together to talk about solutions that work for our communities. So we've generally seen really positive interactions and supports. And I think moving forward into the implementation. Continuing to see that positive support for action, particularly in this really challenging time of reduced resources will help ensure that we can start down the path of achieving some of the goals in the climate action plan. Yeah, just to add briefly, you know, the impacts of climate change are not not Potterson, right, they affect everyone equally. And so this is an initiative to protect all manors regardless of, you know, party or affiliation and I think even more than that you know this is an opportunity for economic innovation, you know, we can get in front of these problems and figure out ways to, to, to innovate and to, you know, create solutions that will bring us into the future this is going to be a positive thing for Maine. So hopefully it's something we all get behind there's always, you know, difficulty getting things passed or reaching agreement of course that's a normal part of the Democrat process. But we think we're, there'll be support from across the aisle and we know there's an input from from lots of different angles in Maine. So thanks Tom. I have a question from Edward about recycling. What's the role of recycling in either the climate action plan or in climate change thoughts there. Yes, so I will say that we actually had one of the past climate action plans in that main undertook, I want to say it's the 2004 plan that had a number of recommendations to reduce emissions. We did address waste management quite a bit and they, they had some modeling there. In this climate action planning process we didn't have a great deal of modeling around the emission savings of recycling. And I know that that some of the feedback that we've received from the public to really include waste management include recycling. I can't say I have a great deal of knowledge of what the, the exact emission savings are from from recycling but I think generally Maine is has had a long history of, of, you know, trying to tackle waste reduction and recycling. I think one area where where the state can help lead in this is in our lead by example initiatives that are starting to get off the ground where in this sort of a recommendation in the plan as well that the state can help provide helpful examples where we can reduce not only but be more efficient with our energy usage but also our waste. And so I think as we move forward we'll start to see more examples of that and pilot projects. It wasn't a large part of this planet completely, you know, under completely agree with the commenter, but by I think moving forward it'll be interesting to see how, how we can model some of the, the emissions savings. Great, thanks. A question here from anonymous about transportation, she says it's my anonymous says it's my understanding that transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Maine, correct. I can say that is correct. What are some low hanging fruits to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions transfer from the transportation sector. And can you say what the climate council is sort of considering for recommendations. Absolutely. And the commenter is absolutely right transportation is 54% of our emissions in Maine where a little unusual among us states were very, a very large rural state and so folks do drive quite a bit. And this is one sector where our emissions have been going up over the last several years. So, some of the low hanging fruit that the transportation working group identified are really trying to reduce vehicle miles travel trying to support people in, in both, I think, as we're seeing with the current pandemic, seeing where they can reduce the number of trips they take to go to work or to run their errands doing things like that. They really, they made a recommendation, along with the Economic Recovery Committee and the state economic plan to really expand broadband in our states, which can help support people from home for more mayors. But the, the greenhouse gas emissions modeling that Eastern Research Group helped guide, really identified a couple of big strategies to reduce our emissions. And in addition to reducing vehicle miles traveled another is switching to, to electrifying our transportation. This includes both having more electric cars on our roads as well as switching to things like electric bikes and supporting people to walk or bike more in their communities. So I would actually refer the commenter to the modeling because it has a lot of great details on what the biggest bang for the buck is. And the transportation working group report also has some great details on the low hanging fruit that we can do very quickly with current programs. And I should plug as well the climate spotlight presentation we gave a August I guess about transportation. I just put a link in the chat that featured Emily Green from Conservation Law Foundation and Barry Woods from revision energy who knows all about electric cars and various transportation solutions so give that a give that a check out there. So a couple questions left and then we'll we'll get out of dodge here we're a few minutes over thanks for sticking sticking to us. Jake asks, can the tree city USA project be combined with climate work, or how does that maybe relate to that work I'm not actually a program I'm familiar with but I'm not either. Yeah, I have I have very minor familiarity with it but I did just look up. So the Arbor Day Foundation does have a bulletin available for how the tree city USA project relates to climate change so I can post that as I guess an answer to this question here and the question and that I would say you know I don't know structurally what what that would look like but I would say absolutely focusing on I know Orleans not necessarily an urban or suburban area but certainly focusing on any trees that we can help conserve and you know do help sequester carbon do help store carbon and certainly from a human health perspective if you're talking about reducing, you know, air temperatures in areas that have a lot of pavement and things like that recreational benefits mental health benefits of having more natural and open spaces. It all ties in, but I would say you know formally as far as part of the tree city USA project I'll put that bulletin in that in that chat box so you have a link to it and can start and can start there. And again the benefit of doing all these climate spotlight presentations that is that we have presentations on a lot of different topics so I just also posted the, the presentation that we gave about forests as natural climate solutions so if you're interested in figuring seeing how some really great information from Adam Diagono from the University of Maine about how forests actually sequester carbon what it actually means to take it out of the air and put it in the ground. That's really great stuff. So, finally here, a question about, you know how much of a priority do we think that the conservation and connectivity stuff is going to be in the final plan that's a that's a really interesting question. The focus you know is on greenhouse gas emissions reduction. I can speak a little bit to that too but love Cassandra to hear from you and Amanda. I'll actually say that really this is, it's a plan that definitely it recognizes that reducing our emissions is sort of the first step to also adapting to climate change and that it's going to reduce our impacts. But this is the first climate action plan that Maine is undertaking that both addresses reducing our emissions as well as adapting to the impacts of climate change and becoming more resilient to those impacts. Those are on equal footing. Really we can't just do one and not and not address the other because climate change is already impacting our state. And I will say that habitat connectivity and preserving our species is also elevated as one of the the guiding principles to the entire planning process. The plan very clear the legislation really clearly lays out that we can't just preserve our communities we also need an industries but we also need to consider our environment and our habitats and our wildlife species and the STS with coming up with methods for doing that, but the working groups like natural and working lands and coastal marine also address these really important goals as well. I think further, or one thing in addition to that is that the natural and working lands group and coastal marine working group recognize that having healthy environments and habitats also also helps us to reduce to nature carbon from the atmosphere so CO2 going into natural environments and getting pulled out of the atmosphere and buried in soils for a long period of time. And so what we what the strategies have tried to do is not just achieve, you know, emissions reductions and sequestering but also try to identify strategies where we can achieve a lot of these important co benefits as well. Like having more habitat connectivity and preserving our species. So we were trying to do a lot at the same time. I will say that we've had a lot of fantastic involvement from scientists like Dr Cross, who have helped the Climate Council to understand that this is a really important part of achieving these goals. And you can all you can have habitat connectivity preservation of species as well as reducing emissions and sequestering carbon at the same time. So we're trying to as much as possible not lose sight of these really important aspects of the plant as well. And I think it's actually a great point to end on because you know the working groups and the Council have done an incredible job of doing some really great thinking in wildlife conservation and connectivity and providing some really great recommendations. But I think moving forward and we are you know thinking about moving forward already. All these priorities are up to us right up to the up to main Audubon members and up to the state of Maine who's going to elect representatives to pass these things and to put them into place and so you know, for all the folks watching this now we we're going to continue to need your help to make this a priority make make climate reduction and climate solutions a priority moving forward so the plan we are very much looking forward to the release of the plan in December and we're looking forward to, you know, continuing on after that because a lot of work needs to happen. So thank you so much, Sandra Rose Amanda Cross for joining me today this was fantastic. Thanks to everyone who joined and stuck with a little bit over time. Thanks to anyone who joined any of the climate spotlight presentations that we've done this has been a really fun series, and we're so glad to end it with a bang today. So thank you, everyone. Have a great rest of your day. Thanks for having us. Thank you for the invitation. Great to see you all. Great. Bye.