 Hello everyone and welcome to Maine Audubon's spring 2024 winter 2024. Let's be optimistic and call it spring. The second session of the 131st main legislature our priorities webinar. Welcome everyone. My name is Nick lined I'm in Audubon's advocacy and outreach manager I am joined by Francesca chess gundrum as we all know our policy associate the one who is doing. The the hardest work you guys could ever imagine right now, passing laws to protect Maine's wildlife and habitat. She sped down from the state house moments ago her car is probably still idling and parked crooked in the driveway as she They're not wrong. The session is underway right now we are going great guns, but we wanted to make sure that we took a moment to talk to our members our friends out there across Maine, all the way northern Virginia and beyond to tell you about what we're working on what are the things that chess mostly is up there in Augusta fighting for right now this week and in the next couple weeks and for the months to protect Maine wildlife and wildlife habitat. So chess. Hello, how are you doing well you're not wrong crooked car, but I'm here and present and really excited to talk with you all today about some awesome priorities that we're working on up at the state house. Alright, before we turn it over to you, I will just do we've all been on these zoom webinars by now we all know the drill but I will cover it because I'm contractually obligated to Q we are going to, we're going to start with a little recap of what we worked on in the first session of the legislature. And so we're going to go do that and we're going to pause for some questions if folks have them in the middle. If you have questions, please type them down below if you look on the bar and the lower part of the screen there's a thing that says Q and a type your questions right in there then we'll come directly to chess tonight that way that way we won't lose them in the chat or anything. That's the best way to do that will pause halfway for questions, and we'll talk in the bulk of the thing the second half about what we're working on right now our priorities this session. That's about it. We're recording this will be available on YouTube tomorrow if you want to pass it on to friends and family. I think that's all. And without further ado, I will turn it over to you, chess. Thank you so much for joining us for the wonderful introduction. Hopefully you're seeing the right screen. I'm going to go with yes thumbs up awesome. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to get right to it because there's so much good stuff to talk about today and before I really dig into the highlights from last session and then what we're working on this session. I wanted to take a minute to just frame us up a little bit and introduce you once more to our advocacy department at me not a bun. So, we advocate on behalf of public policies that are the best interests of means wildlife and wildlife habitat. And we do that at the local level. Here's that Nick again working on some birds. It's stuff right in Portland, which we'll talk about later at the state level that is the focus of today's webinar is what we do up in Augusta to conserve wildlife and wildlife habitat and beyond. Work at the federal level as well I was up in DC this fall working on some endangered species act. legislation. And with that framing once more a reminder that our approach our department's approach is science based, it's inclusive, it's measured and it relies on you, our members are supporters are volunteers and beyond that are really the secret to successful advocacy. So, we can't do what we do without you. So, with that, again, thanks so much for being here and I'm going to jump in to reminding us once more of what our focus areas are before I jump into the highlights. A full range of things and we're actually adding more as we go here. But we work on issues related to climate change habitat connectivity plastic pollution endangered threatened species and beyond. And we work in collaboration with a lot of different partners across the state, because we know that we do our best work when we do it together. So we work with education groups we work with environmental and social justice groups we work with climate groups. environmental and public health and conservation groups and beyond. So that's sort of the framing is that we're not up there doing the work alone we do it with some really impressive and wonderful folks who are just as dedicated as we are. And we do that work together. So, last session, the hundred and thirty first legislature had its first session in 2023. So what we're going to do here is just give you a big picture some of the numbers of the big highlights from from last year. So we submitted testimony on 56 bills. It was more bills than we ever have in our department's history, which is exciting. We're really happy about the growth and the directions that we're going. We, you, our members, supporters, etc submitted more than 3600 messages to legislators. And you did that when it was a timely moment that we needed our legislators to know that they had that we wanted them to vote in favor or an opposition to a bill that's a priority of ours and hopefully a priority of yours as well. And then finally, we also had our largest petition ever that we submitted to a legislative committee, which was more than 1000 folks signed a petition to help expand protections to common loons from lead poisoning. And I'm going to just put a pin in that and explain more about that bill right now because that was a big focus for me last session. So I'm going to do a little bit of a dive onto LD 958. So this was the lead tackle bill and lead poisoning remains one of the leading causes of death for adult loons in Maine. Loons will pick up lost or discarded fishing tackle at the bottom of lakes and ponds. They'll also eat it and just tackle that stuck in fish. And when they ingest that lead based tackle, they ultimately become poisoned and within two to four weeks, they end up dying and that death is brutal. They have seizures their wings troop they have trouble vocalizing. And this is a picture of a loon that washed up in 2019 up in Belgrade. And we did a really great job 10 years ago of trying to close them to address this issue and make it so that the use and sale of lead based small sized fishing tackle is not allowed in Maine, but there was a loophole that maintained in that law that painted small sized jigs were allowed, but we know that the paint does nothing to help protect loons from lead poisoning now so we worked really hard to close that loophole and make it so that painted jigs were also included and we did it. So we got 40 folks to submit testimony. Again that massive petition was super helpful. So thank you if you signed on or you heard about it. This was really, really great. We got bipartisan co-sponsorship and votes agency support from our wildlife agency and I got to watch in the house and then in the Senate as this thing passed which was really exciting running back and forth across the halls of the state house. And we got a ceremonial signing from Governor Mills for this legislation as well in red there on the left is Representative Allison Hepler who is the sponsor of this bill. We're so grateful for her support and everything she did to help get it across the finish line and then also right there is Rep Passenfuss who has a lot of leaps in his district and actually his oldest daughter is named Gavia, which if that's sparking anything for birders on the call Gavia Immur is the scientific name for loon so he had an extra investment in this legislation so it was really fun to work with both of them. And we'll spend as much time on the other bills as this one, but just wanted to give you sort of a full range of what we did to accomplish this priority for us. We also passed LD 57, which is a bill that added eight new species to main endangered species act list. Species gets added to that list. It means that they get the resources and the attention that they need in order to bring them back from the brink of extinction so it's an incredible tool that we have and we do everything we can to make it stronger and to make sure that those species don't need those protections get on that list. And that's what we did last session so we added the salt marsh sparrow, big nails thrush clips swallow black bull warbler bank swallows margin tiger beetle and rusty patch bumblebee and the tricolored So we got those eight on the list and thankfully because of a wonderful representative Sally Cluchy where we were also able to add to that legislation that instead of checking on species lists every eight or every eight years to see what species we need to add. So we now are doing it on a four year cycle which is way more appropriate for the scale at which we are seeing habitat or excuse me population shifts for species, especially those that are threatened and are getting close to that threatened and endangered marks so kudos to representative Cluchy. On the endangered and threatened species habitat thread here we also passed a bill to make it so that our natural resource agencies are required to consult with each other more so to avoid and minimize impacts or endangered and threatened species habitat. So this was sort of an oversight in one of our most important environmental protection laws. So we were able to add number four there again this is kind of blurry but this is this is what it looks a lot of my work looks like is looking in the weeds of definitions etc and thinking about what I can add so that all that underlined there is added. So that was great so that was a huge effort to make sure that those development pressures etc that are coaching on endangered and threatened species habitat are better protected and our agencies are working to do their best work. A fun one LD 239 established a state butterfly the pink edge sulfur this was a fun surprise bill and we cannot take credit for this. This was put forward by two really enthusiastic fifth graders from Old Orchard Beechers Laranger Middle School, who were working on a class project about state wildlife state birds state insects and thought, huh, Maine doesn't have a state butterfly. Let's do something about that. And so they reached out to their state representative another environmental champion representative Lori Ramlich about establishing a state butterfly and working with our state wildlife agency and having us in the room to support. We were able to get it done. And it was a really exciting and momentous day and this is one of those bills that clearly you can see how much I'm smiling it just brings us a lot of joy and it helps marry a lot of what we do at Maine Audubon and specifically in our mission of making sure that that education and advocacy and conservation pieces all flow together so we love to see kids getting engaged at all levels. And this was wonderful and we got to watch Governor Mills sign this bill into law as well and I also at the time, one of these fifth graders had a broken arm. So Governor Mills also signed his cast so it was quite the day for this for this young kiddo. So exciting stuff. And I think I'm going to turn it over to Nick to talk about the next three highlights. Let me jump in here for a second just to give chess a breather gets a hope it gets some water should be going hard in the second half to and I do see a great question in the question in a box. We'll get to that when we wrap up these bills quickly but for other folks if you have questions now about what chess has said so far, please put them in there and we'll get to them in a few minutes. While I talk about LD 1895 this was a huge bill that we passed worked and I must give a lot of kudos to our colleague, Eliza Donahue actually haven't mentioned Eliza yet so far our beloved director of advocacy left recently to take over a job at the Maine Renewable Energy Association as their executive director. We miss her dearly she's great, but we're doing great. But Eliza was a powerhouse behind this bill here which took a lot of work. It's deals with offshore wind. We need to act on climate change period and offshore wind in the in the Gulf of Maine presents an incredible opportunity to generate a ton a ton a ton of clean local electric power. And, but we need to make it happen and there are things we got to do to facilitate it going on. The first is a procurement or a very important important is a procurement which is a commitment from the state to buy power that is derived offshore. So the one of the main thrusts of 1895 was a three gigawatt procurement requirement from the state of Maine for offshore wind. That's fantastic. But there's a lot of other great pieces in 1895. The idea here is that, you know, Maine doesn't own the Gulf of Maine, right? Maine only owns three miles out from our shorelines. Everything else is owned by the federal government. And so states are sort of in competition for each other to get offshore wind to be able to control and have a say in how offshore wind is developed because we don't own the land. But we want to have really strong standards. So Maine came out and said, yes, we will procure this energy, but we're going to put some strong standards in it. We don't want it in, for example, LMA one lobster management area one, which is where most all 99% of the Gulf we want to avoid those impacts. We want to have strong labor standards and environmental standards we want to have research involved to understand what might be environmental impacts and wildlife impacts of offshore wind be in the Gulf and how we can mitigate those. All of those things were included in 1895 and it was a huge lift. And so now we're moving ahead. So we're going to be a long process but one very much worthwhile and we can get turbines in the water. Let's go to my next one. Okay, this is a very exciting one to me personally. A few years ago, I helped start a program at Maine Audubon called bird safe Maine which works to raise awareness about bird glass collisions in Maine. It sounds niche perhaps but this is a huge problem for birds across the country about a billion birds die per year in the United States alone from colliding with glass windows 1 billion. It's a big problem and we've worked a really great partnership in Maine to help raise awareness with the University of Southern Maine Portland Society for architecture a whole ton of volunteers. We've talked with tons of architects we've done a lot of work to get folks to understand what this problem is and how they can avoid it. As a result of that sort of by surprise, a bill came in the legislature called LD 670, which would require the state of Maine to establish guidelines for public buildings. So how the buildings can be built in a way that limits the risk to migratory birds and other wildlife. We passed this bill and Maine is now just one of four states around the nation that has any sort of statewide look at bird safe architecture. We're working on the process now of implementing this bill and we're working with the state and partners in Portland and around the state to develop really robust guidelines that will help me be a be a national leader really in in this field and so we are really proud of this bill and and we're glad to see it go through. Really for me LD 649 this is a very cool bill related to our bringing nature home program. We know that one of the best things you can do for birds is plant native plants in your backyard, or anywhere nearby because native plants provide homes for the insects that birds need to raise their babies caterpillars, and they also provide food in other seasons. Some folks don't want you to plant the things you want. I'm looking at you some homeowner associations. And so there was a sort of issue around the country where homeowners associations were not letting homeowners plant native plants they were saying you got to do some lawn or they say. And there was a big fight in Maryland, where a homeowner said no I want to be able to plant these plants and they won. And then we saw that up here in Maine and said we need to avoid this fight we're going to pass this bill that says that homeowners associations can't outlaw the planting of native plants in your yard. So we want to make sure that folks have the right to do what's best for wildlife in their backyards. So that's what we did. If you want to learn more about our bringing nature home program and look on our website for bringing nature home we have all kinds of information and, and when the season is right all kinds of native plants for sale so check it out and plant them. With a with a with a with ease now, no getting your way. Okay. With that we are on time and I want to pause now for just a few minutes and see if folks have questions about these are the highlights from last session the end of 2023. I see a couple questions from Rob and I last the first one about the lead tackle thing. What is the public being made aware of this ban. Oh, it's a great question from Rob was it. Yeah, Rob. Thank you Rob. So, it's an excellent question because it really is education is really a huge part of this as much as policy changes we need to make sure that fishermen, etc know about these changes so thankfully we have a program in Maine, called fish led free. This is with it's a collaboration between us, the department of inlet fisheries and wildlife main lakes and a few other organizations that actually help not only get educational materials out to fishing organizations out to docs, etc. But we've have a website as well a fish led free.org I think you can click on the main base tab. We've also got a voucher system in place. So, we understand that this, we don't want there to be barriers and people to, you know, being able to fish and so if you need to get rid of your lead based gear now because of these changes. You can look out for vouchers that are available at fishing shows etc sportsman shows to for every I believe ounce of lead that you turn in, you get a $10 voucher that you can use it several main base stores so that's one example of many programs that we've got in the works to educate and then to help also lift that burden off of folks. A lot of that base gear. Yeah. Thank you Jess. Rob is on fire right now he comes back with another question about the bird safe initiative wondering if there's anything in the initiative that encourages manufacturers or homeowners to use bird safe bass in their single family. So I will say that the bill that we passed does not address single family homes, except that part of the goal here is to educate architects about this problem. The last collisions is not something that is taught in architecture school right now. So you have all these architects coming out being unaware not knowing, you know that they're about reflective glass or, or those issues. And so a side effect and a real benefit from any of the advocacy we can do around bird safe class stuff is educating architects about the problem fundamental. So that's one of the projects on any size home. That said, bird safe main outside of this bill that we passed has it has a lot of resources about single family homes. We stock decals in our stores we have information about strategies you can use to avoid or mitigate the problem and other resources along those lines so may not have on certainly does encourage folks to take action at their single family homes. So that's one of the goals focused on state funded buildings. Okay, if I stop right now we are right on track. I love it. Any last I don't see any last question so I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to chess for the second half. Okay, second half, we're focusing on the now what I'm doing what we're doing up at the State House this 2024 legislative session this is the second session right of the 131. And we've got some really big topics, many of which are moving, as we are talking right now today, I had to leave a hearing early for example, there's just a lot moving even in the evening hours so lots and flux so we're going to focus on some big, bigger topics here, but I'll just say over and over look out for more updates from us and action alerts for ways to engage on all the topics that we're about to talk about moving forward. So with that, a huge topic for us this session. Look at all of these LD numbers is land use planning so every session has some themes the big stories, and there are a couple different really major topics that our legislation will be handling the session, one of which is housing and I'm sure you've been if you've been catching up on the news and paying attention to things. You, this isn't a huge surprise right. So main needs a lot more housing in order to keep up with under production currently we need a 40,000 new homes, just to keep up with our current needs and then by 2030 we need another 40,000. So that's a lot as we have a growing population in Maine as well. More and more folks are coming to the state to live so we are thinking really thoughtfully about where we want to build and where we want to develop and how we want to grow. As communities in Maine and around the country this is not a main base issue right are working to address this urgent need for housing. We know that wildlife and wildlife habitat can suffer if development occurs either too quickly or without proper considerations or unintended impacts. So, growth, the growth that we need and the conservation that we also need can coexist, and they must. But we really have to be smart about it so several of our priority bills for this legislative session deal with exactly that and this list. These are some bills that we're happy with some bills that we are working really hard to make better. Some bills we are not happy with, and there's a little bit of everything in between. So, I never thought I'd spend about a third of my work up in the housing committee at the state legislature but that is where I have been. So, with that, I'll say to that a huge part of the puzzle here is planning. Right, we want to make sure that we're being smart as we do this growing so we want to grow up, not out. We want to think about compact development mixed use development making sure we've not got long windy roads leading out to our rural farmlands, or other working lands. How can we do this in a really thoughtful and judicious way so that we need our housing goals and our conservation goals so that's the framing all the time so a lot of legislation is dealing with the importance of that planning element making sure that towns have the technical assistance and guidance that they need in order to do this smart kind of planning, whether that's through funding which that's that's a huge part of it, making sure that there is staff at the state level to help guide a lot of the work that towns want to do. And I'll lift up highlighted here is beginning with habitat, which is an incredible program housed within the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, which maintains data and maps about our really important natural resources and making sure that towns, for example, and individuals to individual landowners and even on a regional basis at really all levels, have the information that they need to protect special places to protect places that are important for wildlife. And so, as I'm sitting in the housing committee I'm always thinking about opportunities for programs like beginning with habitat to be imbued within a lot of the legislation that's being forwarded so I'll leave that there there's we could have an entire webinar on land use planning right now. But for the sake of all of our other wonderful topics I'm going to keep going. Another big one is aquatic invasive species. So we invasive flora and fauna are invading mains lakes and rivers so this is fish and then all different kinds of plants like different pond weeds and niads mill foils. And they are accidentally introduced, most often by boats being moved from one water body to the next so that aren't being properly cleaned and drained and dried. Thankfully, as an aside to last session we passed some really good legislation related to clean drain dry, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done in order to make sure that that's happening properly one and two that those that are helping to do that work. Have the funding that they need in order to. It's a lot of volunteers who are doing this important work so making sure that the funding is there on the boat launch level as well as the. You know, water body protection level so making sure that our state agencies and the funds that are put in place to help address aquatic invasives are strong and intact. So that this is a huge topic for us LD 1342. I'll lift up this would raise the sticker price of the lake and river sticker protection fund sticker that folks get when you put it. It's just just frozen for me. Let me. Just tell me if chess is frozen or if it's just me. Oh, okay chess is frozen let me text her, then I will just take over chess. One second. The good old days of things. Going wrong on zoom. She's moving the slides because she's moving the slides. Hold on a moment we will figure it out. I just got in touch with her. And we're going to figure it out. Oh no she's off. All right everybody check this out I can do this with my hands. No we're fine. She's going to come right back on I'll let her in and she'll keep going. I'm going to talk over now about some shoreland zoning stuff this is going to be very exciting. Because a lot of us live on lakes and ponds in Maine know how important shoreland zoning is these are the rules that prevent folks from just cutting down trees all the way to the shoreline chess says she's working on getting back. These are lakes clean and healthy right protect the water quality for loons. Here's chess, what back. Whoa, dramatic exit I don't know where I exited but we did it. The sticker program that had jumped into shoreline zoning so I was just talking about shoreline zoning. So, if you want to pick up there that's great. So I got to share my screen again huh. Yeah. Okay, sorry everybody. I saw the unstable thing pop up and thought oh no. It's not coming. Okay, we should be good. Thanks Nick. Yep. So yes 1342 is going to help increase that sticker price just even a tiny bit to help us deal with a really huge problem that's already a problem but getting worse, unfortunately so we got to do what we need to do there. I'm not sure where you got with this but I'm going to just jump in again. Another big topic protecting shoreline. So there's a few different bills here that cover a few different issues related to protecting that really important shoreland zone which is with the first and this is the you know the areas around lakes, lakes and ponds and one LD 379 created a stakeholder group to address potential policy initiatives that could be put forward to curb the impacts that high powered wake boats which are coming are here in Maine currently that make really really big waves for the purpose of wake surfing which is a newer sport in the water sports world. These really big waves. When we make it to the shoreline, they don't dissipate in the way that other power boats waves do so. They cause more erosion, they impact that really critical common loon habitat as we know that, especially the nesting habitat right along the edge of the shore that's right where loons nest so this is, you know, where our antenna go up here. There's also water quality concerns with with wake boats as well as they stir up sediment in ways that other boats don't. So, we need to think really thoughtfully about how we allow for these new kinds of high powered boats on our, our lakes and ponds so that we can beat a couple times this summer it was folks from the boating and marine community from the water quality from state agencies from enforcement to you know wildlife us here. And actually tomorrow afternoon. State's wildlife agency will be delivering a draft of the report to the legislatures inland fisheries and wildlife committee of what we found where there was consensus where we need where there was not consensus because that always happens in stakeholder groups but hopefully where there were moments of of consensus we will be able to forward some sort of legislation from the committee this session to deal with something here with wake boats. The other sort of flip of this is on really the more land focused side. And that has to do with shoreland zoning. So shoreland zoning rules generally on the state municipal level are really critical to protecting that water quality common loon habitat, etc. But they're not always enough and sometimes people find ways around them, or just don't deal with them in the ways that they're supposed to. And that's a really rosy way of putting it. But right now we're seeing that as we've got more and more people coming to mean more people are really interested in living on the you know the edges of lakes and ponds and we're seeing that, you know, trees are being pulled out for beaches and folks are getting shoreland violations and then moving on to the next you know property that they might have so it's just becoming a really big problem. So these latter two LDs here actually make it so that folks who have previous shoreland violations, you know, can't get future permits, at least for five years. It takes away permits if people have them and they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing with their, you know, permitting for development or whatever they're up to. And if they do violate their permit, there's actually one of these bills places a lien on that property so that the town doesn't have to absorb that I cost because what we're seeing, especially in our lakes regions as towns are now having to go and do this work of trying to facilitate or figure out how to you know protect this really critical and some and often sensitive areas, this zone, and it just becomes really exorbitant and expensive. So, this is a fair way to address this problem. So this is another huge topic area for us. And another bill here on the land conservation side of things, LD 1285 which would infuse two rounds of $10 million into the land for mains future fund and LMF, for short, is mains most successful land conservation program. It's a large part because it is so diverse and collaborative in nature. It brings together tons of different stakeholders from the working waterfront side to the conservation side to the, you know, wildlife side, and recreational side, etc. So for historically this program has been funded by bonds. So if you are an avid voter in Maine you might recall over many years right that we've had you've voted, or you've, you know, hopefully voted in support of, of passing LMF bonds. And while that's great and well that's actually really not a sustainable funding model for something like LMF our most successful conservation land conservation program. So to make sure we're thinking about ways to secure long term and reliable funding for programs like LMF, amongst others. But this is a great bridge for the moment so we did some good. funding across the LMF program in the previous legislature, but that is going to run out so this is just to help us get to the next stage so that we can think more thoughtfully about how we really keep this fully funded into the into the future. So this bill is currently on the appropriations table which all the funding elements of bills really happen at the end of the legislative session. So stay tuned. Another topic area for us is the Wabanaki studies bill LD 1642. So, big picture in 2001, Maine passed the original Wabanaki studies law, which required in statute that schools in Maine teach Wabanaki history Wabanaki culture, etc. And that was great. And a commission came together to figure out you bring the proper expertise that was needed to the table to make sure that that curricula was thorough, accurate, and being dispersed in ways that, you know, it would be really successful. However, many years later here, 23 years later, there's a lot of gaps too many, not only in the ways in which things are being taught, but really that they're being taught at all. So, here's, you know, we've got, there's a lot of compounding factors here of course within the, you know, and, and pains on the educational system generally. But this is really important. And we are advocating for this bill as it brings together, it reconvenes that commission to figure out how we really deploy Wabanaki studies and schools. Keep it well funded and make sure that teachers have the resources the accurate resources that they need to teach Wabanaki history and and culture and, you know, another big picture here too is so much of what Wabanaki teachings are based on living in relationship with lands, waters and wildlife. And that is critical to the work that we're doing here and beyond. So any opportunity we have to advocate for more of this kind of thinking in main schools, we're going to be there. So, this bill is being heard in a work session later this week. So we'll see where, how funding is going for this one so stay tuned you might might get an action alert about this in the coming days, we shall see. Another Wabanaki bill, the big sovereignty or self determination bill. So, I'm sure this is hopefully not the first time you've heard about this bill and certainly not from us as a starter is this is something very much that is a broad sweeping effort to recognize the inherent sovereignty of the Wabanaki nations. So, it was an effort last legislative session to forward and a big bill to recognize the inherent sovereignty of the Wabanaki tribes and that was not that did not move forward so this is a second attempt. And we're still this bill has not had its public hearing yet so it will likely come up in the coming weeks so stay tuned here but again big picture 100 businesses organizations from environmental and conservation to faith to social justice to public health, etc, support this effort to write this wrong and to forward a fair and just path where we do right by our Wabanaki neighbors so more on this one as well in the future. And another big bill for us is the open space tax credit bill LD 1648 which is actually what I came screeching in here from this is just this afternoon is there was an initial work session on on this bill. The open space tax credit program is one of many, one of a few programs we have in Maine which helps lower the value of property if a landowner does something special to that property and in this case for open space. So it would be, you know, coming up with a plan. Well, if this bill moves forward in the ways that we are excited about coming up with a plan to protect wildlife in a better and more sustainable way or to think about ways to protect your land for water quality, etc. So if you work on those plans with the state agency, you're how your tax on that land is actually lowered your assessor will lower your taxes so it's a great idea and it's exactly the kind of thinking we need as we are thinking about land conservation and general in Maine and making sure we're not just conserving for the sake of conservation but we're doing it and really good and thoughtful and hearty ways. I've been working really hard on this bill and this is another sort of diverse coalition wide effort. So this is just a need of a refresh to make sure that the credits that landowners get is the incentives are bigger and better as they should be. So, this is one that will likely be wrapping up in the next couple weeks. So this is the last big one on the list. Plastic pollution so there are a couple plastics bills this session but just going to highlight this one for now, LD 295. So we know, of course that plastic pollution represents a huge significant threat to wildlife and seabirds in particular right. So this bill would make it so that plastic containers and plastic packaging that are marked as recyclable, and they look like you can throw them into your recycling bin and then they go off and get recycled. But actually aren't recyclable in Maine that we don't have those anymore. So it's a big idea, but there is a lot of support for it which is great this will make it so that our recycling processing centers in the state are not getting overloaded by what you know material that looks like it could be recycled but it actually can't be. It's breaking down machines and really gumming things up so this is just going to make it so that you know the few plastics that can really be recycled are recycled in our state. So this bill has a hearing tomorrow morning so that's the first thing I'll be doing in the morning is testifying in support of this bill alongside some public health and other environmental groups. But this whole sort of area for plastics and beyond is called truth and labeling. So stay tuned on this one as well but, and there are a few other plastics bills but I think I'll leave it. I will leave it there. Good afternoon on time. Great job chess. Thank you for all the work and and folks if it's not I mean it is clear but chess is actively doing this right now she's up there pacing the halls of Augusta, making sure our voices heard and you know as you saw from earlier presentation is your voices that we're bringing up to Augusta we can't do any of this stuff without your help. So please continue to you know subscribe to our action alerts. It may seem like it's a small action, but taking action and those alerts actually matters. Because when you go in there and take an action that means your legislature gets on their phone, an email that says, Hey, this thing that you may be not have maybe not thought that much about. I'm thinking about your constituent me is thinking about it, and I want you to take one thing or the other. It's really important to to fill those things out we just takes a second. So thanks for all that you've done and all you'll continue to do. I want to pause for some questions so the rest of this program now is just questions. And so we got a couple in the Q&A now if you've got others please put them in there. I will start for a question from Francis about sea level rise. If you've been in Maine in the past couple weeks you've known that coastal flooding and not coastal flooding flooding everywhere is a major issue. What are we doing to work on seal the rise. You know, I'll mention a couple things and just maybe you can finish off. We do a lot of work on sea level rise, you know, first of all from one sort of indirect way but direct way, I think, all of our climate change work is related to to seal the rise right so everything we're doing remote renewable energy to make sure that we get off fossil fuels as soon as we can and get on to clean renewable energy. That is tackling seal arise and all the other associated impacts with climate change. We also have another number of other programs the one that jumps to mind right now is our program called Stream Smart. Stream Smart is a program that my colleague Sarah Haggerty is pretty much the leader in this is facilitating the safe passage of large amounts of water through streams right so all across Maine we have all these stream parts and most of the time, there's just this tiny little culvert that is responsible for getting the water through. That's bad for a lot of reasons bad for wildlife because they can't often get up that culvert to migrate and move where they need to go. It's also bad for flooding because those culverts are easily overwhelmed and things and so Stream Smart is a program that works to replace those tiny culverts with much larger naturally wildlife friendly culverts or bridges. So that water can move more easily and wildlife can move more easily as well. We also work in legislature, although you know chessmate know what's going on this legislature. One another thing that jumps to mind is in May 2023 so a year ago, we passed a bill to facilitate the to finalize some rules for coastal protection. It basically gave gives homeowners tools to help them plant native vegetation and facilitate sort of natural dune movement in the beaches in front of their houses, which is great for seal of the rise and great for piping flow versus nest on the beaches down there. Chest anything to add. Yeah, I would that was great Nick thank you for the background. The current context right I mentioned at the top of the second half of the presentation that there are themes to the legislative sessions. And while housing is one of them. I'm seeing that dealing with coastal and even inland flooding related events is becoming another really big theme, at least of this. It's less week, two weeks, three weeks even and beyond so this is really on people's minds. Legislators are walking through the State House halls with photos on their phones that constituents have sent them of their homes up against the coast or even, you know, up in Western Maine that are dealing with flooding and their basements, etc. It's really on people's minds. So in that with that said to the legislature convened reconvened the coastal caucus, which is a subgroup of legislators along or caring about the coast it doesn't have to be in their district but they're you know intrigued about how they can support efforts to deal with flooding events so I was brought into that group to talk a little bit about what everything Nick just shared about what may not have done does because we everything's a balance that we're doing here. You know from housing to renewable energy, etc. You know we need to think really thoughtfully about what legislation we put forward to address flooding impacts to make sure that there aren't ripple effects that impact, you know people, wildlife, etc. So that's where my framing is when I come into those conversations and I expect given that a lot of the climate council meetings are happening right now the main climate council, one of which was, you know, convened as an emergency meeting this afternoon to really talk about the flooding issues so very much on people's minds I expect that we will see legislation we already have seen a couple bills put forward from a few state agencies that we've been working with them to make sure that you know we've got safeguards in place to make sure we're dealing with public safety issues related to flooding, but also thinking about, you know, long term impacts to habitats and etc. So, I'll wrap it there but very much on people's minds. Next question another one from Rob about the lay of the land on Wabanaki studies bill is there is there pushback or what do you what do you envision happening there. Great question Rob so it's currently looking like funding which is really the case with every bill, not every bill but every a lot of bills at least is a big issue. We have some ideas to try and find some funding to make sure that this commission can come back together to address, like I said the many gaps in the the programs deployment and then curricula generally. So that's the big, that's the talk right now is how are we going to make sure that this this can get funded this work. We'll know more later this week. I think we might not have mentioned to but all the bills that got carried over from the first legislative session. There are usually the bigger bills the trickier bills the ones maybe they just ran out of time there's kind of a spread for why, why they get carried over, but the legislature has put in a rule here that they need to report out so the committee needs to vote on these carry over bills by the end of the month, which is why everyone is double triple quadruple booked up at the State House this month in particular. So, this bill, we shouldn't really know more because it is a carry over bill by really the end of the month so stay tuned on that as well as you know a lot of our legislation. There's a question from Dina now I'm trying to get a little clarification she wants to know about how well current protections are enforced. I wasn't sure if she had a specific area and maybe while we're waiting for some clarification. Chesky you talked a little bit about the just the timeline of this session and and how long we're, how long we're doing this. It's on my mind a lot so it's a great question. So I kind of just gave you a little flavor of like this month is really hectic. Lots of committee meetings public hearings work sessions to get those carry over bills reported out of committee voted on and then they go to the full legislature for their votes so there have, I think there were some new additions were somewhere in the 60s or 70s of new bills, probably actually more with agency bills now 70s 80s 90s for new legislation for this session. This will have more public hearings and work sessions in the February and March on those new bills for this session and we'll get more in is the governor can put a bill in whenever she she wants to. So we'll we can respond and support or figure out how to, you know, improve or what have you depending on what she puts forward. You know flooding is on my mind I think we're going to see some flooding legislation so we're kind of waiting for things to pop up but the flow really everything should end in April. Good. I don't, I haven't heard of one that really has ended on time lately. So and that's really why there's such a rush right now this January work is because the last legislative session led into the end of July, which was way over. So this is a short session. We had our long session last time so it really should end toward April, end of April. Thank you. We did get some clarification on the protections it's very general so current environmental protections in Maine, are they well enforced at their room for improvements. You know, I would say yes and yes. I would say that, you know, Maine is a state that takes its environmental protections very seriously we're very proud of the way the state looks and the model it is for other states and so overall and there's a lot to this question. The state is fairly well protected, I would say and we do a thanks in large part to to you all and you know the work that chest does and all our partners. Other room for improvements, of course, of course and I would say a lot of that has to do with, you know, getting state agencies the funding they need to have people on hand who can enforce environmental protections. I worked for for when I interned for the DEP and their enforcement division when I was in law school and it's a lot of work. And you have to do a lot to make sure that the environment is protected. It takes people to do it takes money to do it and so those two things are in short supply, always. So, just I don't know if you want to jump in on that or to highlight the last thing you said there. We passed great legislation we've got really strong environmental protection laws in Maine. And when we send a mandate off to an agency and they don't have the staffing they don't have so that capacity, they, you know, to be very frank they pay in Maine for a lot of our natural resource agencies and beyond does not compare to other states so we end up losing a lot of good people. So that seems a huge problem. As well I think that's one in one in four. Positions positions in Maine is currently vacant. That's not good. I'm advocating a lot as well as our other environmental and conservation partners all the time to make sure that our folks at natural resource agencies and particularly that's our focus right are getting the support that they need in order to do this really good work that we already have in place and that we're trying to get established into the future. Couple minutes left I see a couple more questions here one is a great comment from Linda, a visual art instructor who said great things about some time that she had on a seminar involving Linda and how she had a great time there was very motivated and encourages us to push this bill, get this bill passed. We can't agree with you more. Linda I'm glad you had had that great experience. A question here from Daniel about the forest advisory board bill. You want to talk about chess. Yeah, great. Thanks Daniel. Yes, I got you LD 993. So this would establish a forest advisory board that would bring together a diverse group of stakeholders. You know folks with a wildlife focus recreation focus folks in the forest products realm, etc, to the table to help really implement strong and thoughtful thinking on the programmatic level and also implementing for policies for our forestry practices in Maine and there are a lot of stakeholder groups that are like this for other agencies DMR has a stakeholder for an advisory board rather. So it is IF&W department of fisheries and wildlife has an advisory board but we don't have one on the forestry side so this has been sort of a gap in that you know we really need to put our best heads together as you know what there is made has some of the most important for us in you know East Coast and beyond you know temperate and attack for us like it's in incredible habitats and species that you know we need to be thinking really thoughtfully about that protection and I know we're running up on seven so I would just say that that bill is currently sitting on the appropriations table with a small fiscal note it's only $5000 so we are getting some pushback about you know how this advisory board would actually work in function. And we're working on it, and we've got some really good partners in the forest conservation space who are leading the effort but we are there in the supporting role as much as we can be. And it's seven o'clock. We got through all the questions we did it. Chess thank you so much for all the work you are doing and continue to do and we'll be doing nonstop sorry for the next couple weeks. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. I really appreciate you coming on learning about what we're doing, making your voice heard for Maine wildlife. We can't do any of this without you. Thanks for everything. Let us know if you have questions at any time advocacy at main Audubon.org is a great way to get in touch with us and we'll see you out there. Take care everyone have a great night. Night everybody. Thanks so much.