Traffic on the Maine Turnpike may be down this summer, but that other north-south freeway # the watery one just off the coast # is getting plenty of use by some unlikely visitors.

Boaters and fishermen, in fact, are being warned to steer clear.

Leatherback turtles, the largest reptiles on earth, have been showing up in uncommonly large numbers all along the New England coast this summer, including in the brisk coastal waters of Maine.

So far, seven of the huge turtles have been seen along the Maine coast. Three of the them, including one near Ogunquit Beach last month, were dead. The other four were tangled up in fishing gear but released.

And there are almost certainly more out there or on their way. September is usually the time when turtle sightings # if there are any # typically get reported in Maine.

A record number of sightings of both live and dead leatherback turtles off New England # nearly 100 since June # prompted a federal warning to boaters to keep eyes open for them. Many of the dead turtles have shown up with propeller wounds.

Maine’s national wildlife refuges have gotten used to a lack of money for biological studies, maintenance and other projects.

Now they’re dealing with staffing cuts so deep that wildlife advocates warn that the refuges are in as much peril as some of the animal and plant species they’re supposed to protect.

At the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Wells, for example, the staff has been reduced from eight people to five in the past year and a half. It’s even more severe at Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Milford, where the sole remaining position – manager – was eliminated earlier this year.

The nation’s 548 refuges, including 10 in Maine, are a last bastion for plant and animal species that are losing habitat to sprawl, pollution, invasive species or other forces. Refuges help sustain healthy wildlife populations and restore struggling ones.

Rachel Carson, for example, is a leader in efforts to save the piping plover and the least tern, two endangered shorebirds. The refuge also is helping restore the New England cottontail, an endangered rabbit species, said Ward Feurt, Rachel Carson’s manager.

Refuges also provide opportunities for recreation and education. Nearly 400,000 people visit Maine refuges each year to hike, watch birds, photograph wildlife or study nature, according to the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, a national advocacy group.

The alliance released a report this month calling for a renewed commitment to the refuge system started by President Theodore Roosevelt 105 years ago.

“Refuges have been so woefully underfunded. What’s happening in Maine is indicative of what’s happening nationwide,” said Desiree Sorenson-Groves, vice president of government affairs for the National Wildlife Refuge Association. A $3.5 billion maintenance backlog and an ongoing 20 percent workforce reduction are leaving wildlife refuges vulnerable and making them less visitor-friendly, she said.

Maine’s refuges face a $25.9 million shortfall for conservation projects and deferred maintenance, according to the report.

The elimination of all employees at Sunkhaze Meadows, which had four staff positions five years ago, means that refuge will be managed from an office in Rockport, although it remains open to visitors.

Rachel Carson, Maine’s southernmost refuge, includes salt marshes and estuaries scattered along 50 miles of coastline between Kittery and Cape Elizabeth. It protects prime habitat for migratory birds and gets about 250,000 human visits a year, Feurt said.

In the past year and a half, the refuge has lost its deputy manager, an administrative employee and the staff member who patrolled the refuge and managed the prescribed fires that are used to maintain natural habitats. The refuge now brings a fire crew down from Moosehorn Refuge in far northern Maine.

Some of the money from those salaries will be available to help manage the refuge, he said. But the loss of more than a third of the staff will have impacts, he said. “I’m of the opinion you get things done with people,” Feurt said.

Refuges nationwide actually got a funding increase in the current fiscal year, in part because of protests from advocates, said Janet Kennedy, federal refuge supervisor for northern New England. But, she said, “Up until this year, we’ve had basically level budgets and increased costs of operations.”

The staffing cuts, in fact, are intended to free up more money to catch up on deferred maintenance and other projects, she said. “It’s a solution for us to live within our means.”

It’s not unusual for mainlanders to head over to Peaks Island or some other Casco Bay community in hopes of making a home or raising a family.

Some stay and some don’t.

But it’s not that often that the newcomers are beavers, and they decide to stay on.

Peaks now seems to have two beaver families – or perhaps one family with a guest lodge. The two well-built lodges have appeared near the southeast shore and Trout Pond.

Along with building their lodges using branches, saplings and some pilfered lumber, the beavers have been hard at work on multiple dams. They’ve raised the water in a stream more than a foot and may flood part of Battery Steele this summer, said Garry Fox, a biology teacher at Portland High School and member of the Peaks Island Land Preserve.

Fox and other islanders have been watching the engineering project progress, knowing that destroying the dams wouldn’t discourage the industrious rodents from simply rebuilding. “You can’t beat them in that regard,” he said.

The first of the beavers is believed to have arrived about five years ago. One islander thinks she saw that one, tired and wet, climb out of Casco Bay onto the south shore near Cushing Island.

They seem to like the privacy of island life and keep pretty much to themselves. “They operate, it seems like, at night,” said Fox, who has yet to see any of his new neighbors in the fur.

The islands of Casco Bay are certainly no Galapagos, a cluster of islands off Ecuador so isolated they have their own varieties of bird and turtle species. But the nearly two miles of Atlantic Ocean that separates Peaks from the mainland is enough to give it a different mix of wildlife.

“We don’t have squirrels. We don’t have chipmunks,” said Fox.

Those smaller mammals can reach islands using the life-raft strategy – cling-and-drift – but the odds aren’t good. It’s a much easier journey for larger swimmers, which include moose and deer, a species Peaks has plenty of.

Raccoons can swim, but they’re thick, absorbent coat would get too heavy for a Peaks crossing, said Philip Conkling a naturalist and director of the Island Institute in Rockland. Raccoons do sometimes reach Maine islands involuntarily. “They have been brought out to islands … to be hunted for recreation,” Conkling said.

Someone on Peaks once introduced a raccoon, but it hasn’t been seen for a while, Fox said. Another islander once brought a skunk across, apparently to get the upper hand in some island feud. It was trapped and shipped back ashore, he said.

Coyotes have started swimming to some Maine islands, which worries those who raise herds of sheep offshore, Conkling said.

“From time to time you’ll get a bear on the biggest uninhabited islands,” he said. “It’s hard for them to find a mate, but there’s plenty of food.”

Conkling has seen beavers, or at least their handiwork, on several islands. Some young beavers basically travel so far downstream in search of a new home that they find themselves swimming in one of Maine’s bays.

“They don’t live in saltwater but to migrate through it is not a problem. They’re fully aquatic and they’re strong swimmers,” Conkling said. “They’ve shown up on Vinalhaven, which is 8 to 12 miles offshore.”

But, alas, the story of island wildlife is often one of immigration and extinction, said Conkling. Food and new habitat runs out before too long and it’s time to move on.

Fox, in fact, thinks the Peaks beavers may soon run out of poplar and birch trees to chew on. Then, like a lot of mainlanders before them, they’ll realize island life isn’t for everyone.

A big life and death struggle is quietly taking place in Maine’s woods right now.

White-tailed deer are trying to survive one of the longest and deadliest winters in the past 50 years. And thousands of them, mostly pregnant does and last year’s fawns, are starving to death, or soon will.

It is the harsh reality of nature at work. This is the northern edge of the deer’s range, after all.

But as with most everything in our modern, managed environment, we’re playing a role, too.

Maine has about 247,000 deer. And even in a mild winter – like the last couple – many die before spring.
In a bad winter, as many as 30 percent of northern Maine’s herd, and 12 percent of southern Maine’s can die.
This is one of those winters.

“We’re going to have some pretty serious losses,” said Lee Kantar, lead deer biologist for Maine’s Inland Fish and Wildlife Department.

Deer are not built for harsh winters. They don’t hibernate like bears and can’t walk across snow like snowshoe hares or Canada lynx.

They essentially survive by storing up as much fat as possible beforehand and making it last by conserving energy. They congregate in wintering areas called deer yards, mature stands of spruce or other evergreens that offer protection from deep snow and cold winds.

In mild winters, it’s easier to stay warm and move around to look for woody food, which is about as satisfying as it sounds. But once snow gets more than a foot deep, it takes too much energy to go anywhere. “When you pile up 6 feet of snow on the ground and you’re a deer, life is going to be incredibly difficult,” Kantar said.

He expects thousands of deer to starve by the end of this month and others to come through the ordeal so weak they’ll die next winter, if not sooner.

“This kind of extreme winter is really going to be felt for a long time,” he said. “It started early and it never went away. Deer were sinking up to 2 feet for an extended period. That is about as bad as you can get.”

Even now, in far northern Maine, as much as 5 feet of snow are still on the ground, he said. In southern Maine, a shrinking snow pack is allowing deer to move around, but they’re still starving. It will be weeks before spring delivers nourishing sprouts and leaves.

Feeding deer, although well-intentioned, is always a bad idea, biologists say, even this year. Sudden changes in diet can poison them, and drawing them out of the woods for grain can do a lot more harm than good, Kantar said.

In a winter like this one, however, deer yards can literally be a lifeline. And that’s where humans come in.
The quality and quantity of Maine’s deer wintering areas have declined because of roads, development and logging, according to Kantar and other experts.

Maine protects wintering areas in northern forests through protective zoning in some cases and, more often, with voluntary no-logging agreements with timberland owners. But some of those voluntary agreements have not held up as millions of acres of timberland changed hands in the past decade.

Calls for stronger protection of deer yards last year led to the creation of a state task force which, in turn, led to a renewed commitment by landowners and state officials but, so far, no new regulation.

The reality check taking place in the woods right now is sure to intensify that conversation.

“It’s going to bring things home,” Kantar said.

Wolves are well known for their ability to travel hundreds of miles from home.

But getting from eastern Canada to western Massachusetts would be no small feat. An Eastern wolf would have to cross the St. Lawrence River and survive a gantlet of traps and snares north of the U.S. border before passing through Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Or at least that’s one theory.

The confirmation this week that an 85-pound male canid shot last fall on a Massachusetts farm was a wild Eastern gray wolf is seen by some as further proof of an alternative theory. Wolves may already be living and breeding in New England, perhaps in northern Maine.

At the very least, the encounter shows that the animals could resettle here someday soon – if we let them.

The appearance – and demise – of a wild Eastern gray wolf in western Massachusetts is stirring up speculation about whether the charismatic canids might ever repopulate northern New England.

An 85-pound male was shot last fall after a farmer in Shelburne reported that something had mauled more than a dozen lambs. Tests confirming the animal as a wolf were reported today in the Boston Globe.

It’s the first confirmed wolf appearance in Massachusetts in 160 years, although a couple were found in Maine in the 1990s. The last confirmed sighting in New England was a wolf shot by a hunter in Jackman in 1993.

Wolves that appear here are believed to have strayed down from Canada, and some experts say such visits increase the chances of a comeback here.

It’s far from impossible. Maine and northern New England sit squarely in the wolf’s historical range and have plenty of suitable habitat.

And consider that scientists didn’t think Canada lynx were breeding in the state until 8 years ago, and now the cats have been tracked across more than 10,000 square miles of northern Maine.

Look here for more on wolves.

The old blog has been a little quiet lately, what with time off and holidays and all.

So it’s nice to get things flowing again with a little good news.

Maine’s loon chicks had a really good year in 2007, according to the 24th annual Maine Audubon Loon Count. The group announced today that last summer’s count recorded the highest number of loon chicks since the annual census started in 1983. Not bad considering that the 2006 count revealed the lowest number of chicks ever on record. Chick numbers jumped nearly 200 percent from 2006.

“It was great to see the numbers of young bounce back,” said Maine Audubon biologist Susan Gallo, who coordinates the army of 800 volunteers in the annual count.

Much better weather last summer was clearly a big help.

Another factor may have been a 6 percent decline in adult loons, according to Maine Audubon. Groups of non-breeding adult loons – “rogue” birds that inhabit large lakes – can threaten nesting loons, according to the group.

Rogue loon gangs notwithstanding, the bird has a lot of charisma and huge following. It’s also a valuable environmental indicator, reflecting the health of Maine’s lake systems and the effects of pollutants such as mercury.

Look at Maine Audubon's Web sitefor more about the survey results.

Some familiar feathered friends are on the latest national "watch list" of imperiled birds issued today by Audubon and the American Bird Conservancy.

The 2007 list includes a total of 178 species in the continental U.S. and 39 in Hawaii considered to be in the greatest need of conservation to survive in the face of habitat loss, invasive species, global warming and other threats. Ninety-eight are "red list" species of greatest concern, and 119 are on the “yellow list” of seriously declining or rare species.

Maine species made both the red and yellow lists, according to Audubon. The piping plover and least tern are on the red list. Both have been the focus of intensive restoration efforts along the Maine coast, but face constant pressure from coastal development, beachgoers and predators.

Only 35 pairs of piping plovers returned to nest in Maine this year, according to Audubon. The number has declined five years in a row and is now the lowest since 1994. Piping plovers are on the federal threatened species list and on the state’s endangered list. A total of 37 plover fledglings grew up on Maine beaches this summer.

Maine’s least tern population saw an increase in nesting pairs this year, with at least 150 pairs nesting from Wells to Scarborough, Audubon said.

Another red list species in Maine is Bicknell’s thrush. That’s a rare species that lives on Maine’s mountaintops, and concerns about the impact on its habitat has been a major reason some conservationists have opposed putting wind turbines on Redington and Black Nubble mountains.

Here’s the press release with more information about the list.

It’s tough being a lynx in Maine these days.

And not just because a few hunters seem to be using them for target practice. Traps and motor vehicles also have taken their toll. And illness and starvation are signs that the population also faces a new natural threat that biologists can’t yet explain.

The latest misfortunate feline was found dead along a road in Aroostook County earlier this week. The 25-pound male was shot through the hind legs by someone with a high-powered rifle.

Time for the bald eagle to leave the nest.

The national symbol is about to come off the federal protected species list after a long and dramatic recovery. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is expected to make the announcement tomorrow.

It’ll be reason to celebrate for biologists around the country who brought the birds back from near extinction 40 years ago. In Maine, biologists fed the birds, protected their nests, brought eggs and chicks in from out-of-state zoos and rehabilitated injured eagles, even gluing one unfortunate bird's wing back together.

In 1963, there were only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles counted in the lower 48 states. Maine had about 35 pairs in the early 1970s, and almost all of them nested around Cobscook Bay at the eastern tip of the state.

As of last year, there were nearly 10,000 nesting pairs in the lower 48 and 414 in Maine, with at least one nest in every county.

But it’s not just biologists who like this success story. Although some will argue the eagle should have flown off the list sooner or that the list itself is for the birds, this is one environmental story that seems to please everyone from conservationists to property-rights activists. That’s an achievement in itself.

We ran this story last month on the bald eagle’s recovery, and its future. And here is a story about the announcement expected tomorrow.