News release from Appalachian Mountain Club, Maine Audubon, Natural Resources Council of Maine, and Trout Unlimited
The Conservation Plan intended to mitigate for the impacts of a 53-mile-long transmission corridor fails to meet the permit requirements
Augusta, Maine – A Conservation Plan filed by Central Maine Power (CMP) and approved earlier this week by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) as mitigation for the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) transmission line fails to meet the requirement to protect mature forest habitat in western Maine, according to forestry experts, wildlife scientists, and conservation groups.
The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), Maine Audubon, Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM), and Trout Unlimited (TU) said that the Plan fails to comply with the permit requirements and should have been denied, so that an improved Plan could be brought forward. The groups are considering the option of appealing DEP’s decision to the Board of Environmental Protection (BEP).
In comments filed with DEP over the past six months, the groups called on DEP to require NECEC to augment the Plan with at least 10,000 acres of land with larger and older trees, which would be allowed to grow to full maturity, establish a scientifically credible definition of mature forest, and require no-cut buffers for the small amount of older forests still remaining within the proposed 50,000-acre Plan area.
In a joint statement, the four groups said:
“The NECEC Plan should have been denied because it categorically fails to meet the requirement of providing ‘blocks of habitat for species preferring mature forest.’ The Plan fails in large part because of the fundamental challenge of conserving mature forests, as required by the permit, within a proposed 50,000-acre area that is almost completely devoid of mature forest. NECEC came up with their own definition of what constitutes a mature forest and told regulators to wait nearly half a century for trees to just barely meet that flawed definition. The DEP has wrongly accepted this approach, setting an unacceptable precedent that Maine’s other natural resources agencies urged against.”
On November 18, 2025, the DEP approved the Conservation Plan submitted by CMP on May 9, 2025. The proposal would place a conservation easement on 50,000 acres of forestland in an area that is bisected by Route 201, south of Jackman. The DEP and BEP imposed specific requirements for the Plan to mitigate impacts of the NECEC, including:
- The Plan must establish as its primary goal the promotion of habitat connectivity and conservation of mature forest areas;
- It must include blocks of habitat for species preferring mature forest habitat and be comprised of large blocks of forestland that are at least 5,000 acres, unless adjacent to existing conserved land or if the land has unique values; and
- It must conserve at least 50,000 acres, which should not simply meet standard sustainable forestry operations.
The Plan approved by the DEP fails to meet these requirements for several reasons, as highlighted in public comments submitted by forestry experts, scientists, and conservation groups in June, October, and November.
Heavily Overcut Forest with Essentially No Mature Forest
“The biggest problem with the NECEC proposal is that the 50,000 acres that NECEC selected contains almost no mature forest as typically recognized by both forest and wildlife ecologists – a fundamental requirement for the mitigation plan,” said Sally Stockwell, Director of Conservation for Maine Audubon.
As documented through the use of LiDAR, a highly accurate technology for classifying forest stands, Dr. John Hagan, one of the state’s leading ecologists, determined that the tree canopy in 78% of the area is less than 35 feet tall and only 7% of the area is comprised of trees greater than 50 feet tall. This information was provided to DEP in comments submitted by Dr. Hagan in June.
According to Dr. Hagan, President of Our Climate Common, “The proposed easement area has been one of the most intensively harvested areas of the unorganized township area of Maine in the last 20+ years.”
Flawed Definition of Mature Forest as Contrivance to Comply
“Since it is difficult to conserve mature forest in an area that is essentially devoid of older trees, DEP’s approval essentially ignores the mature forest conservation requirement by relying on a definition of ‘mature forest’ that is not grounded in science,” said Luke Frankel, the Woods, Waters, & Wildlife Director at NRCM. “We visited the site and took photos of areas that NECEC is defining as ‘mature forest,’ but I don’t think anybody would look at these trees and call them mature.”
In comments for the record, Molly Docherty, Director of the Maine Natural Areas Program (MNAP), responded to NECEC’s implausible mature forest definition by stating: “The definition put forward in the Conservation Plan is not technically in line with the MNAP’s scientific basis for mature forest,” adding that it “does not reflect working definitions used by the U.S. Forest Service, the Society of American Foresters, and others (e.g. USFWS).”
As further described by Dr. Hagan in his June comments to the record: “the ‘mature forest’ definition proposed in the Conservation Plan does not pass an ecological straight-face test.” It should be noted that Dr. Hagan identified himself within his comments to the DEP “as a proponent” of the NECEC corridor project.
Unacceptable Delay in Mitigation
“The NECEC plan includes an unprecedented delay of nearly half a century before a significant amount of the trees within the 50,000 acres reach at least 50 feet tall, which still doesn’t meet the straight face test for a mature forest. This should have been flat-out rejected by the DEP,” said Eliza Townsend, Maine Conservation Policy Director for AMC.
Although the fragmenting impacts of the NECEC line have already begun and will continue each year, the Plan approved by DEP allows NECEC until 2065 before 50% of the forest would meet a definition of “mature forest” that falls far short of what constitutes an actual, ecologically mature forest.
“Inexplicably, the DEP says they’re just fine with this level of delay, explaining that wetlands mitigation projects sometimes take years. Those projects often take a few years, not many decades,” said Jeff Bush, Advocacy Chair, Maine Council of TU.
Bad Precedent of “Shifting Mosaic” Management for Mature Forest Species
Multiple experts and state agencies submitted comments expressing concerns about the precedent that could be set if the DEP approved the current plan. Some of those comments focused on the inadequate definition of “mature forest,” worried that it would be used as a precedent for future projects.
Others expressed concern that most of the 50,000 acres would continue to be managed through a “shifting mosaic” harvesting strategy that leaves nearly all of the area open to harvesting at some point, including much of the remaining ecologically mature forest. This approach is not suitable for species that require habitat features that take upwards of a hundred years to develop, not a few decades. And several state agencies expressed concern about pine marten being used as the standard for habitat needs for most species that rely on mature forests.
Remarkably, the DEP responded to concerns about the dangerous precedent of considering a forest as being “mature” if it supports pine marten by saying that this approach is acceptable for the NECEC project but that “future regulators are not obligated to focus on pine marten habitat.”
“For one of the highest profile development projects in years, the DEP is saying for the purposes of compliance for this project – and this project only – we will define ‘mature forest habitat’ in a way that future regulators can ignore. This is not the way a state regulatory agency should operate. The way to avoid bad precedent is simple: don’t set it,” said NRCM’s Luke Frankel.
First proposed in 2017, NECEC is a transmission line designed to bring electricity from existing hydropower facilities in Quebec to consumers in Massachusetts as part of the regional electrical grid. Construction is nearly complete, including all clearing of a 150-foot-wide, 53-mile-long corridor through undeveloped Maine woods between the Canadian border and The Forks in Somerset County. Operation of the project is contingent on approval of the Conservation Plan.
