Balancing all-out preservation and development at all cost
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Photo by Michele Stapleton

Translating vernal pool science into land-use policy is no easy task. Nevertheless, Aram Calhoun of The University of Maine, and Michael Klemens of the Wildlife Conservation Society have led a team of scientists and development specialists in creating guidelines for municipalities and developers: Best Development Practices — Conserving Pool-Breeding Amphibians in Residential and Commercial Developments in the Northeastern United States.

This spring, UMaine graduate student Damon Oscarson will be working with two York County, Maine, towns to put the guidelines into practice and create a model that other communities can use.

The guidelines do not have any regulatory authority; they are strictly voluntary. They call for municipalities to identify vernal pools, prioritize them according to their importance to the environment and then create a conservation plan.

Creating the guidelines was a joint project of UMaine, Maine Audubon Society and the Wildlife Conservation Society, with funding support from foundations and environmental agencies. Developers also provided input to the document.

Another set of guidelines will be published for the forest products industry.

"What I like about this approach is that it admits that, in a developing landscape, we're going to lose pools," says Calhoun. "In the past, people put a little 50-foot buffer around them, and that made us feel good. (Now) the point is to put mitigation into a resource that's going to serve the function. We are going to lose pools in a developing landscape, so let's be careful about which ones we choose to conserve."