Nearly 50 acres of marshland along the upper York River is newly protected under a conservation deal.
Amelia Nadilo of the York Land Trust, who worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Maine Coast Heritage Trust to secure the parcel from a landowner, calls the deal a climate win.
"Because we're able to protect a tremendous amount of salt marsh, and that's a climate adaptation," she says. "It's necessary for marsh migration. It's necessary for protecting carbon sequestration and storage. And, as we're seeing with the recent storms, how important it is to have marshland and have those wetlands and riparian areas to buffer between any water body and housing or roads."
The parcel has been added to the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. Refuge manager Karl Stromayer says the marshland is also home to the endangered saltmarsh sparrow, which only nests in saltmarshes along the East Coast.
"And one of the things that's happening with sea level rise is that the nests are getting destroyed by high tides and the species numbers are dwindling quite rapidly," he says. "And by acquiring land that allow the marshes to migrate, we're actually opening up new areas that allow species to persist."
Stromayer says the saltmarsh sparrow is an indicator for the health of saltmarshes.
He and Nadilo say the conservation deal is also significant because it's in an area with high development pressure.
