Shaping the Work of Blue Hill Heritage Trust
Prepared by Hans Carlson
Climate change is today’s defining challenge. It is causing milder winters and earlier spring conditions, blurring seasonality, and impacting vulnerable wildlife species, particularly those for which our region is a southern limit. Warmer ocean temperatures, sea-level rise, and ocean acidification are stressing the adaptive capacity of marine ecosystems, and stronger wind and rain are causing shoreline erosion and flood damage requiring state, municipal, and private response.
Related, and equally important to these environmental impacts are the socio-economic challenges to our communities driven by climate change. Some of these are the direct effect of the changes outlined above, like coastal communities facing the economics of a changing ocean. In the next ten to twenty years, however, a significant climate-change impact on the Blue Hill peninsula is likely to be demographic increase, and associated socio-economic and land-use changes, driven by conditions in other places.
Anecdotally, people are moving to the Blue Hill peninsula and identify climate as a factor in their decision to move, and their choice of this region as a destination. Near-term modeling predicts that this region of Maine will fare better than other places. Extreme weather, though not absent here, will be less threatening, growing seasons will be longer, and eastern Maine will be more desirable as a place to live than other parts of the country and we expect that climate migration will continue and likely increase.
All these environmental and socio-economic impacts will shape the work of Blue Hill Heritage Trust. Successful conservation will mean acting expeditiously to conserve forestland and wetland. It will mean including carbon sequestration practices and climate resiliency in our land management. It will mean supporting climate-related research where and when possible. It will mean investigating and implementing appropriate changes to conservation easement criteria to include carbon-positive farming and other possible climate-positive strategies. It will mean investigating and implementing appropriate changes to Trust investments to be carbon positive, this includes placing Trust property into carbon sequestration projects, if they are feasible and desirable. It will mean exploring solar development on appropriate Trust land (gravel pits, brown fields, etc.) investing in heat pump technology in Trust buildings and transitioning to community solar for electricity. Finally, it will mean creating more partnerships with businesses and nonprofits focused on carbon sequestration, decarbonization, and climate mitigation, and engagement with municipalities on climate issues, both environmental and socio-economic, including possible involvement in green housing development.
All of this will be in service to our mission.