The Maine Coastal Program supports habitat restoration and resilience to mitigate against natural hazards and enhance community resilience. This work supports the uptake of nature-based infrastructure to maintain habitats while mitigating coastal hazards, planning for wetland restoration and resilience, advancing blue carbon strategies, eelgrass knowledge transfers to build capacity for restoration, and statewide planning for landscape-scale resilience to natural hazards.
CoastWise: Rethinking Tidal Crossings
Safe, dependable roads are crucial for Maine's economy, access to critical services, and a way of life valued by citizens and visitors alike. Where roads cross tidal wetlands at over 800 locations in Maine, the challenges for road maintenance and the potential impacts on wildlife habitats are considerably magnified. To support coastal municipalities, Maine Coastal Program and partners have developed the CoastWise Program, which offers workshops, trainings, and information about best practices, decision-making tools, and methods for designing safe, cost-effective, ecologically supportive, and climate-resilient tidal crossings.
Maine Tidal Restriction Atlas
Maine Coastal Program and our partners created the Maine Tidal Restriction Atlas for communities, road owners, conservation groups, and others who plan for coastal resilience. The Atlas is based on Maine Coastal Program's statewide Tidal Restriction Assessment, the first dedicated review of tidal structures in decades. The Atlas helps people identify culverts, bridges, dams, and other structures that are currently tidal or will likely become tidal in the future. The Atlas is meant to complement use of the CoastWise approach for tidal road crossing design.
Maine Stream Habitat Viewer
The Stream Habitat Viewer is a tool from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to enhance statewide stream restoration and conservation efforts. The Viewer provides a starting point for towns, private landowners, and others to learn more about stream habitats, fish passage barriers, and road crossings in inland, non-tidal areas across the state. The Stream Habitat Viewer helps bring people together to restore and conserve Maine’s natural heritage while looking for opportunities to ease the financial burdens of road and dam owners.
Maine Blue Carbon Network
The Maine Blue Carbon Network is a forum to exchange information about advances in blue carbon science and coastal carbon inventory methodologies to inform Maine’s inventory development and move forward coastal carbon research in the state. Blue carbon (or coastal carbon) is a term that refers to the carbon that is sequestered by coastal ecosystems like salt marshes, seagrass beds, and seaweeds. Developing and advancing best management practices to fully realize the carbon sequestration value of these habitats is a priority of many in the state.
Maine Seagrass Consortium
The Maine Seagrass Consortium is a group of organizations and individuals that recognize the need to protect and restore seagrass as a vital coastal resource and protect the benefits it provides to fisheries, water quality, coastal resilience, and coastal ecosystems. Membership includes state government, municipal government, academia, nonprofits, community groups, and others. Leadership consists of Maine Coastal Program and Casco Bay Estuary Partnership. In 2025, the Maine Seagrass Consortium wrote a Maine Seagrass Action Plan (PDF) to drive action on seagrass monitoring, protection, and restoration.