The Animals Of Maine

Section 01

The Most Forested State, And The Coldest Corner Of The East

Maine is roughly 89 percent forested, the highest proportion of any state, and most of that forest is a working commercial timberland rather than a park. The North Maine Woods alone covers millions of acres with almost no permanent residents, crossed by private logging roads. That combination of scale and cold gives Maine an animal community that belongs more to Canada than to New England.

The state sits at a biological transition. Southern Maine is temperate deciduous forest with oak and hickory. Northern and eastern Maine is spruce-fir boreal forest, the same forest type that runs to Hudson Bay. Species reach their southern limit here: Canada lynx, American marten, spruce grouse, and boreal chickadee all live in Maine and almost nowhere else in the eastern United States.

The coast is the second half of the story, and it is not a simple shoreline. Maine's tidal coast, measured around every bay, inlet, and island, runs to roughly 3,500 miles, longer than California's. The Gulf of Maine behind it is a cold, semi-enclosed sea with enormous tides, up to 25 feet in Cobscook Bay, driving nutrient mixing that supports a rich marine food web.

The Gulf of Maine is also warming faster than almost any other body of water on Earth. That is reshaping the state's marine wildlife within a single career: lobster have shifted northeast, Atlantic cod have failed to recover, Atlantic puffins have had years of breeding failure when the fish their chicks need moved out of range, and southern species now appear regularly.

Section 02

Maine's Official State Animals

The lobster designation in 2016 came late for an animal so central to Maine's identity and economy. The Maine coon cat, named state cat in 1985, is a large, long-haired breed that developed in the state and is one of only a handful of official state cats in the country.

Section 03

Habitats By Region, And Who Lives In Each

1. North Woods boreal forest

Spruce, fir, and northern hardwood across millions of acres of commercial timberland. Maine's Canada lynx population, the largest in the eastern United States, lives here, sustained by snowshoe hare in the dense young regrowth that follows logging. Also American marten, moose in high density, spruce grouse, boreal chickadee, black-backed woodpecker, and Bicknell's thrush on the highest fir summits.

2. Western mountains

The northern Appalachians, including Katahdin and the Mahoosucs, with alpine tundra above treeline on a few summits. Alpine areas hold arctic-alpine plants and insects isolated since the last ice age. See Appalachian Mountains.

3. Central and southern forest

Mixed oak, pine, and northern hardwood, more settled and fragmented. Black bear, white-tailed deer, bobcat, coyote, fisher, and the state's densest human population all overlap here.

4. Lakes, rivers, and wetlands

Maine has thousands of lakes and ponds and extensive peatland. Beaver shape much of the wetland landscape, and common loons breed on clear lakes in numbers that make Maine a stronghold for the species. Brook trout persist in wild self-sustaining populations in more Maine waters than in the rest of the eastern US combined. Related: what happens when beavers leave.

5. Coast, islands, and the Gulf of Maine

Rocky shore, mudflat, salt marsh, and roughly 4,600 islands and ledges. Atlantic puffins nest on a handful of offshore islands, restored by one of the first seabird translocation programmes in the world. Also razorbill, black guillemot, Arctic and roseate terns, common eider, harbour and gray seals, humpback, finback, and minke whales, and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale feeding in the Gulf. Great white sharks have become regular in Maine waters as seal numbers have grown. See Acadia National Park.

Section 04

Mammals Of Maine

• Moose: the state animal, with roughly 60,000 to 70,000 animals, the largest population in the lower 48 outside Alaska. Winter tick infestations, worsened by shorter snow-covered seasons, now kill a large share of calves in some regions and are the primary management concern.
• Black bear: over 30,000, among the largest black bear populations in the eastern US.
• White-tailed deer: abundant in the south and limited in the north by deep snow and the loss of mature softwood deer wintering areas.
• Canada lynx: the largest population in the eastern United States, federally threatened, and dependent on the dense young conifer regrowth that follows timber harvest, which makes forestry practice central to its future.
• American marten and fisher: both present, with marten requiring mature conifer forest and fisher more adaptable.
• Coyote: arrived in the 20th century, carries some wolf ancestry, and is the state's functional large predator.
• Bobcat, red and gray fox, river otter, mink, ermine, long-tailed weasel, striped skunk, raccoon, porcupine, snowshoe hare, beaver, muskrat, woodchuck, red and gray squirrel, northern and southern flying squirrels: all present.
• Bats: eight species. Little brown and northern long-eared bats have declined catastrophically from white-nose syndrome. See do bats hibernate.
• Marine mammals: harbour seal and gray seal in large and growing numbers, harbour porpoise, white-sided dolphin, minke, finback, humpback, and North Atlantic right whale.

Absent: gray wolf, eastern cougar, caribou, and elk. Woodland caribou were gone from Maine by around 1908, and a 1980s reintroduction attempt at Baxter State Park failed. Wolves are occasionally reported and a few confirmed animals have been killed, likely dispersers from Canada, but no population exists.

Section 05

Birds Of Maine

Around 460 species have been recorded. Maine is the eastern US stronghold for boreal forest birds and a globally important seabird nesting area.

• Seabirds and the puffin story: Atlantic puffins were hunted almost to elimination in Maine, leaving one pair on Matinicus Rock by 1900. Beginning in 1973, Project Puffin transplanted chicks from Newfoundland to Eastern Egg Rock and used decoys and recorded calls to convince returning adults to settle. It worked, established the technique of social attraction now used worldwide, and Maine has several hundred pairs today.
• Terns: common, Arctic, and the endangered roseate tern nest on managed islands, protected from gulls by active management.
• Boreal specialties: spruce grouse, boreal chickadee, gray jay, black-backed and American three-toed woodpeckers, Bicknell's thrush, and a long list of breeding warblers including bay-breasted, Cape May, and blackpoll.
• Loons and waterbirds: common loon breeds on hundreds of Maine lakes, and the annual loon count is one of the longest-running citizen science efforts in the country.
• Raptors: bald eagle, which recovered from roughly 30 pairs in the 1970s to hundreds today, plus osprey, peregrine falcon restored to cliff sites, and northern goshawk.
• Shorebirds: mudflats in eastern Maine and the Bay of Fundy approaches are a critical staging area for semipalmated sandpipers fattening on mud shrimp before flying to South America.

Section 06

Reptiles, Amphibians, And Fish

Cold limits the list: Maine has around 17 reptile and 18 amphibian species, and no venomous snakes.

Snakes: nine species, all harmless. The timber rattlesnake was the only venomous species and was extirpated from Maine by the 19th century, making Maine one of the few states with no venomous snakes at all.

Turtles: Blanding's turtle and spotted turtle are both state endangered or threatened, plus wood turtle, eastern box turtle at its northern limit, painted turtle, and snapping turtle. Offshore, leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles enter the Gulf of Maine in summer to feed on jellyfish.

Amphibians: spotted and blue-spotted salamanders, eastern newt, red-backed salamander, plus wood frog, spring peeper, mink frog (a northern species reaching its US stronghold here), and northern leopard frog.

Fish: the story is migratory. Sea-run Atlantic salmon are federally endangered with only a few hundred returning adults, restricted mainly to the Penobscot and a few Downeast rivers. Alewife, blueback herring, shad, sea lamprey, and Atlantic sturgeon all run inland, and the Penobscot River Restoration Project, which removed two main-stem dams and improved passage at others, has produced large increases in alewife runs. Wild brook trout are a Maine specialty, and landlocked salmon is the state fish.

Lobster: the American lobster fishery is the most valuable in the country and the defining marine industry of the state. Maine landings rose dramatically over recent decades as the Gulf of Maine warmed into the optimal range for lobster growth, while populations south of Cape Cod collapsed for the same reason. Continued warming is expected to push the advantage further northeast into Canadian waters.

Section 07

Dangerous Animals In Maine

• Moose: the most dangerous animal in the state. Moose-vehicle collisions are frequent and often fatal because the animal's mass sits above the hood line. Most occur at dawn and dusk in May through July and in the autumn rut.
• Ticks: Maine has among the highest Lyme disease incidence rates in the country, and cases have risen sharply as winters have moderated. Anaplasmosis and babesiosis are also present.
• Black bear: no fatal attacks recorded in Maine. Food conditioning is the practical issue.
• No venomous snakes, and no venomous spiders of consequence: Maine is among the safest states in this respect.
• Cold water: the Gulf of Maine stays cold enough year-round that immersion causes rapid incapacitation, and this kills more people than all Maine wildlife combined.
• Great white sharks: now regular in Maine waters following seal population growth, with the state's first recorded fatal attack in 2020.

Section 08

Endangered And Protected Species

The right whale is Maine's hardest conservation problem because it is also an economic one. The whales become entangled in the vertical lines connecting lobster traps to surface buoys, and entanglement plus vessel strikes are the two causes of death for a population of only a few hundred animals. Proposed gear restrictions and ropeless fishing technology sit against the livelihood of thousands of lobster fishermen, and the dispute has been in and out of federal court for years. Beyond that, the dominant pressure in Maine is a warming Gulf reorganising the marine food web faster than management can respond.

Section 09

Where To See Wildlife In Maine

• Acadia National Park: peregrine falcons, seabirds, seals, and accessible coastal habitat.
• Eastern Egg Rock and Machias Seal Island: Atlantic puffins, razorbills, and terns by permitted boat tour in summer.
• Baxter State Park: moose at Sandy Stream Pond, plus boreal birds and alpine habitat on Katahdin.
• Moosehead Lake and the North Maine Woods: the highest moose densities in the state.
• Rachel Carson and Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuges: salt marsh in the south and woodcock and boreal species Downeast.
• Bay of Fundy approaches, Lubec and Eastport: extreme tides, whale watching, and staging shorebirds.
• Scarborough Marsh: the state's largest salt marsh, good for saltmarsh sparrow and wading birds.