These laws will affect your outdoor experience in Maine in 2025
By Julie Harris, Bangor Daily News Staff
Money for trail systems, airboat noise limits and a push to fight aquatic invasive species are among the Maine Legislature’s 2024 decisions that will affect your outdoor experience in 2025.
Maine’s $3.4 billion outdoor recreation economy represents 3.7 percent of the state’s economic base, according to the Maine Office of Outdoor Recreation’s latest figures released in 2023. That was a 9.1 percent increase over 2022 and the outdoor economy is expected to grow, making the laws that regulate such activities even more important.
Here are the new laws affecting some of those outdoor sports:
Boating
Emergency legislation established legal noise limits for airboats, which the state defined as a flat-bottomed watercraft with an aircraft-type propeller that uses either a plane or automotive engine to power it. It also separated airboats from other motorboats.
Under the new law, the noise limits may not exceed 90 decibels as measured by a shoreline test the Society of Automotive Engineers established for stationary engines. Airboat noise must not be more than 75 decibels between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Exceptions are made for the time needed to reach headway speed when leaving a boat launch or to get the boat off a tidal flat.
It may not exceed 90 decibels between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., with the same exceptions. Marine patrol, game wardens and other law enforcement are exempt if using them in the line of duty.
Boaters can be fined between $300 and $500 for exceeding the noise limits. If the boater amasses more than three civil violations within a five-year period, the charge bumps up to a Class E crime.
The state’s new wake boat and wakesurfing law went into effect over the summer too, restricting boat speeds and closeness to shore in order to prevent damage to shorelines and the wildlife, such as loons, that live there. LD2284/HP 1472 stipulates that motorboats serving wakesurfers or surfboarders stay in water 15 feet or deeper and go no closer to shore than 300 feet. Violation fines are no more than $100.
Although numbers of violations were unavailable, there generally is an educational period in which wardens inform violators about the new law before they start handing out citations, according to Mark Latti, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. This law did not go into effect until mid-July, well into the boating season.
Invasive species
Boaters are required to not only be aware of potential plant fragments that might carry an invasive species from one body of water to another, but also to make sure all water is drained from the boat, except bait wells, when leaving one lake, pond or river and going to another.
In 2024, the Legislature took that a step further, requiring the departments of marine patrol and inland fisheries and wildlife to work together to prevent invasive species from getting into clean waters from dams and fishways in particular.
The new law says the two departments are not allowed to make changes, particularly at the Medway dam on the Penobscot River or the Brown’s Mills dam in Dover-Foxcroft on the Piscataquis River, without notifying the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in writing.
A second bill addressed funding, by increasing the cost of invasive species prevention and control stickers for inland watercraft from $15 in 2024 to $25 in 2025 and $35 in 2028. The allocation from those fees to the Invasive Aquatic Plant and Nuisance Species Fund reduces from 80 percent to 70 percent, and to the Lake and River Protection Fund increases from 20 percent to 30 percent beginning Jan. 1, 2025.
The fees for boat registrations are going up too by $10 in all classes. It will cost $40 in 2025 to register a boat with a 10 horsepower or less motor and $50 in 2028. A tidal waters only registration will remain at $15. It will be $45 in 2025 for boats with a motor more than 10 horsepower up to 50 horsepower and $55 in 2028. Tidal only registrations will remain at $20. For more than 50 horsepower to 115 horsepower motors, it will cost $51 in 2025 and $61 in 2028. Tidal only registrations will remain at $26. Allocations of the fees will be the same as the invasive aquatic species stickers.
And for personal watercraft and motors more than 115 horsepower, the registration fee will increase $10 to $59 in 2025 and $69 in 2028. Registration for tidal waters only will remain at $34.
Fees for nonresidents who purchase lake and river protection stickers for boats and personal watercraft in Maine, and residents and nonresidents who buy them for seaplanes, will see an increase as well. In 2025, the fee will be $60, with $1 of that going to the agent who sells the sticker, and $75 in 2028, with $1 going to the agent. Fee allocation percentages will be the same as the others.
Fishing
Beginning on Sept. 1, 2024, it became illegal to sell lead jigs weighing an ounce or less or measuring 2 1⁄2 inches or less, but on Sept. 1, 2026, it will be illegal to use such jigs. Lead sinkers were banned from sale and use in 2013, and it was made illegal to sell or use bare lead jigs in 2016. You may still own them, even though it will be illegal to use them. Fines for violations will be from $100 to $500.
Hunting
The language in upland game law H.P. 1422 – L.D. 2216 was softened to say that open season must include the last Saturday in September, rather than mandating it begin on that day. The law stipulates that the DIF&W commissioner decides what the length of the season is. Upland game includes snowshoe hare, gray squirrel, ruffed grouse and bobwhite quail. The change takes effect Jan. 1, 2025.
Commissioner Judy Camuso recently withdrew a proposal to pause upland hunting during the first week of moose season.
The Legislature in 2024 made two bills related to youth hunting into laws. One increased the number of moose permits allocated to youths with critical illnesses from two to five, and the other made two days of youth deer hunting a permanent law.
The state had allocated the two permits for youth with critical illnesses primarily to out-of-state organizations that would bring their kids to Maine for their hunts. The revised law keeps the three new permits in the state for Mainers.
The Legislature last year had temporarily increased the youth deer hunt by one day. The success of the two-day hunt spurred lawmakers to make it permanent.
Snowmobile and ATV trails
The governor signed LD2276 in April, updating the allocations of approximately $5.7 million in non-recreational vehicle gas tax money primarily between snowmobiling and all terrain vehicle riding for the first time since 2001.
It provides additional funding to the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, Bureau of Parks and Lands’ Snowmobile Trail Fund and ATV Recreational Management Funds, and less funding to DIF&W.
The new allocations will be effective for the upcoming snowmobile and ATV seasons.
Land
The Maine Legislature approved with the two-thirds majority required to allow the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands to transfer the state’s ownership of Peacock Beach to the town of Richmond. The beach is 32 acres on Pleasant Pond. The emergency legislation allowed the town to make improvements to the public beach before the summer season.
The state park had been under a 25-year lease with the town when the Legislature approved the transfer. The town has to maintain the land as a public park and the law stipulates that the state has first refusal if the town or subsequent owners want to sell it.
New legislation
A new law that requires gun buyers to wait for 72 hours before taking their purchases home has become the subject of a lawsuit questioning its constitutionality. Hunters and other gun owners hope gun advocates such as Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine can get it repealed. The law went into effect in early August and was passed after the mass shooting in Lewiston in October 2023. Maine Legislature Minority Leader Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, has submitted a bill at the request of Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine Executive Director David Trahan to repeal the law.
A bill carried over from the Legislature’s prior session, “An Act to Restore Firearm Rights and Hunting Privileges to People Convicted of Nonviolent Felony Crimes,” would allow a person to apply through law enforcement for reinstatement of gun rights for hunting. As currently written, it requires applicants to have 10 years passed after serving any sentences and it would revoke any reinstated privileges permanently if another felony occurs.