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UMaine is applying to receive up to $1 million for agricultural research infrastructure

MAINE PUBLIC • July 12, 2026

The University of Maine could receive up to $1 million in federal funding for agricultural research infrastructure. The funding is part of a new partnership between the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Education to encourage land-grant universities to address deferred maintenance and to accelerate modernization of agricultural research facilities. UMaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy said, "It's about helping rural farms be sustained.

Five-acre brush fire in Otisfield contained after 15 departments respond

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 12, 2026

Crews have contained a fire in Otisfield that broke out in the woods Sunday. Otisfield Fire Department Deputy Chief Ryan Fox said a call came in just after 11 a.m. reporting a brush fire off Bolsters Mills Road. When crews arrived at the scene, the fire had spread about 2 acres, but quickly grew to 5 acres. Otisfield Fire Department called for additional engines. A total of 15 fire departments responded to the scene.

UMaine is applying to receive up to $1 million for agricultural research infrastructure

MAINE PUBLIC • July 12, 2026

The University of Maine could receive up to $1 million in federal funding for agricultural research infrastructure. The funding is part of a new partnership between the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Education to encourage land-grant universities to address deferred maintenance and to accelerate modernization of agricultural research facilities. UMaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy said, "It's about helping rural farms be sustained.

Rooftop solar eases New England's electric demand in heat wave

MAINE PUBLIC • July 12, 2026

Solar panels mounted on rooftops across New England significantly eased overall demand for electricity from the regional grid during an intense heat wave in early July, according to a new analysis. Jamie Dickerson, senior of climate and clean energy programs at the Acadia Center, said distributed solar generation helped New England electric customers save at least $130 million in wholesale energy costs during the heat event between June 28 and July 4.

They could be lurking right outside your door. Tips on avoiding ticks in your yard from Maine experts

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 12, 2026

Maine residents are in the midst of this year’s tick season and experts say the tiny menaces could be as close as your front or back yard. Last week, the Androscoggin Valley Soil and Water Conservation District held a workshop at the Auburn Public Library on a variety of ways to reduce ticks in your yard. The state’s current data suggests it’s shaping up to be a normal tick season. For tick-proofing landscaping tips, go to the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension’s resource page at extension.umaine.edu.

Column: Appalachian Mountain Club celebrates 150 years with relay from Virginia to Maine

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 11, 2026

Founded in 1876 by a group of scientists, educators and outdoor enthusiasts, the Appalachian Mountain Club is the oldest outdoor recreation and conservation organization in the United States. The original goal of the club was to explore, map and protect the mountains of New England, with particular focus on New Hampshire’s White Mountains. One hundred fifty years later, AMC remains dedicated to fostering the protection, enjoyment and understanding of the mountains, forests, waters and trails in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. Over 90,000 members — including nearly 6,000 in Maine — across 11 chapters comprise the club’s vibrant and passionate outdoor community.  ~ Carey Kish

Japanese knotweed giving you fits? Here’s how you can kill it

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 10, 2026

apanese knotweed is among the world’s most invasive, resilient plant species. In Maine, it has spread “everywhere,” said Abigail Edenfield, Presumpscot Regional Land Trust’s environmental steward from Maine Conservation Corps. Travelers brought the plant from eastern Asia to North America in the late 19th century to adorn domestic gardens. The species is highly damaging to Maine’s natural ecosystems. Enter Mainers, who are working to remove the unwelcome plants not only from their own gardens and yards, but also from their communities more broadly.

Maine's old growth forests are disappearing. This program could help save them

MAINE PUBLIC • July 10, 2026

After centuries of farming and logging, only pockets of large, old trees remain in Maine, especially in southern Maine. "If northern Maine has 3% or 3.5% of the landscape in this, than there is less than 1% in southern Maine," said Brian Milakovsky, a senior forester with the New England Forestry Foundation. He said old woods are critical for biodiversity. And they serve an outsized role in trapping climate-warming carbon dioxide. Preserving those trees is a challenge in Maine, where most forests are private. The foundation is using a $4.3 million U.S. Forest Service grant to offer landowners partial value of their timber to defer logging trees. That should give groups time to conserve the parcels through purchase or easement. Or to let carbon credit markets develop that would pay landowners for the carbon storage potential of their living old trees.

Letter: ‘Secret beach’ is overrun by visitors who will stop at nothing

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 10, 2026

Some years ago, the Press Herald published an article about “secret beaches.” Since then, Cliff House Beach attendance has soared. Cliff House Beach is a small beach with sand only at low tide. People have to cross a field of rocks and boulders to access any sand. The article identified it as a public beach. That may be, but it is in a neighborhood that traffic has absolutely flooded into. I have two areas of concern: safety and preserving the beach ecosystem. ~ Brenda Daly-Weiss, Cape Elizabeth

Maine will resume ferry service to Swan Island Wildlife Management Area for first time since 2022

MAINE PUBLIC • July 9, 2026

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will resume complimentary ferry service to Swan Island Wildlife Management Area in Richmond this upcoming weekend for the first time since 2022. The service will resume because of a bill introduced by Rep. Sally Cluchey that was approved last year. "Reliable ferry access is more than access to the island, it's about access to economic benefits that come with it, breathing new life into our local economy, and making sure that future generations will have the chance to learn, explore, and fall in love with Swan Island," Cluchey said. the new ferry service will be provided by Capt. Gary Smith, owner and operator of River Run Tours in Bath.

What does a changing climate mean for central Maine? We asked an expert

CENTRAL MAINE • July 5, 2026

Gail Carlson, Colby College associate professor of environmental studies, said, “There is a ton of uncertainty in predicting exactly how hot it’s going to be in the world, in the U.S., and in Maine. We have made progress in terms of climate action at the policy level and investments in renewable energy, such that the worst-case scenarios for warming are probably off the table now. So that’s a good thing. But Maine has already warmed around 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 150 years or so, so it’s not like, ‘Oh, we’re good now.’ I think it’s reasonable that we can expect warming to continue. Exactly how much in Maine is hard to say.”

Volunteers at Old Orchard Beach keep the shore sparkling on the fifth of July

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 5, 2026

Cigarette butts, lone flip-flops and un-lit sparklers filled blue Lowe’s buckets to the brim Sunday at Old Orchard Beach. Under the pier, blue tarps displayed the Surfrider Foundation’s beach cleanup loot, waiting to be sorted by volunteers. The Surfrider Foundation’s Maine chapter has been holding beach cleanups at Old Orchard Beach the day after the Fourth of July for several years. The nationwide environmental nonprofit hosts events that promote the fight against climate change and plastic pollution, Maine Chapter Chair Paula Slayton said. Festivities on Independence Day inspired the foundation to dub the fifth of July “The Dirtiest Beach Day of the Year,” and launch a cleanup.

Skowhegan man drowns in Kennebec River

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 5, 2026

Jakub Prokop, 21, was a passenger on a 16-foot Lund boat that was traveling upriver of the Hinkley Boat Launch in Skowhegan at around 11:20 a.m. Saturday morning. He was not wearing a life jacket when he was ejected from the boat.

Opinion: Fisheries managers must stop delaying and protect Maine’s river herring

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 5, 2026

For generations, alewives were harvested from Maine’s rivers, providing food, bait for fishermen and support for the broader ecosystem. When alewives disappear, the effects ripple outward. That is why in Maine we spent hundreds of millions of dollars removing dams, improving water quality and building fish passage to bring these fish back. Those efforts improved our alewife runs. But many of those restored fish are being killed at sea. Industrial midwater trawlers are the biggest threat to our restoration efforts. A single tow can wipe out an entire river’s spawning run. All the taxpayer dollars spent restoring rivers and fish passage can be wasted in one afternoon. Maine’s alewife runs have rebounded but Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey have seen their river herring and shad populations hit hard by industrial bycatch. The New England Fishery Management Council has failed to take action. ~ Rusty Taylor, Alewife Harvesters of Maine, Mount Desert

Opinion: Maine must be prepared to accommodate ‘climigrants’

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 5, 2026

Since the COVID pandemic, Maine has gained nearly 80,000 new residents through in-migration. The state’s report “Why People Move to Maine” views this as a clear benefit: “Attracting population and workforce talent to Maine is a core goal of the state’s 10-year economic development strategy to mitigate the effects of an aging population and projected workforce deficit.” Half of recent arrivals say that climate influenced their relocation decisions and almost one-quarter list climate as an important push-pull influence. Maine’s current trickle of climigrants may become a stream, if not a flood. ~ David Vail, professor of economics emeritus and former director of environmental studies at Bowdoin College

‘This is the long view’: Gabe Perkins’ ambitious vision for Bethel’s trail future

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 5, 2026

Gabe Perkins is pursuing an ambitious vision for Bethel as a recreation mecca: connecting Greenwood’s Mt. Abram Ski Area and Bike Park to Newry’s Sunday River Resort through a roughly 13-mile corridor of year-round recreation. The proposed route would create a recreational spine linking Greenwood, Newry and Bethel. Along the way, Perkins imagines additions — both practical and playful — perhaps a sledding hill, or even a snowmobile-powered shuttle to move visitors along the route in winter. For Perkins, the concept is bigger than a trail. “It’s a state of mind,” he said.

Visitors to Acadia National Park get this injury more than any other

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 5, 2026

Pamela Gunter began her well-prepared summer vacation by slipping down a steep granite incline in Acadia National Park and breaking her ankle — resulting in a rescue off Dorr Mountain, emergency surgery and an overnight hospital stay. While many hikers depart the park with memories of the iconic sunset from Cadillac Mountain summit or the daring scramble up Beehive trail, a handful also leave with an island injury known as “Acadia ankle.” MDI Search and Rescue, a volunteer group that assists Acadia park rangers with missing or injured visitors, completed 93 missions between March 2017 and September 2023. Over those roughly six years, more than half of the rescues — 48 missions — involved rescuing a hiker with an ankle injury. “Everyone be careful out there — there were 3 broken ankles while I was at the ER and apparently it is so common it is called the Acadia ankle,” Gunter wrote in a Facebook post about the incident.

Column: Wildlife finds creative ways of staying cool in summer

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 4, 2026

It is fun to watch how various animals cope with heat extremes. One of the funniest ways that animals cool down: splooting. This is most often seen with gray squirrels. They spread their body out across the cool ground, splaying their legs and tail out to help dissipate their body heat. Another common heat-dissipating behavior you’ll see from pets is panting, but watch for this with wildlife too. One other cooling technique, but I wouldn’t recommend that any readers attempt, is called urohidrosis. It is a cooling mechanism in which birds defecate on their own legs to cool themselves off. Through evaporative cooling, the fluid waste pulls heat from the birds’ legs which dissipates as it evaporates. ~ Doug Hitchcox

Aroostook’s biggest celebration of the potato industry starts next week

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 4, 2026

Amid the summer heat in a rural Aroostook town a stone’s throw from Canada, where blossoms are poised to explode from fields, thousands of people will soon descend on Fort Fairfield to bask in northern Maine’s chief agricultural export: the potato. They will race potatoes. Decorate potatoes. Cook potatoes. Eat potatoes. Tour potato fields. High-five a potato mascot while walking by a stack of potato barrels to watch a potato-themed parade in a region once dubbed “The Potato Empire.” Anywhere else, it would be odd. In Fort Fairfield, that’s just July. The 79th annual Maine Potato Blossom Festival kicks off on July 11, bringing with it patrons from across the state — and the country — to celebrate the region’s rich agricultural history.