The most comprehensive online source of conservation news and events in Maine and beyond, edited by Jym St. Pierre
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • June 20, 2024
Thursday marked the third day of an oppressive heat wave that has been hanging over the state since Tuesday, bringing extreme conditions with it. Bangor on Thursday set a new daily high temperature record, reaching a high of 96 degrees. Millinocket saw a high of 97 degrees, breaking the daily record of 95 degrees, set during the 2020 heat wave.
MORNING SENTINEL • June 20, 2024
Deborah Staber has been the director of the L.C. Bates Museum for more than 30 years. She can’t remember a time when there wasn’t some sort of renovation or preservation work going on at the museum. Staber describes the museum as “one of the last remaining collections of cabinets of curiosities in America.” In addition to the ongoing effort of preserving its extensive collection of natural and human history, Staber says the museum is always working to preserve itself, too. As the museum celebrates the 100th anniversary of its first taxidermized animal exhibits, Staber hopes that the renovation work now will help keep one of the country’s most unique and eclectic museums thriving through the next 100 years.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 20, 2024
The Presumpscot River Preserve is one of the only conservation areas and trail networks within Portland city limits, the largest freshwater input into Casco Bay, an untouched nature preserve that provides essential habitats to hundreds of species. A Miami-based real estate developer pursuing a permit to build a major condo development abutting the Presumpscot River Preserve, proposes to demolish 14 acres of forested habitat and wetlands. This same developer built a retirement community in Saco that was plagued by construction deficiencies. We need to create affordable housing units, but when conserved lands are on the line, we need to be more discerning about the who and the how of housing development in Greater Portland. ~ Robert Benak, Protect Presumpscot
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 20, 2024
The key takeaway from Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s recent greenhouse gas report should be that the state has a long way to go in cutting overall carbon pollution. Its optimistic conclusion that we remain on track is focused on net emissions, accounting for storing emissions in our trees and coastal wetlands. But this only works if today’s healthy forests and wetlands remain as they are for years. And we know that climate change threatens that stability — in fact, it’s happening right now via wildfires, devastating invasive species, droughts, storms, rapid sea level rise and record-breaking heat waves on land and sea. The report shows that we need to cut overall carbon pollution, not remain complacent with business-as-usual. ~ Dan Amory, Portland
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 20, 2024
Since the Roux Institute site plan has been approved by the Portland Planning Board, tempered with concerns about so much traffic using one street for entry and exit, perhaps the Roux Institute could do something else to help alleviate the problem. They could rebuild the old railroad trestle to the Eastern Prom. It could be a pedestrian/bike/ebike path directly linked to the Eastern Promenade Trail or it could go big and make it a narrow gauge railway since the old railroad tracks are still there across from them. ~ Peter Ferrante, Portland
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 20, 2024
A letter writer recently expressed concern for views to be lost if building height limits increase, (“Building height limits will forever eclipse scenic views,” June 14). When considering supporting this proposed height limit, I would ask our fellow citizens to consider that the loss of a view, no matter how lovely, can’t be compared to the lack of a home, no matter how humble. ~ Zoe Gaston, South Portland
CAPE ELIZABETH SENTRY/SOUTH PORTLAND LEADER • June 19, 2024
Willard Beach will soon be added to the state Department of Environmental Protection’s list of impaired waters because of the persistent bacterial contamination in the water last summer. The designation does not mean the beach is unsafe for the public, city officials said at a City Council workshop last week, but recognizes the consistency of the issue and makes the city eligible for grants to fix it from the DEP. While only stormwater is expelled into the water at Willard Beach, it can sometimes be contaminated when damaged pipes in the sewer system leak into the stormwater system.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 19, 2024
New England’s grid operator said Wednesday it declared a low-level emergency the previous evening as some power plants failed to generate electricity in the year’s first heat wave, potentially leaving the region short of electricity in reserve that could be tapped in an emergency. A Power Caution is an advisory that available electricity is insufficient to meet anticipated demand in addition to operating reserve requirements. It is not a request that people limit their electricity use.
ELLSWORTH AMERICAN • June 19, 2024
The Maine Coastal Program is seeking information from coastal restoration and conservation partners for the department’s upcoming application(s) for projects in habitat restoration planning, design, engineering, construction and land acquisition.
MORNING SENTINEL • June 19, 2024
Joshua Steele, 38, was hiking the Rim Trail with friends near the Jaws Waterfall in Gulf Hagas around 4:30 p.m. Sunday when he slipped on some rocks. Gulf Hagas is a deep river gorge with a network of trails that cross rugged terrain. Rescuers reached Steele after dark. He was taken to CA Dean Hospital in Greenville.
MAINE PUBLIC • June 19, 2024
Town officials in Bar Harbor have approved new rules for the town's cruise ship ordinance. At a meeting Tuesday evening, councilors approved rules establishing a new permit process requiring disembarkation facilities to submit a daily count of the number of people entering town from cruise ships. The council also directed the planning board to prepare a new cruise ship ordinance proposal for a future town vote.
NEWS CENTER MAINE • June 19, 2024
Mainers and tourists alike love the Lupines they see in fields and along the sides of the roads that run through the state. Photographers go into a frenzy when the blossoms are at their peak, but Maine's beloved flower is not native to Maine, making it controversial. "This Lupine showed up in the state in larger proportions around 1950," Emily Baisden, seed program director with Wild Seed Project, revealed. "The story of Miss Rumphius that a lot of us grew up reading as children, there actually was a person in kind of midcoast Maine that would spread Lupine seeds.” Behind the beauty are some ugly facts. “It’s shown to out-compete some of our important native plants for pollinators and things like the Monarch butterfly that requires the Milkweed and is now endangered,” Baisden explained.
WISCASSET NEWSPAPER • June 19, 2024
The further the next sewer plant is from the river, the more it would cost, Wiscasset Town Manager Dennis Simmons told selectmen June 18. He said town-owned and other sites, by a voluntary sale or one through eminent domain, are all possibilities. “Every option’s on the table.” The topic came up when Simmons mentioned U.S. Sen. Angus King, I – Maine, is trying for more funds to help with the move. If the $6 million King now seeks for it from Congressionally directed spending comes through, it would bring the amount raised to $11 million of the “roughly” $36 or $37 million needed, Simmons said. “We’re making progress here ...” He added, this is a multi-agency process that will take multiple funding sources.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 19, 2024
Climate change is the biggest threat to our national security, and we should call out the Democrats and Republicans who make excuses for their climate inaction by trying to scare us (again) with China and Russia. The time to act was yesterday. Every day we delay is a day closer to irreversible damage. Calmly but unwaveringly, we must insist that from Maine to Washington, our approach to climate change needs major shifts — immediately. ~ Bill Beckett, Watertown, Mass.
ASSOCIATED PRESS • June 19, 2024
Suspicious deaths in an idyllic seaside community and detective work that points to poison sound like themes from a classic murder mystery. But the victims in this Maine whodunit were trees that stood in the way of a wealthy family's oceanfront view, allegedly felled by well-heeled killers who, while ostracized and publicly shamed, remain free. Wealth and hubris fuel the tale of a politically connected Missouri couple who allegedly poisoned their neighbor's trees to secure their million-dollar view of Camden Harbor. The incident that was unearthed by the victim herself — the philanthropic wife of L.L. Bean's late president — has united local residents in outrage.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • June 19, 2024
Tuesday is National Go Fishing Day, but Maine biologists are encouraging people to leave the cold-water species in their safe zone during the heatwave and seek warm water fish such as bass, perch or pickerel. Like a person trying to breathe in high humidity, a cold water fish swimming for any length of time in really warm surface water will struggle to get enough oxygen.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 18, 2024
Monthly bills for Central Maine Power Co. customers will go up by another $5 after state regulators on Tuesday approved the utility’s second rate increase in a week. The rate hike is to cover a nearly 50% increase in the amount the utility pays solar developers. State law incentivizes utilities to subsidize certain solar projects to further Maine’s climate goals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The higher rates, which take effect July 1 and extend through June of next year, follow a roughly $10-a-month increase that the Maine Public Utilities Commission authorized last Tuesday. That rate hike was to reimburse CMP for $220 million it spent to restore power after destructive storms..
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 18, 2024
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention updated its fish consumption advisory list Tuesday, adding four freshwater sites containing so-called forever chemicals and expanding guidelines for other locations. Officials recently found evidence of PFAS at the following ponds, lakes, streams and rivers as a part of a yearslong testing effort that has identified more than a dozen contaminated sites:
• Belgrade and Oakland – McGrath Pond and Salmon Lake (consume no more than one meal per month of any fish species)
• Caribou – Aroostook River from the Aroostook River Reservoir to Haley Island in Fort Fairfield (consume no more than two meals per month of brook trout)
• Corinth to Bangor – Kenduskeag Stream from the Robyville covered bridge to the Penobscot River (consume no more than one meal per month of smallmouth bass)
• Monmouth and Winthrop – All of Annabessacook Lake (consume no more than 10 meals per year of black crappie)
LIVERMORE FALLS ADVERTISER • June 18, 2024
The green team, one of four teams and 24 students from Spruce Mountain High School in Jay this year, won the state competition and “earned the privilege of representing Maine at the National Conservation Foundation International Envirothon Championships from July 28 to Aug. 3 at Hobart William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York,” advisor Rob Taylor said. “Envirothon is the world’s largest environmental science competition and tests student understanding of wildlife ecology, soil science, forestry and aquatic ecosystems, as well as this year’s current issue, Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Future.”
MAINE PUBLIC • June 18, 2024
This week's heat wave is also bringing potentially unhealthy air to Maine. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection said Tuesday that the coastline from Kittery to Acadia National Park could see unhealthy levels of ozone on Wednesday for sensitive groups, such as children, the elderly and people with asthma and other respiratory or heart problems.
