Sinking in Saltwater: Maine’s coastal marshes at risk as sea levels rise

MAINE MONITOR • July 28, 2024

It takes hundreds of years for a salt marsh to form. As salt-tolerant plants grow, their dense stems and roots trap more sediment, and the marsh builds more rapidly. Acre by acre, a healthy salt marsh anchors a food web “more productive than most midwestern farmland,” according to UMaine. The same dense grasses that are good at trapping silt also excel at ensnaring pollutants, pulling out nitrogen and nutrients that cause algal blooms, and burying toxic contaminants in the peat. For much of American history, the marsh has been considered more of an impediment than an asset; something to be filled, ditched, dug and bulldozed. More than half of the wetlands that existed at the start of the Revolutionary War are gone. Development in and near marshes affects their ability to function or adjust to rising seas. “The real question is, are [marshes] going to be able to keep up with the amount of sea level rise that we’re expecting to see over the next 50 or 100 years?”

Maine island mystique: Why so many books feature these isolated settings

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 28, 2024

A Maine island is a good place for a murder. It can also be a great place to find quirky characters, romances among people who grew up together or a terrifying sense of isolation. Authors from here and away say the main reason so many kinds of novels take place on a Maine island is that the setting elevates and amplifies stories in ways other places just don’t.

As temperatures rise, so do Maine’s mountain tree lines

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 28, 2024

Mythologized by artists, hiked by explorers and revered by the Wabanaki, Katahdin is a towering symbol of Maine’s untamed natural beauty, its storied logging and sporting traditions, and its Indigenous peoples and culture. Now the state’s tallest peak is becoming a symbol of climate change. Global warming is fueling the uphill march of its mountain tree line, with warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons enabling firs and spruce to grow higher up the 5,267-foot mountain than ever before. By comparing old and new aerial photos, Jordon Tourville, an Appalachian Mountain Club ecologist, has calculated that the tree line is moving up Katahdin about 10 feet a decade.

Column: Three changes to North American checklist affect Maine birds

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 28, 2024

The American Ornithological Society has a committee, the North American Checklist Committee, that maintains the official checklist of North American birds. This year’s supplement has three decisions that affect Maine birds. The decisions combined the common redpoll and hairy redpoll, split up the barn owl into three species, and changed grammar. ~ Herb Wilson

Life and death in the heat: What it feels like when Earth’s temperatures soar to record highs

ASSOCIATED PRESS • July 27, 2024

On Wednesday, there were 21 heat-related deaths at a hospital in Morocco as temperatures spiked to 118.9 degrees Fahrenheit in the region of 575,000 people, most lacking air conditioning. “We do not need any scientists to tell us what the temperature is outside as this is what our body tells us instantly,” said Humayun Saeed, a 35-year-old roadside fruit seller in Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore. Saeed had to go to the hospital twice in June because of heat stroke. For climate scientists around the world, what had been an academic exercise about climate change hit home.

With Richmond’s Swan Island service down for the day, people turn to a seaplane for bay tours

KENNEBEC JOURNAL • July 27, 2024

As a part of Richmond Days, Kevin Dauphinee and his wife, Katie Dauphinee, flew people around Merrymeeting Bay in their yellow seven-passenger seaplane. Richmond Days is an annual two-day event in town that features a parade, games, music and special activities, like the seaplane. A boat service was supposed to run during Richmond Days to bring people to a guided tour of the island, but the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife closed the Swan Island pier that would have been used to drop people off at the island.

Plan to bring remote-controlled trains to South Portland rail yard draws safety, labor concerns

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 27, 2024

Maine’s largest rail operator is installing technology at Rigby Yard that railroad workers say is dangerous and could cost some people their jobs. Remote-controlled locomotives or remote-controlled operations have been used in the railroad industry for decades, but a recent series of deadly accidents have the industry’s biggest union sounding the alarm. Rigby Yard is full of explosive and hazardous materials, and an accident could be disastrous.

Commentary: Global heating is no longer a tomorrow problem. It’s today’s

BLOOMBERG • July 27, 2024

For decades, global warming was widely seen as a tomorrow problem, something for our hapless grandchildren to worry about. But with heat records tumbling relentlessly, it’s clear that tomorrow has arrived. It’s also becoming clear that we’re not ready for the heat. Higher temperatures turbocharge the planet’s weather engines, leading to more frequent and severe heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods and increasingly destructive hurricanes and thunderstorms. They will lead to mass migration and resource wars. But the deadliest immediate effect is the heat itself. It attacks human health on every level and already takes more lives each year than every other natural disaster combined. We should treat the permanent new state of global heat with no less urgency than a public-health emergency on the scale of a pandemic. ~ Mark Gongloff

Letter: Climate change matters most

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 27, 2024

I was encouraged to read the Press Herald’s July 16 opinion piece, “A Trump victory will be a climate catastrophe,” by David Vail, professor of economics emeritus at Bowdoin College. It reinforced what many believe to be the most critical and defining issue of this year’s presidential and congressional elections — continuing to address ways to lessen the devastating impacts of climate change that we are experiencing here in Maine and globally. As the author states, “…we can sustain climate progress—and hope for coming generations.” In other words, if we don’t continue substantial progress on this front, nothing else will really matter. ~ Sandra Comstock, Portland

Open Farm Day has high stakes for multigenerational Maine farmers

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 27, 2024

Open Farm Day takes place on Sunday for the 35th year running, inviting the public to visit working farms across the state. For farmers who have been involved with the event since the 1980s, it’s an opportunity to connect people with where their food comes from. That’s important, they said, to encourage consumers to buy locally and support farms in a challenging economic landscape — and, hopefully, recruit a new generation.

Column: Even dead woodpeckers will cling to a tree

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 27, 2024

I was surveying a block on the southeast side of First Roach Pond in Kokadjo, when I noticed a downy woodpecker clinging to a roadside tree, about 4 feet off the ground. Its head was turned, its bill across its back in normal napping fashion. On my return 45 minutes later, it was still there. As I approached, I noted that it was in classic cling-to-a-tree posture – two toes in front, gripping the tree, two in back doing likewise. Its tail was properly braced against the bark. But it was dead, apparently from natural causes. From this, I learned that woodpeckers are so well-adapted to a life of banging their heads against trees, that they can grip the tree even after dying. ~ Bob Duchesne

Two Maine beaches under advisories for elevated bacteria levels

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 26, 2024

Two popular beaches in southern Maine were under advisories Friday due to elevated bacteria levels. Swimmers and beach-goers should avoid the water at Ocean Park in Old Orchard Beach and Mackerel Cove in Harpswell.

Richmond Days tours of Swan Island are canceled, but August ferry service is still on

KENNEBEC JOURNAL • July 26, 2024

Guided tours across Swan Island are canceled during this year’s Richmond Days celebration, but people will still have the chance to explore the island on their own on the weekends through August. The first island tour was scheduled for Saturday, during the town’s annual Richmond Days event. But Thursday that the event was cancelled after the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife declared the island’s pier unsafe last week. However, the ferry service will still run on weekends through the end of August by using a different dock. For years, a ferry service brought people back and forth from the island to enjoy its campsites and explore the wildlife preserve, but in 2022, the U.S. Coast Guard suspended the service following a failed inspection.

Project 2025 would undermine conservation and environmental programs

MAINE ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS • July 26, 2024

Project 2025, a roadmap for the next Republican administration prepared by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, calls for massive changes to national conservation and environmental protection programs, including for example:
• shrinking Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument in Maine
• legally defending a President’s authority to reduce the size of national monuments
• repealing the Antiquities Act to stop the presidential designation of future national monuments
• sabotaging science-based policies that address climate change
• circumscribing the structure and mission of the Environmental Protection Agency
• increasing logging in national forests
• ending input by species specialists in the Endangered Species Act program
• letting states take over management of endangered species

‘Lost on a Mountain in Maine’ movie now slated for November release

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 26, 2024

The cinematic adaptation of the classic survival tale “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” is now slated to hit theaters this November. Blue Fox Entertainment, which acquired the distribution rights for the film produced by Sylvester Stallone’s Balboa Productions, will begin its theatrical run on Nov. 1, according to Variety. “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” was previously expected to hit the big screen this summer. The movie — filmed in 2022, directed by Andrew Kightlinger and written by Luke Paradise — tells the true story of Donn Fendler, who became lost for nine days at age 12 in the Katahdin wilderness in 1939, surviving only off his wits and determination.

U.S. agriculture chief announces $4 million for Maine solar projects

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 26, 2024

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on Friday more than $4 million in grants and a loan guarantee to advance solar and heat pump projects in Maine. Vilsack joined Gov. Janet Mills, U.S. Sen. Angus King and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree at a ceremony at the Brunswick Farmers Market to celebrate Maine’s agricultural industry and the small farms that power it. Vilsack touted the federal program as an effort to help family farms cut costs. Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, said federal agriculture policy aims to develop “climate smart” practices that help reduce farms’ energy costs and seek to spur market demand for sustainably made products.

Checking in on Maine’s dams: Here’s what you need to know

MAINE MONITOR • July 26, 2024

Like floodwaters released during a breach, dam news in Maine seems to come all at once. In the past month, a federal court reasserted Maine’s role in the relicensing of a major Kennebec River dam, a Downeast town secured funding for the removal of its aging ice retention dam, and the owners of three Bucksport-area dams announced intent to forfeit their ownership. These shifts in the long-term management of all five dams lead back to a question that the state is addressing more and more often: What futures lie ahead for the structures that have shaped Maine’s environment and communities for centuries?

'National forests are not national parks': Logging debate in Whites divides forestry experts, environmentalists

NH PUBLIC RADIO • July 26, 2024

The Liberty Trail on Mt. Chocorua is one of the most popular hiking paths in the White Mountain National Forest. The trail, flanked by thick woods, laces through the Sandwich Range, a swath of public land along the forest’s southeastern ridge that’s beloved by hikers for its acres of undisturbed wilderness. “This forest,” said Zack Porter, a local conservation advocate, “is unique regionally for having much older and healthier forests than we have on private lands around New England.” But the recent approval of a 600-acre logging project in late June in the Sandwich Range has animated long simmering tensions over the best way to manage the national forest. In some stands, clear cuts are planned. Many see the White Mountain National Forest as similar to a national park — a place of nature protected from development and extraction. But national forests are managed with economic considerations front of mind.

Maine awarded $69 million grant to address climate change

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 26, 2024

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced Friday it is giving Maine a $69 million grant to help underserved communities develop and implement new strategies to protect themselves from the impacts of climate change, including flooding, storm surge, and extreme weather events. Federal officials hailed Maine’s “ambitious vision to become a national leader in climate resilience.” The Maine Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future will use the $69 million — the state’s largest ever climate grant — to focus on nature-based solutions, strengthen Maine’s working waterfronts, and build enduring capacity to prepare for and respond to climate change impacts.