What locals fear will be lost if Sears Island becomes a wind port

BLOOMBERG • July 30, 2024

The hustle and bustle of Maine during its summer tourism season is obvious along Route 1, the busy highway that carries visitors through this coastal town, often en route to Mount Desert Island, the Blue Hill Peninsula or points farther up the coast. For locals in the know, though, it’s possible to turn off Route 1 and drive about 2 miles south to find an easy hideaway from all that traffic, on the free walking trails and beaches of secluded Sears Island. It’s that pristine quality that has endeared Sears Island to local residents for years. It’s also what has put the state-owned island at the center of some of Maine’s most heated development disputes of the past few decades.

Invasive plants workshop offered in Hiram Aug. 10

SUN JOURNAL • July 29, 2024

Chad Hammer, invasive plant biologist with Maine Natural Areas Program, will talk about combatting invasive plants during a workshop, coordinated by Oxford County Soil & Water Conservation District. Attendees can learn to identify and combat common invasive plants such as Japanese knotweed, barberry, and bittersweet, that threaten the local ecosystems. At Hiram Arts Center, August 10, 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

UMaine to build $10.3 million aquaculture research, workforce training center

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 30, 2024

The state university system is building a $10.3 million research center meant to train future workers for careers in aquaculture and to help solve problems fish and oyster farms are facing in Maine. Construction is slated to begin in Orono in October, with the facility expected to open in late 2025. The project is funded by the Build America Buy America Act and the Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan. The economic impact of aquaculture in Maine nearly tripled in 10 years, from $50 million in 2007 to $137 million in 2017.

‘Devil bird’ from Southern states spotted in Maine for the first time

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 30, 2024

A Southern waterbird known as the anhinga, or “devil bird,” made its first documented appearance in Maine last week, perched on a log in a flooded meadow in the small Lincoln County town of Somerville. The anhinga is the latest in a long line of rare birds sighted in Maine in recent years, the most prominent being the late 2021 arrival of the extremely rare Steller’s sea eagle in Georgetown, a bird native to northeastern Asia. In 2018, a great black hawk, only seen once before in America, hunkered down in Biddeford and generated buzz throughout the national birding community. Two other rare bird sightings in Maine in the last month. A tropical kingbird was seen in Dayton, the third time in Maine history. A ferruginous hawk was seen at the Lewiston-Auburn airport.

Commentary: Extreme heat is making our mental health worse

BLOOMBERG • July 30, 2024

On July 22, planet Earth achieved a terrifying milestone: Global temperatures reached their highest level in recorded history, breaking a record set just one day before. This year is expected to be the hottest in centuries. Heat waves are hotter, longer and more frequent than they were in the 1960s. Most of us understand that extreme heat is bad for our health, making our hearts, lungs, kidneys and other organs work much harder. But too often we overlook the toll heat takes on another vital organ: our brain. Extreme heat doesn’t just make us uncomfortable, it can make it harder to think clearly and be productive at work. It worsens our mental health, exacerbating common mood disorders like anxiety and depression as well as rarer conditions like schizophrenia and self-harming. ~ Lisa Jarvis

Half of all bikes in Acadia are now electric

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 30, 2024

There was zero electric bike traffic on the Acadia National Park’s scenic carriage roads five years ago, but e-bikes now make up roughly half of all bicycle traffic on the restricted gravel paths. The park has been studying and learning more about e-bikes since the National Park Service decided in 2019 that it must allow them wherever regular bicycles could go. Only Class 1 e-bikes, which have a top speed of 20 mph and require riders to pedal to get a boost from the electric motor, are allowed on the carriage roads.

Coastal Maine homeowners are trying to beat flooding by raising their houses

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 30, 2024

Matt Piantoni has been working on homes in the Saco village of Camp Ellis that were battered by extreme storms this winter. In the last year, he has replaced staircases and removed porches. On Monday, he was out jacking up one home’s foundation on massive 10-foot piers. More homeowners are seeking these kinds of services following twin January storms that led to record flooding along Maine’s coast. Most homes built along the coast now are built far off the ground, but cottages built in the earlier 20th century were not.

Acadia tackles mountaintop soil erosion with the help of hikers

MAINE PUBLIC • July 29, 2024

With so many hikers scaling the peaks at Acadia National Park, mountain top erosion has become a concern. The park has come up with a simple solution — that relies on the kindness of strangers — in hiking boots. As part of a new "Save Our Summit" restoration program to combat erosion and preserve local plant life each hiker will carry from five to 25 pounds of soil, which has been sterilized to ensure it's not carrying any invasive species into the park. These weekly hikes are a change from last year, when the park held a few larger events in which volunteers carried nearly 4,000 pounds of soil to 29 restoration sites. This year’s soil will be used for new sites, and researchers are testing to see if adding seeds to the soil helps plant life return faster.

Milo police chief threatens to ban ATV riders from using roads

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 29, 2024

Milo’s police chief threatened Monday to close the town to any all-terrain vehicle access after disruptive behavior by riders caused a private landowner to revoke permission to use his property. The Ramsdell Ridge Road all-terrain vehicle trail in Milo is closed because of riders who are misusing the stretch and being disrespectful to landowners, according to the local ATV club.

Two erosion sites threaten public infrastructure in Falmouth

FORECASTER • July 29, 2024

Erosion from ocean waves at two sites in Falmouth is threatening public infrastructure and the town will need to acquire some property rights to address the problem, according to Town Manager Nathan Poore. One erosion location is at 44 Old Mill Road, which has a publicly owned wastewater pump station nearby. The other location is 30 Shoreline Drive near Mackworth Point, where erosion is threatening the public road. Both face Mackworth Island. One councilor expressed interest in stabilizing a longer strip of land than what was outlined to make sure the issue doesn’t reoccur, citing an “economy of scale to fix a larger tract” of land.

Weather service warns of dangerous rip currents along Maine coast

Dangerous rip currents are expected along the Maine coast on Monday, according to a warning issued by the National Weather Service. The coastal hazard message says there is a high risk of dangerous rip currents from 8 a.m. Monday through the evening in York, Cumberland, Sagadahoc, Lincoln and Knox counties.

Wells considers temporary ban on large housing developments

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 29, 2024

Wells voters are poised to decide whether to temporarily ban large-scale residential developments to give the town time to adjust policies to manage growth in the community. The 180-day moratorium, which would extend from April to October, would not impact projects currently under review. Talk of the moratorium began earlier this year when word began to spread about a proposed 158-unit housing development on a 121-acre parcel off of Route 1. That project has since been withdrawn.

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.