He shot a big Maine bear with a homemade flintlock rifle

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 1, 2024

Tom Winland, 47, decided more than a year ago that he wanted to hunt for a bear. He chose Maine because it is legal to hunt bear over bait. He chose Dead North Adventures in Perham as an outfitter for lodging and guide services. Then he built his own rifle. Although the old-style gun is more common in Ohio, it’s rarely seen in Maine for hunting big game. Maine has a muzzleloader deer season, but most hunters use more modern technology such as in-line guns that have a percussion system for igniting the gunpowder rather than sharpened flint. “A trophy for me is getting a bear with a gun I created. Taking the bear with a 400-year-old technology [makes it] special,” Winland said.

Freeport climate group a finalist for Natural Resources Council award

TIMES RECORD • September 1, 2024

Freeport Climate Action NOW has been selected as one of four finalists (out of 36 nominations) for the Natural Resources Council of Maine’s “People’s Choice Award,” which recognizes individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the protection of Maine’s environment. The winner will be chosen by votes cast on NRCM’s website through Monday, Sept. 9. Freeport Climate Action NOW is a 3-year-old, all-volunteer nonprofit whose mission is to combat climate change.

Portland closes out second-warmest summer on record

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 1, 2024

The city had its second-warmest summer on record this season with an average of 69.2 degrees Fahrenheit throughout June, July and August, according to the National Weather Service. That’s 2.5 degrees above Portland’s normal summer temperature. It narrowly topped 2022, Portland’s third-warmest summer, which averaged 69.1 degrees. The hottest summer on record in Portland was 2020, when the average temperature for June, July and August was 70.5 degrees. Statewide, Maine experienced the warmest June and July on record.

Maine faces lawsuit for failing to adopt EV mandates, the latest state-level climate court case

MAINE MONITOR • September 1, 2024

A pending youth climate lawsuit in Maine represents the latest iteration of legal strategies aimed at holding states accountable for emissions-cutting targets. The case is one of a growing number responding to lagging progress on state climate laws that, in many cases, have now been on the books for years. What makes the Maine case unique is its targeted approach — focused on electric vehicle policy as a way to push the state forward on climate action. The case, filed earlier this year by the nonprofits Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), Sierra Club and Maine Youth Action, argues that the Maine Department and Board of Environmental Protection have fallen short on their legal duty to pass rules that will help achieve Maine’s required emissions reductions.

In Addison, a question over what is natural

MAINE MONITOR • September 1, 2024

For years, Ronald Ramsay — like his father before him — gathered the hay from his plot of salt marsh and spread it on his blueberry fields to keep the weeds down. Ramsay’s use of that land is now in jeopardy, because of a proposal to restore tidal flow to the marsh along the West Branch of the Pleasant River by removing a set of six tide gates beneath the Ridge Road crossing. Conservation groups say removing the gates would restore more than 250 acres of salt marsh — land area that could host sea-run fish and provide nesting habitat for migratory birds. “To restore it to what they determine to be its original state is a fantasy to begin with,” Ramsay said of the marsh. “No one really knows what it was. Those marshes were diked in the late 1700s. The riverway has been altered probably a dozen times by man over the years. What state are you looking for?”

Editorial: No better time to recognize Frances Perkins than right now

MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • September 1, 2024

Frances Perkins, America’s first female presidential Cabinet member, is in renewed limelight right now for a very good reason: a handsomely supported push to have President Biden designate a national monument in her name and memory. The move has this editorial board’s unreserved and enthusiastic support. A national monument in Maine for all time. And a fitting reminder to all of us, and generations to come, that there is much to do – and that it’s up to us to do it.

Opinion: Sabattus River restoration work is underway

SUN JOURNAL • September 1, 2024

For generations, factories and mills operated along the Sabattus River, but those businesses are gone now. Left behind are a series of dams along that do not produce power but do create impassible barriers to native migratory fish species. Removing the lower dams and installing an engineered fishway at the Sabattus Lake Outlet (Sleeper Dam) will allow fish species to return. Restoration of the Sabattus River is expected to make 2,429 acres of lake and pond habitat, and 75 miles of river and stream habitat accessible to migratory fish species. Once access is restored to Sabattus Pond, a self-sustaining run of nearly 500,000 adult alewife, a keystone species, is expected to return each year. ~ Landis Hudson, executive director, Maine Rivers

While an agency dawdles, a Machias dike remains crippled with winter storms approaching

MAINE MONITOR • August 31, 2024

Over the past six years, catastrophic storms with surging tides dumped floodwaters in Machias far surpassing the base flood elevation, classifying the events as 100-year floods. Last winter alone, three floods overwhelmed the dike and much of the surrounding downtown, including forcing the town hall to move, a change that has become permanent. Meanwhile, the eroding, century-old dike — a significant cause of that flooding — remains crippled and inadequately mended. After 15 years of studies, hearings and back-and-forth plans, the public still awaits a Maine Department of Transportation decision about how it will fix the problem — a dike that keeps crumbling and flood waters that keep coming.  

Scientist believes more great white sharks are swimming Down East

QUODDY TIDES • August 31, 2024

Steve Crawford, a fish ecologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, a scientist who has been gaining local knowledge about great white sharks along the East Coast of the U.S. and Canada believes there could be up to nearly 1,000 of them in the Passamaquoddy Bay region during a season and that they may be courting and mating in the bay. While other scientists say that the number of great white sharks in the region cannot yet be estimated, nor can it be determined if their numbers are increasing or if they are mating, they agree that the number of sharks being detected in the bay is growing.

What it’s like to hike Maine’s scariest trail

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 31, 2024

The jagged backbone of a stone giant, Knife Edge stretched before us. On both sides of this narrow ridge, the earth fell away, a near vertical drop of more than 1,000 feet. It occurred to me just how ridiculous it was to hike across it. But what’s life without a dash of absurdity? So I took one careful step, and then another. The mile-long ridge of sharp granite bridges two peaks atop Maine’s tallest mountain, Katahdin. Some call it the scariest hike in Maine, others claim it’s the most dangerous. It’s all a matter of perspective. Katahdin is located in Baxter State Park, which recorded its first death in 1933. Since that time, the park has seen more than 60 deaths. I don’t wish to scare anyone away from this trail, but I want to acknowledge the risks.

They’re digging through Maine’s growing piles of trash to help you make less of it

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 31, 2024

Wyatt Wells wore thick rubber gloves as he helped paw through several tons of household garbage at ecomaine’s Blueberry Road waste-to-energy facility on Wednesday morning. The trash-picking was part of a statewide audit of Maine’s waste stream organized by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. It’s designed to find out what the state’s growing population throws away most, and then help devise ways to divert that material from costly, environmentally unfriendly landfills and trash incinerators. The goal is to help reduce the amounts of waste that communities are burying in the ground. That has come at a growing cost to the environment, as well as to taxpayers who must cover the rising costs of disposing of all that waste.

Why gillnets like the one found in a Maine river are so bad

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 31, 2024

Gillnets have been illegal on Maine’s fresh water for decades. There’s a good reason. They kill not only the species the person is trying to catch but any fish not small enough to swim through the net’s holes. The net holes are big enough for the fish to get its head through, but it cannot get back out because its gills get hung up on the net. That’s why when a gillnet with dead fish in it was found discarded on the bank of the Magalloway River — one of Maine’s premier trout rivers — people were outraged.

Maine’s only dairy north of Portland will stop producing milk

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 30, 2024

Houlton Farms Dairy will stop producing milk in September, the owners said Friday. Citing increased costs of production and supplies, as well as declining milk sales, the dairy will cut out its white milk line near the end of September. The dairy has been an Aroostook County fixture for 86 years. Current owners, the Lincoln family, have had it for half that time. They’ve grown beyond milk to produce seasonally famous ice cream and butter that’s so much in demand it’s rationed. But production hikes and a drop in sales, due partly to the blossoming plant-based milk trend, have made it impossible for the family business to keep going, general manager Eric Lincoln said. Houlton Farms will stop milk production, but it will continue to make ice cream, butter and lemonade.

Improvements aim to enhance year-round appeal for Quarry Road Recreation Area in Waterville

MORNING SENTINEL • August 30, 2024

Work is scheduled to begin next year to pave part of the dirt road leading to the welcome center at Quarry Road Recreation Area, improve parking, and make changes to the meadow area so it may be used year-round. In addition, the city and Friends of Quarry Road have agreed to hire a seasonal development coach for the 2024-25 ski season to help grow the Nordic program for youth and middle school ski programs. A private donor gave a grant to fund the position, which would pay up to $34,155.

Toxic foam spill in Brunswick spread to garden used by immigrants

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 30, 2024

Some of the toxic firefighting foam that spilled at Brunswick Executive Airport last week made its way onto a nearby community garden used by immigrants and asylum seekers, according to the organization that manages it, the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust. Steve Walker, the land trust’s director, expressed concern about the potential contamination to the garden during a public forum about the spill on Thursday night, after he reported seeing foam land there in the days afterwards. The firefighting foam, which has also made its way to some nearby bodies of water, contains harmful PFAS chemicals. Authorities say they’re doing a range of monitoring of water and soil for contamination related to the spill.

Drinking-water warning lifted in Lisbon; pump malfunction caused sludge problem

SUN JOURNAL • August 30, 2024

After roughly 24 hours without safe drinking water, Lisbon residents hooked to the public water system can now drink the water. A pump malfunction resulted in sludge getting into the system at the Lisbon Water Department’s filtration plant, according to a statement issued by the Water Department on Friday night. Because the Water Department could not confirm that levels of contaminants such as arsenic were safe, the state required it to issue the do not drink order out of precaution. The Water Department handed out water to people all day Friday.

Meet the man behind Maine's puffin resurgence

NEWS CENTER MAINE • August 30, 2024

Maine has a puffin population thanks to one determined researcher who hatched a plan more than 50 years ago. His idea was to take newly hatched puffins—also known as pufflings—from Newfoundland and bring them back to Eastern Egg Rock, an island off the coast of Maine where they had once lived, but over the years had been killed off by predators and humans. It was a wild idea at the time, but Dr. Stephen Kress thought maybe if they grew up on the island they'd come back to it as adults and keep breeding. Despite a successful regrowth now, more than 50 years later, it was a slow start to his so-called Project Puffin.

A Maine shellfish harvester has a guess why his town is losing its mud

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 30, 2024

The town of Penobscot’s shellfish committee has teamed up with a Massachusetts nonprofit and a New Hampshire drone operator to solve the case of Northern Bay’s disappearing mud. Manomet Conservation Sciences, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that studies coastal ecosystems, contracted a New Hampshire-based drone operator to map the 1,000 acres of mudflats on Penobscot’s Northern Bay on Aug. 22. The drone’s multiple morning flights across the bay at the low tide will hopefully yield detailed maps that can provide insights into what is happening to the mud, researchers say.

It’s tough to build things in America. The Energy Permitting Reform Act could change that.

MAINE MONITOR • August 30, 2024

The U.S. added a record amount of energy from solar, wind and batteries to the grid last year – around 40 gigawatts. Another 63 gigawatts are planned for this year. But an analysis suggests that won’t be enough to meet our emissions reduction targets, which will require adding roughly 70 to 126 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity each year between 2025 and 2030. If we don’t make it easier to build large infrastructure projects, particularly the transmission lines that are currently one of the primary hurdles to adding renewables to the grid, the analysts wrote, we likely won’t meet those goals. “The biggest barriers to deployment between now and 2030 are non-cost in nature—like siting and permitting delays, backlogged grid interconnect queues, and supply chain challenges.”

Lisbon Water Department giving out bottled water amid arsenic contamination

SUN JOURNAL • August 30, 2024

An “accidental release” of arsenic Wednesday has prompted Lisbon officials to continue a do-not-drink order for all residents on town water, and the Lisbon Water Department was making bottled water available to residents. Interim Water Department General Manager Shellie Reynolds said she could release no additional information about the source of the arsenic or its spread in the system. The Water Department is directing people not to consume the water at all. Boiling it will not make it safer.