The most comprehensive online source of conservation news and events in Maine and beyond, edited by Jym St. Pierre
MAINE PUBLIC • April 24, 2025
At least 11 right whales were born this calving season, the New England Aquarium reported this week. The number is lower than what scientists hoped, as the critically endangered species faces threats from human-caused activities. Entanglements in fishing gear and boat strikes are the leading causes of death and injury to the population. Scientists say those injuries make it more difficult for right whales to reproduce and survive.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 24, 2025
Last November, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey filed a lawsuit accusing major oil and gas companies of misleading the public about climate change. In doing so, he joined a well-funded campaign aimed at ushering out fossil fuels faster than our markets can accommodate. With Maine households relying on heating oil and propane for home heating more than any other state in the country, his action raises a troubling question: Why is Frey investing taxpayer dollars into a legal campaign with little chance of success and a high price tag for Mainers? ~ Jacob Posik, Maine Policy Institute
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 24, 2025
I love all wildlife. Well, maybe not bears on my porch. Word had come down earlier. A bear and its two yearlings were visiting houses along my quiet, rural road after dark. Neighbors were urged to take precautions. I didn’t. Maine has the largest black bear population in the lower 48 states. It’s inevitable that we’ll bump into each other now and then. When bears are active, take your feeders down at night and bring them indoors. Secure trash cans in the garage or shed. DIF&W even suggests using an electric fence around the trashcans, if indoor storage isn’t possible. Bring grills and pet food indoors. Secure and clean. The best solution is to make your neighborhood unbearable. ~ Bob Duchesne
LIVERMORE FALLS ADVERTISER • April 23, 2025
Livermore Falls Selectmen are looking for feedback from residents on the town’s vulnerabilities and will be handing out surveys as part of a partnership with the Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments. The partnership provides up to $50,000 grants for potential projects ranging from heat pump installation to environmental assessments to increasing the overall building envelope and window upgrades. The state funded program requires no matching funds.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 24, 2025
The Trump administration has suspended a $12.5 million award for University of Maine’s floating offshore wind program. The funding interruption leaves a partially constructed test array docked on the coast in limbo. In an April 11 letter, the U.S. Department of Energy alleged that Maine failed to comply with the terms of the award for a quarter-scale demonstration of offshore turbines it is developing. It did not cite any specific violation by the university. "No costs incurred during the suspension period will be allowable," the department said. The department did not respond to a request for comment.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 23, 2025
Maine workers and labor organizers are urging Congress to preserve clean energy tax credits they say create local jobs. The Investment Tax Credit and Production Tax Credit return up to 30% of costs for large-scale renewable and clean energy projects. The credits are being reconsidered as federal lawmakers debate an extension of 2017 tax cuts. Chad Ward, an ironworker from Thorndike said the incentives let him to keep working in Maine and hopefully help his son join the ranks of skilled workers in the state. The Investment Tax Credit and Production Tax Credit were expanded through the Inflation Reduction Act passed during the Biden administration. Solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, battery storage, hydropower and carbon capture developments can qualify for the credits.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 23, 2025
Solar developers will need to obtain permits and pay fees to build on high value agricultural land according to new rules enacted by state regulators. Under the rules, developers of solar projects up to 20 acres have access to expedited permitting. But larger projects will have to pay compensation for displacing valuable agricultural soils and receive more stringent review. That compensation could include fees or mitigation such as conservation easements on similar land elsewhere. The regulations were required under a state law intended to balance Maine's goals of expanding clean energy and boosting local food production.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 22, 2025
A public hearing on a bill that would require hunters to have a permit to hunt coyote over bait in the fall will be held Wednesday. There already is open season on coyotes in Maine, and baiting is allowed with certain restrictions.LD 937, An Act to Establish a Permit to Hunt Coyote Over Bait, presented by Rep. Richard Mason, R-Lisbon, targets certain wildlife management districts and establishes penalties for violations. The idea is to support deer wintering areas in targeted districts.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 22, 2025
According to a study in The Lancet, around 70% of people ages 16-25 are extremely worried or very worried about the climate. In Maine, that commitment to acting on climate change was on display at two events this month. In Augusta, at least 100 high school students from across the state spilled out on a plaza behind the statehouse for a rally last week. The students waved signs and chanted slogans like "no more coal, no more oil, leave our carbon in the soil." The Day of Action organized by Maine Youth for Climate Justice was a chance to mobilize some of the state's youngest activists. And bring their priorities to the lawmakers that represent them. There was an even bigger turnout in early April when 300 high schoolers joined their teachers, students from the University of Maine and members of the Maine Climate Council for a day of speakers and workshops.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 22, 2025
A new law directs tens of millions of dollars to help Maine communities prepare for future storms made more extreme by climate change. Governor Janet Mills signed the bipartisan bill into law Tuesday after it received overwhelming support from lawmakers. The measure "will allow Maine communities, homeowners, businesses, emergency response leaders and others to prepare for the extreme weather events of the future and make Maine a safer place to live in the process," the Governor said. Under the law, homeowners will have access to a $15 million grant fund for improvements to protect against severe weather damage and to lower insurance costs. The law also directs $10 million for the state's required match to federal disaster relief funds.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 22, 2025
A conservation group in Belfast is purchasing a 54-acre parcel of land at the center of a years-long dispute over a proposed salmon farm. Nordic Aquafarms dropped its bid to build the on-shore aquaculture facility in January, after multiple rounds of legal challenges. Upstream Watch, a local group that pushed back on the project for years, is now under contract to purchase the property. Interim executive director Pete Nichols said the goal is to preserve the site.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 22, 2025
North Atlantic right whales gave birth to 11 babies this season. That’s lower than scientists had hoped for given the endangered species has endured a high number of deaths in recent years. As of Tuesday, there were about 370 of the whales left. Three of the mothers bear scars from boat strikes.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 21, 2025
HP 987, “An Act to Create a Green Crab Only Wholesale Dealer License” would give Mainers a low-barrier, affordable shot at wholesaling invasive green crabs. This would fill a crucial gap in the small but growing market for green crabs in Maine. A green crab only wholesale license would help create jobs, stop damage to our coastal environment clamming fishery and promote a low-cost, nutritious, wild-caught seafood, for Maine and beyond. ~ John Painter, Lewiston
THE HILL • April 21, 2025
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday gave sweeping authority to an official with ties to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a secretarial order, Burgum granted Tyler Hassen the authority to make “appropriate funding decisions” and oversee the “transfer of funds, programs, records, and property, as well as taking required personnel actions.” The Interior Department includes national parks, public lands, energy production and tribal affairs. “It looks like Burgum plans to sit by the fire eating warm cookies while Elon Musk’s lackeys dismantle our national parks and public lands,” said Jennifer Rokala, the group’s executive director, in a statement. “DOGE’s unelected bureaucrats in Washington have no idea how to staff a park, a wildlife refuge, or a campground. They have no idea how to manage a forest or prepare for fires in the wildland-urban interface. But Doug Burgum just gave DOGE free rein over all of that,” she said.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 21, 2025
Freshwater mussels surviving in eastern Maine are the focus of a lawsuit against the Trump administration. The Center for Biological Diversity argues that the government has to give Brook Floater mussels protection under the Endangered Species Act."Freshwater mollusks are the most endangered group of organisms in North America, because they have to have high water quality," said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Some of the last healthy populations of Brook Floaters are in the Penobscot River basin and river systems in Downeast Maine according to the state department of inland fisheries and wildlife. The mussels range from Atlantic Canada to Georgia, but have been hurt by water pollution, dams and development, according to the center. Brook Floater populations have shrunk to just a few scattered streams.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 21, 2025
Blue mussels in Casco Bay “have been either disappearing or they haven't been able to find mussels where they usually have been able to find them for generations.” Some have linked the loss of a once-vibrant wild mussel population to an ocean heat wave in the Gulf of Maine about a decade ago. A 2016 study estimated blue mussel populations in the intertidal zone between high and low tides declined more than 60% in the last 40 years. But what if the mussels didn't disappear entirely? What if they retreated to deeper, cooler water? "We are still finding them in these subtidal or deeper water areas," aquaculture program manager at Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Carissa Maurin said. "And these are locations that people wouldn't normally see unless you're there exactly at the right time, on the right date, within a two hour window."
TIMES RECORD • April 21, 2025
A little piece of Brunswick entered space last week onboard the all-female Blue Origin rocket flight. Partnering with nonprofit Teachers in Space, Karin Paquin’s middle school students at St. John’s Catholic School designed an experiment that flew on the New Shepherd rocket during the historic launch on April 14. The CubeSat, a type of small satellite, flew with other experiments — including many designed by students — in the payload of the rocket. It had also been on an unmanned flight.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 21, 2025
After nearly three months of frozen payments, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has canceled a five-year, $35 million climate-smart agriculture grant to a Freeport demonstration farm. Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture & the Environment was informed last week that it had lost its grant.The USDA announced it was canceling most of the 135 projects funded by the $3.1 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program last week, calling it a Biden administration-era slush fund “built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of (nongovernmental organizations).”
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 21, 2025
Ellsworth did not meet the requirements for testing its public drinking water for lead and copper between January 2022 and December 2024, it said in a letter to water department customers earlier this month. While the city did collect water samples twice during a recent three-year period, it was unable to get those samples formally tested for the metals. On one occasion, a box of water samples that the city had sent off for testing at a lab in Auburn were “squished causing the sample bottles to open.” More samples that were collected later in another attempt were delayed too long in getting to the same lab, and so were too old to test by the time they arrived, he said. Because those issues prevented the city from testing for lead and copper in its drinking water, it sent out the notice to the water department customers and is getting its water tested again.
MAINE PUBLIC • April 21, 2025
Many Maine fishermen are applauding a new executive order from President Trump, which calls on the federal government to identify and roll back regulations that are overly burdensome to the commercial fishing industry. The order signals that the Trump administration wants to listen to commercial harvesters and involve them in decision-making and research, said Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen's Association. "There are a lot of regulations that you could take a scalpel to, right? We can clean things up," he said. "There's a piling up regulations that takes place over time, and so I think it needs to be done carefully." Martens stressed that any deregulation must be done with a healthy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has already lost staff and faces more workforce and budget cuts.
