The most comprehensive online source of conservation news and events in Maine and beyond, edited by Jym St. Pierre
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 30, 2025
In response to V. Paul Reynolds’ May 28 opinion column about Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner Judy Camuso; I think he couldn’t be more wrong. Commissioner Camuso has been one of Maine’s best. Maybe Reynolds should go back to the 1900s and fight women’s suffrage. It seems that’s where he belongs. ~ Ed Pineau, Orono [Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine lobbyist]
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 30, 2025
The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife was in the public crosshairs this week when criticism from former employees got traction on social media. Commissioner Judy Camuso on Thursday defended the department after former employees accused her of giving favoritism to women for promotions, using inappropriate publicity stunts to get people into events and straying from the missions of the department. Camuso said Thursday that the department needs to adapt if the state’s hunting and fishing traditions are to survive. “I believe that the outdoors is for anyone,” she said. “We are doing everything we can to protect fish and wildlife for the public and making sure the public understands what we’re doing.”
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 30, 2025
More than 40 years of pulling lobster traps ruined John Cotton’s shoulders. Cotton, 64, started Ice House Oysters in 2016 to stay working on the water without hiring staff, after he found it difficult to find reliable help. Cotton was working with a federally funded program at UMaine Cooperative Extension called AgrAbility, which helps blue-collar workers overcome disabilities so they can remain on the job. The program was helping him purchase a boat with a mechanical arm. But the program was one of the dozens of federal grants that President Trump has terminated. Cotton’s situation shows how the impact of these cuts has trickled down across the state, including to the ordinary people who make up the state’s heritage industries like fishing, farming and logging.
HARPSWELL ANCHOR • May 29, 2025
A bill initiated and co-written by Harpswell officials to facilitate coastal rebuilding from the January 2024 storms has been expanded to include all coastal communities in Maine. Maine Senate President Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, submitted the bill, L.D. 1864, to the Legislature in early May. It would allow working waterfront property owners to bypass certain zoning rules so they can rebuild structures damaged during the back-to-back coastal storms. If passed, the bill would let communities grant variances to their shoreland zoning and floodplain management ordinances to repair or rebuild structures that don’t meet the typical threshold for approval.
MAINE PUBLIC • May 29, 2025
The Gulf of Maine will again experience colder than normal bottom-water temperatures, according to a new forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA projects deep water temperatures in the Gulf of Maine will be cooler by 0.9 to 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, compared to the seasonal average. The forecast appears to continue a trend that Maine scientists observed for the last year and a half. Nick Record, a senior scientist with the Bigelow Laboratory, said recent measurements taken through the lab's survey are consistent with NOAA's outlook. Colder deep waters may create more favorable conditions for lobster, groundfish and whales.
MAINE PUBLIC • May 29, 2025
Rapidly growing turf algae are effectively waging chemical warfare on kelp forests in the Gulf of Maine, according to a new study from researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the University of Maine. Lead author Shane Farrell said the algae have proliferated due to warming waters, and are releasing chemicals that make it harder for kelp to survive. Farrell said losing those kelp forests threatens a linchpin of the marine ecosystem. "They're much like coral reefs or rainforests, you know, they provide habitat, food and refuge for a variety of species, making them biodiversity hotspots," he said.
TIMES RECORD • May 28, 2025
Gov. Janet Mills has signed LD 07, An Act to Prohibit the Use of Aqueous Film-Forming Foam at the Former Brunswick Naval Air Station. It stipulates that starting Jan. 1, 2026, the use and storage of AFFF — a fire suppression foam containing a toxic PFAS chemical known as PFOS — will be prohibited at the former air station. LD 407 among several “forever chemicals” bills that lawmakers are considering this session following a catastrophic firefighting spill at the Brunswick Executive Airport’s hangar 4 in August 2024.
MAINE PUBLIC • May 28, 2025
The Maine House has given initial approval to two bills that expand testing for the "forever chemicals" known as PFAS. State law already requires landlords in Maine to test for arsenic in private well water every five years. A bill that received initial approval Wednesday in the House would add PFAS to that list as concerns grow in rural Maine about contamination linked to PFAS-laden sludge that was spread as fertilizer on farm fields.
ASSOCIATED PRESS • May 27, 2025
Tyler Hassen, Texas oil executive from Elon Musk’s government efficiency team. He lacks Senate confirmation, has no public administration experience, hasn’t divested his energy investments or filed an ethics commitment to break ties with companies that pose a conflict of interest. Yet, he has been given sweeping powers to overhaul the federal department that manages vast tracts of resource-rich public lands. “It’s a dereliction of duty to offload decisions about staffing and funding at the Interior Department to someone who hasn’t even been confirmed by the Senate,” said Kate Groetzinger, with the Center for Western Priorities, a nonpartisan conservation group. A department spokesperson said that Hassen is helping achieve the president’s vision for major changes.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • May 28, 2025
The browntail moth population collapse that began in 2024 is continuing this year, which means a less itchy spring for Maine residents. Browntail moth caterpillars shed microscopic hairs that drift through the air and can provoke an allergic reaction when they come into contact with human skin, often resulting in red, itchy rashes that can last for several weeks. The hairs can also cause respiratory problems for people with chronic conditions, like asthma. The caterpillar hairs have been most plentiful, and most annoying, between mid-May and the end of June. But this year, a combination of factors is providing relief from the usual itchy conditions in much of the state.
TIMES RECORD • May 28, 2025
Lady slippers are early spring flowers, coming out in May and then disappearing after a week or two until the next year. Maine is home to several species of lady slipper orchids, including the ram’s head, which is endangered and against the law to pick. Like lady slipper flowers, lady slipper shells are pretty weird. While they are only typically a couple of inches long and a single shell can appear pretty flattened on a rock, slipper shells can form themselves into stacks of many individuals. They are hermaphroditic, meaning that they have male and female reproductive organs, but that doesn’t mean they are male and female at the same time — they switch from one to the other. Slipper shells start out male and then become female as they get older. The older female stays on the bottom of the stack with the younger male on top, which fertilizes her eggs and produces yet another generation on top of that. ~ Susan Olcott
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
A solar developer may be fined about $180,000 for causing erosion and doing unpermitted work at a 19.32-acre Washington County facility. The Maine Board of Environmental Protection will consider a $180,159 consent agreement with Marshfield Solar LLC and a site contractor at its June 5 meeting. In a memo ahead of the meeting, department staff recommended the board accept the agreement and said the violations have since been corrected.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
President Donald Trump’s administration has paused, terminated or threatened to withhold nearly $50 million in funding to Maine’s university system, primarily affecting programs at the flagship campus in Orono. New figures reveal that the Trump administration’s cuts to Maine’s public university system have reached much further than previously disclosed. Since Trump took over in January, the federal government notified the system that it was terminating the remaining funding for 23 federal grants.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • May 28, 2025
The 55 miles of trails snaking through Falmouth Land Trust properties are in need of an upgrade. Heavy recreational use and increasingly severe rainfall has washed out sections of the trails, damaged footbridges and made permanent pools of some pathways. For the first time Falmouth Land Trust has begun a fundraising campaign to modernize and strengthen the trails system. Improvements such as making paths of raised gravel so rainwater can flow beneath them, installing drainage structures and rerouting trails as necessary would make them more resilient to rain and use.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
The Acadia Gateway Center, which was originally expected to open in June, will likely not open until the end of July. The visitors center is meant to encourage Mount Desert Island visitors to park their cars and use public transportation, decreasing vehicle traffic onto the island and into Acadia National Park. the building, which has more than 10,000 square feet of space and is on Route 3, a corridor where visitors in motorized vehicles and bikes must go through to get to Acadia National Park and the rest of the island.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
Last week, the federal government advised Maine’s fish and wildlife commissioner, Judy Camuso, that one of her “social barrier” initiatives in the hiring process was discriminatory. Significant amounts of grant funding for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife from the U.S. Department of the Interior would be terminated, unless the policy was withdrawn. The policy at the center of the controversy reads: “All hiring panels assembled for the review and selection of IFW employees will be comprised of 50% women. In the event there is an uneven number of panelists, organizers shall make every effort to include more women.” Nowhere in statute does it say the commissioner is responsible for social activism or breaking social barriers. Her job is technical, managerial and regulatory. ~ V. Paul Reynolds
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
A new southern Aroostook County kayak rental company will help to give locals and visitors access to regional lakes and rivers. Slated to officially open on Father’s Day, The Riversbend Paddle Co. at 431 Bangor St. in Houlton will launch a new chapter in the region’s outdoor recreation scene, said founder Johanna Johnston, who also leads Southern Aroostook Development Corp. “One of our region’s greatest untapped resources is its potential for outdoor recreation,” said Johnston. “But access has been a barrier for many. This business makes it easier for people — whether they live here or are just visiting — to get out on the water and fall in love with what southern Aroostook has to offer.”
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
Thousands of good-paying union jobs are at stake in Maine. The U.S. House of Representatives just rammed through a budget bill that would gut clean energy tax credits and upend Maine’s energy future. The elimination of those critical federal energy investments creates massive uncertainty for energy companies, imperiling energy projects — and the livelihoods of union workers — that are already in the pipeline to be developed across our state. Tax credits for clean energy projects are supporting hundreds of projects across Maine that are set to bring in thousands of family-sustaining, union jobs to our communities. 70% of Americans oppose taking away federal energy incentives. Americans want the lower bills and good-paying union jobs that clean energy projects will deliver, not tax cuts for the rich. ~ Grant Provost, Brunswick, vice president of the Maine AFL-CIO and Maine Labor Climate Council board member
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
Caribou will get a $4 million federal boost to clean up the remains of its former power plant near the Aroostook River. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced $38 million in brownfields funding on May 16 to benefit 25 projects throughout Maine. Caribou is the only community in northern Maine to receive a grant. The defunct power plant on lower Lyndon Street has been vacant for 13 years and contains metals, asbestos and other dangerous materials.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • May 28, 2025
People often stash canoes and kayaks on the shores of remote ponds that aren’t accessible by vehicle. This way, they have a boat to use anytime they visit that pond, instead of hauling one each time they visit. Is it OK to use one of these boats? If you borrow a canoe that you come across in the woods, keep in mind it’s not your boat, so treat it well. If you abuse it or don’t put it away nicely, the owner may choose to remove it or chain it up, which would ruin the opportunity for others. It should go without saying, but if someone has chained up a canoe, it’s off limits.
