The most comprehensive online source of conservation news and events in Maine and beyond, edited by Jym St. Pierre
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 1, 2025
Two occupants were injured when a small floatplane crashed into Flagstaff Lake near Eustis on Monday afternoon, state police said. The small single engine floatplane equipped with pontoons was beginning to take off from the lake when it plunged into the water. On board were the pilot, 62-year-old Stephen Vorpagel of Readfield and one passenger. Both individuals were rescued, brought to shore, and suffered minor injuries.
SUN JOURNAL • September 1, 2025
In 1960, a visit of a bull moose on my grandparents’ dairy farm generated big news in Somerset County. Motorists slowly drove past our pastures to catch a glimpse of the moose, which had a crush on Ginger, our top milking cow. On the third morning of the moose’s visit, brother Don and I asked Grampa to explain the bull’s attraction to our prize cow. “Ask your grandmother.” Inside the kitchen, we ambushed Grammy with questions about moose sex. “Ask your mother,” she said. “For some reason,” mother explained, “the moose wants Ginger to be his mating partner.” Grandpa had had enough of the utterly bewildered moose. He sicced Bonnie, our border collie, on the brute to drive him into the woods. But Bonnie instead chased him into the barnyard. Bypassing the clothesline, his left antler snagged the backstrap of Grammy’s bra. She grabbed the porch broom and chased the moose yelling, “Drop that bra!” A month later, we spotted the tattered bra on a witch hazel bush. I handed the bra to Grampa, which he called an “over the shoulder boulder holder.” ~ Ron Joseph
THE TRAVEL • August 30, 2025
Acadia National Park is often one of the first places that comes to mind when travelers think of natural beauty in Maine. With its rocky coastline, scenic hikes, amazing spots to view fall foliage, and sweeping views from Cadillac Mountain, it ranks among the most popular national parks in the country. But there's another corner of Maine that has slowly gained attention over the past few years. Located in the state's North Woods, Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument has Americans buzzing, especially those wanting to completely unplug from the stressors of daily life. While many travelers have recently become aware of this area, it has long been on the radar of conservation groups. At one point, it was even tied to the Maine Woods National Park project, a proposal led by RESTORE: The North Woods.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 1, 2025
Authorities are investigating the death of a 74-year-old man whose body was recovered near Bremen hours after he was reported missing from his sailboat Sunday, according to the Maine Marine Patrol. Friends of Mark Metzger, of Waltham, Massachusetts, reported him missing around 11:40 a.m. Sunday, the agency said in a statement Monday morning. Metzger was not aboard his 19-foot sailboat, which had been anchored on the western side of Bremen Long Island.
SUN JOURNAL • August 31, 2025
Since I got pummeled by anaplasmosis, my de-tickification ritual has become rather extreme. For starters, I carry a bunch of lint rollers, the kind that uses sticky paper to pluck fuzz off your fabrics. Whenever I come out of the woods, I get as naked as is tasteful for the situation and I then run that roller over every inch of me in hopes of removing any clinging vectors of death that may have wandered onto my skin. I shake my hiking clothes vigorously and change into something fresh. At home, I throw all my hiking clothes into the dryer on its highest, most tick-killing setting. I then take a shower and use a particularly rough scrubby to scourge my flesh. If ticks are found on me in spite of my efforts, I have my steady-handed wife remove them with a commercially available tick remover. The chemical permethrin is used by some tick-averse folks as a way to treat clothing and hopefully repel the beasts. More tick prevention tips can be found at the excellent Tick Lab website at extension.umaine.edu/ticks.
SUN JOURNAL • August 31, 2025
For three days my temperature shot up to 102, so I’d feel burning hot one minute, Arctic cold the next. All I could eat was soup, and I did that with trembling hands. The result of my flesh being invaded by a tick so small it would be barely visible to the naked eye. Anaplasmosis, that’s what I had, an affliction I’d never heard of and still can’t pronounce half the time. It wrecked me for most of a week, subsided, and then came back a week later for a rerun. Then I started taking antibiotics and within hours of my second dose, I felt human again. But not everyone is so lucky. There’s Lyme disease out there in the world of poisonous ticks and Lyme is an infection that can impact, not just a week or two, but the entirety of a person’s life. In Maine, the rate of Lyme disease has increased more than tenfold in the past 20 years, and it continues to rise. This, experts said, will be another record-breaking year. I haven’t stopped hiking or rolling around in the grass like a dog for fear of ticks, even though I was so thoroughly humbled by one earlier in the summer. Give up doing what you love and the bloodsuckers win.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 31, 2025
Two women were killed and several injured after an 18-foot pontoon boat flipped on Flagstaff Lake in Eustis Saturday around 1:30 near the Cathedral Pines Campground. The victims were Farhana Nasir, 53, of Selden, New York, and Kiran Akbar, 23, of Lake Grove, New York. A third woman is in critical condition at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center. The boat was traveling with seven people onboard when the bow started to dip underwater. The driver unsuccessfully attempted to raise the bow, and the boat flipped, throwing all seven passengers into the water 180 feet from shore. None were wearing life jackets. Witnesses rushed to assist the passengers, and were able to get all seven back to shore. Three of the passengers were unresponsive and CPR was performed on all three.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 31, 2025
When Pineland Farms of New Gloucester and the Libra Foundation stopped funding the Fort Kent Outdoor Center last year and gave the facility back to the board of directors, the group knew a challenge lay ahead. Now, they need to come up with approximately $140,000 in annual funding if they want to keep the operation and its programs intact. The Fort Kent facility, along with the Nordic Heritage Outdoor Center in Presque Isle, were created in 1998 as part of the Maine Winter Sports Center. The center not only trains athletes and hosts local and international meets, but is an all-around recreation resource that helps draw people to the St. John Valley and Aroostook County as a whole. The board aims to put $2.4 million into an endowment, using the interest to generate annual funding to replace what Libra provided.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 30, 2025
The incredibly starry sky of the Katahdin region has long been celebrated, and now it’s being recognized internationally. Maine’s Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument has been recognized as the first International Dark Sky Sanctuary on the East Coast by the International Dark Sky Association, becoming the 12th such designation in the world.
MOTHER JONES • August 30, 2025
From budget cuts to “ideological” changes, the Trump administration is shaping the future of the National Park Service. What’s really at stake in the battle over America’s parks.
MENTAL FLOSS • August 30, 2025
National parks are more popular than ever: in 2024, the National Park Service tallied more than 331 million visits, its biggest year on record. But some states have much more of their land dedicated to national parks than others. National Park Service oversees more than 85 million acres of land across all 50 states, roughly 3.5 percent of the country’s total area. More than half of those acres are located inside a single state: Alaska. The state with the least national park land is also the smallest in the country. Rhode Island’s five acres are spread across the national memorial to Roger Williams, the Ocean State’s founder, and three other units. New national parks, historic sites, and monuments are still being established every year. Some of the newest include the Frances Perkins National Monument in Maine.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 30, 2025
A new push to boost electricity capacity across New England could help to get a stalled transmission line project to northern Maine — and related wind energy development in the region — back on track. The effort by ISO New England will likely support the upgrade of a key substation in Pittsfield and other changes to move power farther south into New England. That could make it easier to tap the mostly undeveloped wind energy potential of northern Maine. Clean energy advocates hope the efforts could give a much-needed boost to Maine’s own plans to create more wind energy in Aroostook County and send it southward. State regulators are again seeking developers who could pull off a wind and transmission project with the new regional support. However, it’s an open question whether the northern Maine transmission project will be able to overcome some of the early roadblocks — including local resistance along the proposed corridor — that have already stalled the project for several years.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 30, 2025
There is little stability in farming, from the field to the finances. There will always be expenses. That reality often forces farmers to have a diverse array of revenue streams to stay afloat. One of the ways some farms accomplish that is through Community Supported Agriculture, in which members of the community pay for a share of a farm’s produce, meat and other products. Through that steady income stream, CSAs give farmers a sense of predictability that is usually lacking in the industry. For some, it’s the difference between staying in business and losing the farm.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 29, 2025
Portland Water District plans to demolish its building at the end of Maple Street, which goes all the way to the lake shore and is seeking grant money to design a new fishing pier. The project would remove the pavement, stabilize the ground with mulch to control erosion, and install an ADA compliant path to the fishing pier. Some residents say it would heavily inconvenience persons with disabilities. Standish Town Council members expressed skepticism of the proposal for a 300-foot walking path to replace the road.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 29, 2025
On Aug. 24, park rangers and the Mount Desert and Bar Harbor fire departments responded to a report of a horse-drawn carriage accident in Acadia National Park. at approximately 11 a.m., the park received reports of a privately owned horse-drawn carriage that had rolled over. The carriage was occupied by a 72-year-old woman and a 43-year-old woman, both from Vermont. Responding personnel were told that the carriage was being driven up the “first hill from Wildwood Stables” and apparently the horse began to back up unexpectedly. As the carriage went backward, the right wheel left the carriage road and the horse, carriage, and passengers rolled down “a steep embankment.” The women were transported to MDI Hospital by ambulance.
MAINE PUBLIC • August 29, 2025
Drought expanded in Maine again in the last week of August, with about 1.2 million people are living in at least abnormally dry conditions. It took about a month for the state to go from having almost no areas with drought to 87% of the state in at least abnormally dry conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Maine Climatologist Sean Birkel said the drought's severity is driven by a warming climate. Short-term drought is fairly common in the Northeast, according to Birkel. But hotter weather is intensifying dry conditions, he said, pointing to a heat wave in mid-August that made the drought worse.
MAINE MONITOR • August 29, 2025
When Governor Janet Mills introduced her landmark bipartisan climate law this January there was already broad agreement that Maine needed to do more to defend against rising sea levels and intensifying storms. The widespread flooding that occurred a year prior exposed vast weaknesses in both local infrastructure and the state’s emergency response and recovery efforts. More Maine communities than ever before applied for federal resilience grants and counted on them to bring vital projects to life. But now, nearly seven months and billions of dollars into the Trump administration’s grant cancellations, a new playing field has come into focus, one with significantly less federal support. Maine will need to become more self-resourced in its ability to make proactive resilience investments.
CENTRAL MAINE • August 29, 2025
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said Friday the Trump administration has agreed to release more than $180 million in federal funding for AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism. The administration sought to cut the funding in the spring, prompting more than two dozen states, including Maine, to sue the administration. Maine had approximately 200 AmeriCorps fellows. “At the last minute, when required to provide legal justification as to why it withheld funds, the Administration instead did what it should have done from the beginning and released the funding.” Last year, Maine received $8.6 million in federal funding for AmeriCorps operations that serve veterans, seniors, and disaster victims, among others. The administration continued to withhold $184 million in funding.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 29, 2025
A large, scenic Belfast property once used for commercial blueberry growing is now for sale. That’s raising concern among area residents that the land could be purchased by a developer or private landholder who could bar the public from accessing it. They are now pushing for it to be preserved. The 247 acres were once owned and harvested by Allen’s Blueberry Freezer company. After the company ended its berry harvesting operations several years ago, it sold the bulk of its land to Jasper Wyman & Son. But the land for sale in Belfast is one of several parcels that the Allen family retained. It’s now owned by Jason Allen of Ellsworth, who has listed it for sale for $1.8 million. Some area residents are pushing for one of the region’s land trusts to protect the property so that it can remain open to the public and continue to offer other environmental benefits.
MAINE PUBLIC • August 29, 2025
A state fund that incentivizes Maine public schools to purchase food directly from local producers is expanding this year. State officials say a new law is helping each dollar a school spends on local food go further. Since the Local Foods Fund was established in 2021, public schools could count on the state to reimburse them one dollar for every three they spent on local food — such as veggies, cheese, meat, yogurt, beans, tofu, etc. — up to a maximum of $5,000 per year. But that changed when the Act to Promote Local Seafood in Schools was passed in June. Jane McLucas, the state's director of child nutrition, says the new law not only explicitly encourages schools to buy local seafood, it also gives the Local Foods Fund a big boost. Now, schools will be reimbursed one dollar on every two dollars they spend, up to a maximum contribution of $10,000.
