Column: How technology is changing bird photography and birding in Maine

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 19, 2025

Once upon a time, wildlife photography was the domain of professionals with outrageously expensive gear. Then the world changed. Cameras became affordable. Digital replaced film. Big name manufacturers began an arms race to see who could develop better features faster — more pixels, higher resolution, quicker autofocus. The trend of birding through cameras continues to accelerate. The newest technology — mirrorless cameras — is rapidly replacing digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLRs). Many of these new cameras have autofocus so precise it can lock onto a bird’s eye. Use whatever camera you have — even your smartphone. After all, you probably paid more for it than I did for my old Canon. ~ Bob Duchesne

Janet Mills highlights climate priorities in visit to Belfast

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 19, 2025

Gov. Janet Mills used visits to two businesses in Belfast on Friday to highlight various priorities her administration has set for responding to climate change in the state. She used a visit to a waterfront restaurant to highlight the damage that it and other places faced from devastating coastal storms that hit the state early last year. Her second stop was at Logix, a growing company that installs solar panels and heat pumps around Maine. Storms and flooding are generally expected to become more severe as human consumption of fossil fuels warms the planet. At Logix, located on Searsport Avenue, Mills expressed concern about disruptions to federal funding for solar energy projects under the Trump administration. 

Maine health officials respond to study showing hexavalent chromium contamination in drinking water

MAINE PUBLIC • September 19, 2025

Health officials in Maine say they are working with water utilities to stay below maximum contaminant levels for hexavalent chromium. That's after a report from the Environmental Working Group, or EWG, pointed to thousands of public utilities nationwide that had traces of the compound, along with arsenic, nitrate or a combination of the three. Exposure to these chemicals at high levels can cause harmful health effects in humans including cancer. But according to publicly available water quality reports, Maine water utilities that were flagged in the EWG report are in compliance with federal standards.

Spreading sand to save a salt marsh

MAINE MONITOR • September 19, 2025

On a humid August morning, the Webhannet salt marsh in Wells was a sea of tousled, neon-green grass. But at the marsh’s northern edge, one spot stood out — about two acres of glittering white sand with only a few plants breaking through. Late last winter, excavators spread sand dredged from the nearby harbor there, in a bid to save the sinking marsh and protect the birds that rely on it. The marsh is a test site for a type of restoration never before tried in Maine, known as the “beneficial use of dredged materials.” The method involves spreading a thin layer of sand and sediment to raise the marsh surface, helping it better withstand sea level rise and support birds like the endangered saltmarsh sparrow and black ducks. At this site, crews used 1,000 cubic yards of sand to raise the elevation by 3 to 6 inches.

$500K cleanup of former Navy gym starts in Cutler

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 19, 2025

Plans to spend a half-million dollars removing toxic materials from a recreation building at the former Naval base in Cutler are underway, and more work may be needed before the building can be put to use again. The Washington County Development Authority was awarded the $500,000 grant through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program in 2021.

Maine’s border towns feel decline in Canadian visitors: ‘Half our community is gone’

CENTRAL MAINE • September 19, 2025

115,000 fewer people crossed Maine’s border with Canada in August compared with the same month a year ago. That’s a drop of 28%. August’s numbers are in line with a growing trend established around the time President Donald Trump began to make disparaging remarks about the country, calling for it to become America’s 51st state, and threatened the country with a volley of tariffs. For months, Maine’s elected officials, tourism experts and business owners have wrung their hands in anticipation of how the president’s actions and rhetoric might impact the state’s economy, which relies heavily on tourism. “It feels like half our community is gone,” said Sarah, a Calais resident who declined to provide her last name.

Maine wildlife biologists, game wardens rescue bull moose trapped in well

MAINE PUBLIC • September 19, 2025

State biologists and game wardens pulled off an unusual feat this week when they rescued a young bull moose that got stuck in an old well in Pembroke. When Steve Dunham, a regional wildlife biologist with the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, got a call about a moose trapped in a well in Pembroke on Wednesday evening, he says he wasn't sure what to expect. When he arrived on scene, he found a young bull moose he estimates to weigh around 500 pounds sloshing around in the bottom of an eight-foot-deep, hand-dug stone well that was hidden in dense vegetation on private property. Using a syringe on a long pole, Dunham dosed the animal with a sedative, then climbed down into the well, which had a few feet of water in it. With help from a crew above, he placed straps under the moose's body, and within an hour, an excavator had pulled it safely to the surface. Dunham said he then gave the moose an immobilization reversal drug, and off he ran.

Maine seafood processors buy last US sardine factory to launch new business

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 19, 2025

Three of Maine commercial fishing’s biggest players have purchased a former sardine canning factory in Prospect Harbor to launch a new seafood processing business. Curt Brown, Betsy Lowe and Pete Daley — all former coworkers at lobster processor Ready Seafood in Saco — started Bold Coast Seafood to expand Maine’s seafood processing capacities and bring jobs to the small Gouldsboro village. Building on Brown’s decades at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Ready Seafood, the company will also run a research lab “to improve our understanding of lobsters and the lobster resource,” Brown said.

Opinion: Native plants make Maine more resilient

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 19, 2025

Native plants build climate resilience, expand wildlife habitat and support biodiversity. They provide essential food and shelter for pollinators, birds and other wildlife — benefits that far outweigh those of most cultivated plants commonly sold at nurseries. Native plants also help to protect our lakes, rivers and streams. Their interwoven root systems provide an anchor for the soil. When the current drought breaks and intense rain events return (remember the 14 straight weekends of rain this past spring?), native plants will absorb some of that rainfall, slowing the flow so it has time to infiltrate into the ground and keeping phosphorus, the nutrient that drives algal blooms, out of our waterways. ~ Tyler Refsland, Wild Seed Project, and Susan Gallo, Maine Lakes

South Portland tank farms expected to be sold. What could happen next?

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 19, 2025

Although nothing official has been announced, Portland Pipe Line Corporation is expected to sell its holdings any day now, a development that would end its long and sometimes fraught relationship with the city and open up new possibilities to reimagine the land. The pipeline, a subsidiary of the Canadian oil company Suncor, owns more than 200 acres scattered across several parcels and is among the city’s largest landowners. Its assets include a 100-acre tank farm near the high school and four tanks and two piers by Bug Light Park that have been viewed both as eyesores and environmental hazards. The assessed value of the land is $38 million, but the city estimates it could be worth more than $100 million if the tanks were removed and the land cleaned up.

Opinion: What the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Foundation got wrong

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 19, 2025

In 2018, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Foundation published “Storied Lands & Waters,” a document designed to honor the cultural and ecological legacy of the Allagash River. It was a chance to recognize those who carved out lives of meaning and permanence along its banks — Scots-Irish and Acadian-Québécois families who endured isolation, brutal winters and hard labor to build something lasting. But the document fails to recognize the hundreds of immigrant families, including mine, whose sacrifices and labor built a lasting treasure. ~ Greg Jalbert, writer and former Maine Guide who grew up along the Allagash River

Opinion: Race between climate change and fossil fuel will determine fate of our children

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 19, 2025

Last year, the fossil fuel industry gave $219 million, mostly to help elect Trump and the Republican congressional majority. Now this industry is getting its payoff. The president is trying to stop the transition to renewable energy at a time when climate change is becoming more dangerous. And we are passing environmental tipping points now, which means that even when we switch completely to renewable energy, our climate will continue to get worse for some time. We are all spectators to a race that will determine the fate of our children. ~ Richard Thomas, Waterville

A Maine guide to spotting animals on your next hike

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 19, 2025

My best tip of spotting wildlife on the Maine coast and beyond: Keep your eyes open to all the possibilities. Rather than hanging your hopes on seeing a certain species — say a bald eagle or a harbor seal — approach the wilderness with the goal of discovering its complexities and enjoying any creature that crosses your path.

Opinion: Now is the time to protect Sears Island from industrialization

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 19, 2025

Since the 1970s, popular support for protecting Sears Island and opposition to out-sized Sears Island development proposals elevated the Penobscot Bay island into a compelling symbol of Maine’s economic and environmental policy options. Proposals for an oil refinery, a nuclear power plant, a coal-fired power plant, cargo port, LNG terminal, container port, and offshore wind manufacturing facility all faced oppositionstatewide and failed, while Sears Island’s 940 acres of old field, mixed forest, wetlands, sand beach, rocky beach, cliff, stream, salt marsh, and marine perimeter endured. When the path to developing floating offshore wind reopens, Maine can lead using new technology that supports launching foundations almost anywhere on our coast (such as aikido technologies new floating turbines), repurposing existing locations (Mack Point, Cousins Island) or integrating multiple manufacturing, launching and assembling locations much as the Aqua Ventus one-quarter scale did earlier this year. Meanwhile, Sears Island provides convincing reasons for protection: ~ Steve Miller

Superfund site in Brooksville will be dredged next week

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 19, 2025

Dredging work is expected to begin on a Superfund site in Brooksville next week, one of just two major projects that remain to be completed after years of cleanup on a section of the former Callahan metal mine. The site had been mined since at least the 1880s and, for a few years in the late 1960s and 70s, was an open-pit mine extracting primarily copper and zinc. The mine site had levels of polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCBs, which are toxins that can cause cancer, among other environmental issues. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency designated it a Superfund site, which gave the federal agency the ability to fund and organize cleanup efforts. When those efforts are eventually completed, it will mark the end of a wide-ranging remediation process that has spanned decades and millions of dollars.

Maine is under a fire watch. Half of the state could also freeze Friday night.

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 18, 2025

The National Weather Service has issued a fire watch across the state due to ongoing drought conditions. The warning comes hand-in-hand with a freeze watch that has been issued for roughly half of the state. Thursday morning’s update from the U.S. Drought Monitor painted a bleak picture of the ongoing drought conditions across Maine, which has seen very little rainfall over the past few months. Just over 5.5% of the state is experiencing extreme drought. The fire watch issued by the NWS stretches across the majority of the state, with elevated risks focused through all of northern and eastern Maine. With low humidity and windy conditions, fires can start and spread quickly. The freeze watch issued for late Friday through Saturday morning encompasses regions of northwestern Aroostook County, northern Somerset, Piscataquis, Oxford and Franklin counties and central Somerset County.

New Welcome Center Opens For Acadia National Park

NATIONAL PARKS TRAVELER • September 18, 2025

A huge new transit and welcome center quietly opened this month, launching a high-stakes effort by Acadia National Park and key partners to persuade more visitors to take the park’s fare-free shuttle and reduce Acadia traffic and parking problems. The Acadia Gateway Center, a key aspect of the park’s transportation plan, is strategically situated off Route 3 in Trenton about 11 miles north of the national park’s Hulls Cove Visitor Center, which can be so busy, drivers may circle around for minutes looking for a parking spot while at the same time having to watch out for pedestrians, bicyclists and RVs.

Skyline Farm celebrates 25 years of conservation, carriages and community

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 18, 2025

North Yarmouth residents did not want the beloved pastures and woods of Skyline Farm to turn into the proposed 15 housing lots. The 54-acre parcel near Walnut Hill had belonged to Horace “Ken” Sowles, and his death in 1997 left questions of its future, as his wife intended to sell it. Purchasing Skyline Farm in 1970, Sowles had owned the farm buildings, horses and indoor horse riding arena that was built in 1959, the first of its kind in Maine. So a group of North Yarmouth residents raised the approximately $75,000 needed to purchase the property, with $25,000 approved for the purchase at the annual town meeting, smaller gifts from the community and $30,000 from a wealthy private donor in Virginia who never visited the property but had a passion for horses. In the summer of 2000, the newly formed Skyline Farm nonprofit and the Sowles family agreed to a purchase of the property with a conservation easement by the Royal River Conservation Trust.

Extreme drought grips parts of Maine as lengthy dry spell worsens

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 18, 2025

More than 5% of Maine is now in extreme drought conditions, and 58% of the state is now classified as being in an severe drought, which is one level below extreme. That includes all of southern, central and Down East Maine — including the state’s entire coastline, from Kittery to Eastport.

Maine’s forests, yards and lakes under siege by invasive species

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • September 18, 2025

“Every invasive species we track comes with its own set of problems, and the list is only getting longer,” said Chad Hammer, invasive plant biologist with Maine’s Natural Areas Program. “Maine has all the ingredients invasives need: wetlands, forests, disturbed soil, and a changing climate. Once something gets introduced, the conditions are right for it to spread.” Climate change, in other words, amplifies the pressures brought with nonnative species by further destabilizing ecosystems, tipping the balance in favor of invasives. Japanese knotweed crowds riverbanks with bamboo-like walls that choke out nearly all native plants. Glossy buckthorn ahas infiltrated wetlands and forests with the help of birds that carry its seeds far from yards. Purple loosestrife has transformed wetlands across the state into monocultures: areas where the invasive establishes itself exclusive to other plants. It isn’t just plants crowding out their neighbors. Insects and diseases like the emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adelgid contribute to the elimination of tree species as forests change composition over time.