The most comprehensive online source of conservation news and events in Maine and beyond, edited by Jym St. Pierre
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 23, 2025
For more than a decade, the nonprofit WindowDressers has offered low- or no-cost window inserts, designed to plug drafty windows and keep heat indoors. Armstrong, a longtime volunteerturned coordinator, said the Rockland-based group helps New Englanders lower their heating bills while bringing people together for “community build” sessions.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 23, 2025
In their reporting on the careers of Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, CNN, NPR and PBS all skipped mention of their many statements warning of dire consequences for wildlife, their habitats and us if we don’t find ways to cork the population-growth genie — and soon. ~ Anthony Taylor, Buxton
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • October 23, 2025
A family-run farm in northern Maine is now getting statewide recognition. Freckle Farm in St. David is this year’s recipient of the Maine Institute for Family-Owned Business Shep Lee Community Service Award. The award, according to the Portland-based institute, recognizes a business of any size that demonstrates a commitment to giving back to the community, volunteerism, and employee service to the community. The 2.4-acre farm is run by Keren and Corey Morin. The Morins and their five children mostly handle everything at the farm, and will occasionally get help from volunteers. The farm began in 2020 as an effort to tackle food insecurity amid the COVID-19 pandemic. They were shocked to see empty grocery store shelves in their town in 2020. This motivated them to start the farm and prevent their neighbors in town from going hungry.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • October 23, 2025
I had a terrible dream the other night. Not a Stephen King-style horror that haunts you in the dark, but a different kind of nightmare. In it, hunting simply didn’t exist. No rifles, no bows, no shotguns. No hunters wandering the woods. A world without one of America’s oldest traditions. I thought about how lucky we are to live in a country where, with few exceptions, nearly anyone can hunt. For me, it is about putting meat on the table, but it is also much more. The woods and fields are my cathedral, a place where I find peace, rejuvenation and a sense of being whole. Those opposed to hunting might find that elsewhere. I have yet to see it. I feel sorry for those who never understand the need or passion as I do. ~ Al Raychard
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • October 22, 2025
An earthquake rattled Monhegan early Sunday morning. The magnitude 2 temblor shook the ground at a depth of 6.7 miles just about 1.8 miles north of the midcoast island about 3:13 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Since 1997, there have been more than 150 recorded earthquakes in the state. The strongest quake in recent memory occurred on Oct. 16, 2012, when a 4.5 magnitude earthquake shook the ground in East Waterboro.
TIMES RECORD • October 22, 2025
The Neighborhood United Church of Christ in Bath and the Earth Care Team of First Parish Church in Brunswick are partnering to inform area residents about the many related challenges and opportunities that go along with plastic pollution. Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick will host the first evening at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30. The second evening is slated for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 5, at Patten Free Library in Bath. On the first evening, Mariel Geiger, policy lead of the Surfrider Foundation’s Maine Chapter, will speak on “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of Plastics.” Vanessa Berry, the Natural Resource Council of Maine’s Sustainable Maine program manager will follow, speaking on Maine’s first-in-the-nation “Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging” legislation. The second evening will feature Megan Mansfield-Pryor, Bath city councilor and Waste Management Climate Policy advisor at the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future. She will speak on “Town Efforts to Reduce Plastic Pollution.” Also featured will be Bea Johnson, ecomaine environmental educator, speaking on the topic of “What To Do About Plastics in Your Home.”
HARPSWELL ANCHOR • October 22, 2025
Brunswick conservationist Jym St. Pierre has been named the sixth recipient of the Brunswick Rotary Club’s annual Walter H. “Doc” Phillips Memorial Award, named for a late Harpswell volunteer. The club presented the award Oct. 16 during a ceremony at the Harpswell Town Office. St. Pierre, who lives in Brunswick, has spent nearly five decades protecting Maine’s natural landscapes. Since 1995, he has served as Maine director of RESTORE: The North Woods. He previously worked with the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, the Northern Forest Alliance and the Maine Department of Conservation. He also helped found the Kennebec Land Trust and Maine Conservation Voters. He continues to serve on the board of Friends of Baxter State Park, as well as the Brunswick Town Commons Committee.
MAINE PUBLIC • October 22, 2025
Fewer Canadians visited Maine this summer, but the drop-off was not as bad as many in the state's hospitality industry had initially feared. According to a report from the Maine Office of Tourism, Canadians did make up a smaller share of summer visitors this year. Overall visitor numbers were down 6% this summer, and more than half of that decline is attributed to Canadians who may have been alienated by tariffs and President Trump's suggestion that Canada become the 51st state. But the report says the drop-off was not as steep as expected, in part due to a concerted effort by the Mills' administration to welcome Canadian visitors. The report says overall, visitors spent nearly $5 billion in the state this summer.
MAINE PUBLIC • October 22, 2025
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has filed another notice of violation against the owner of a former Orrington chemical company for allegedly failing to complete environmental cleanup at the site. Mallinckrodt US "continues to evade the clear requirement" that it remove remaining mercury-contaminated soil at the old HoltraChem factory, according to the Oct. 20 notice. The state said the company had failed to submit a revised cleanup plan to excavate tainted soil and had not filed a suitable proposal to remove an industrial sewer at the site. The company also had not established a trust fund to cover future operation of the plant's wastewater treatment plant, groundwater collection and monitoring, according to the notice. Three years ago, the company agreed to pay at least $187 million to address mercury pollution in the Penobscot river and settle a long-running lawsuit. Representatives for Mallinckrodt's parent company, medical device manufacturer Medtronic, did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 22, 2025
A new trail at Woodward Point Preserve in Brunswick aims to make the outdoors more welcoming. Andy’s Trail — named for Dr. Andrew Cook, who along with his wife contributed the farmland that would become Woodward Point Preserve — is now open to the public. The half-mile, 5-to-7-foot-wide, packed-stone surface was built to comply with U.S. Forest Service and Architectural Barriers Act accessibility guidelines. That meant constructing the trail with suitable slope for wheelchair users and people with other mobility constraints, and using hard, durable materials.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 22, 2025
When Jim Shafer and Carol Epstein moved into their South Portland home more than 10 years ago, they weren’t thinking about how climate change would directly impact them. “What the storms of January 2024 said to us and to many others is that the impacts of this are happening now,” Epstein said. “It brought an immediacy to it.” By next spring, their first floor will be elevated by 5 feet — the product of more than a year of permitting, planning and construction, the project is estimated to cost $500,000. The sea level in Maine is projected to rise between 1.1 and 3.2 feet by 2050 and 3 and 9.3 feet by 2100, increasing the risks — and impacts — of coastal flooding. Epstein and Shafer might be among the first South Portland residents to elevate their home in response to the rising risk of coastal flooding, but their neighbors are eagerly watching the progress and monitoring results. Elsewhere along Maine’s coast, homeowners have been elevating their homes for years.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • October 22, 2025
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that people limit consuming animals harvested from three different towns due to PFAS contamination. The new advisories apply to deer and turkey hunted in parts of the towns of Knox, Thorndike and Unity. That is on top of warnings to limit intake of animals harvested in Fairfield, Skowhegan, Unity, Unity Township, Albion, Freedom, Knox and Thorndike. The Maine CDC issued the new guidelines after elevated levels of PFAS, the group of man-made “forever chemicals,” were detected in deer or wild turkey sampled by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and the Maine CDC.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 22, 2025
Lyme disease cases in Maine have surged this year, with the latest data showing 3,569 cases as of Oct. 14 — surpassing the record of 3,218 cases for all of 2024, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Maine is also seeing high levels of other tickborne diseases this year, with 1,255 anaplasmosis and 324 babesiosis cases through Oct. 14. The warming climate is contributing to the increase in tickborne diseases by expanding the deer tick’s range into colder areas of Maine and extending when they are active. The ongoing drought doesn’t appear to have harmed tick populations.
COLBY COLLEGE • October 22, 2025
As the most heavily forested U.S. state by percentage of land area, Maine has a unique and, in some ways, daunting responsibility to understand, manage, and protect its forests for industry and conservation alike. With this in mind, Justin Becknell, associate professor of environmental studies and chair of Colby’s Environmental Studies Department, has joined a statewide initiative that aims to use science and collaboration to advance the Maine forest economy. Colby’s role in the project, enabled by $1 million of grant funding, will focus on using artificial intelligence to process massive quantities of forest data and make it available—and easily understandable—to forest landowners. Becknell said, “You could click on your parcel on the map, and this website would spit out a bunch of data, like an estimate of habitat quality, carbon stocks, tree species diversity, estimated age, and board feet.”
FRIENDS OF CASCO BAY • October 22, 2025
Friends of Casco Bay and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences teamed up in 2023 for a three-year study of PFAS in Casco Bay. These “forever chemicals” are found in everything from camping gear to food wrappers, and we suspected they might show up in marine waters, too. We didn’t know our first year of sampling would lay the foundation for understanding a looming crisis. By 2024, we planned to monitor 70 water sites and 45 sediment sites. That changed after a massive spill of firefighting foam in Brunswick in August 2024 sent PFAS into Harpswell Cove. Suddenly, our study had a new urgency. We added six more sites, increased testing, and coordinated with Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Here is a peek behind the scenes through the eyes of two key researchers.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • September 22, 2025
In what must be one of the best buys for your money anywhere, when you send a tick to the UMaine lab, they will identify it for free! For a nominal $20 fee, they will conduct DNA testing panels to detect pathogens that can cause tick-borne disease in Maine. ~ Donald E. Hoenig, Belfast, former Maine state veterinarian
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 22, 2025
About 312,000 fewer travelers crossed the border into Maine from June through August compared to the same months in 2024, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows. That represents a drop of about 29%. This year’s drop in traffic has coincided with President Donald Trump’s tariff policy and threats to make Canada the United States’ 51st state. At the Jackman port of entry, from June through August, about 57,000 fewer travelers crossed there than in 2024, a decrease of about 33%. In town, however, many people said they have not felt any significant impact from the dip in traffic.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • October 22, 2025
When Bucksport’s paper mill shut down almost 11 years ago, it didn’t just take hundreds of jobs and more than 40 percent of the tax base with it; the closure also left a void in the life of the town and the workers that spent decades making paper. Now, a new museum has opened in its former gatehouse to honor those workers and suppliers. The yearslong process bringing it to life has reunited some of them for a new purpose with a sense of community they missed.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 21, 2025
The U.S. Coast Guard will not remove over 300 navigational aids from northeastern waters, the military branch announced Monday night. The Coast Guard District Northeast announced in April its plan to modernize its system of navigational aids — many of which were deployed before modern GPS systems became seaworthy. Nearly 150 of the aids that were to be removed are located off Maine’s coast. Maritime stakeholders criticized the plan and over 3,200 comments were submitted. Instead, the northeast branch of the Coast Guard will conduct further analysis of its plan to modernize its system.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 21, 2025
From 4 inches of rain in the Rangeley area to under an inch in the Midcoast and southern regions of the state, the range of precipitation totals across Maine on Monday is having varying impacts on the ongoing drought. Western Maine saw the highest precipitation totals, with 3 inches or more in much of Oxford and Franklin counties. That is enough to put a dent in the drought in that region. However, the low totals on Monday across the rest of the state leave those areas in a “status quo” when it comes to the drought.
