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February 6, 2012
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Press releases, events, publications released, etc. from Maine environmental organizations and agencies. Submit content.
Maine Environmental News
Announcement - Sunday, February 05, 2012
Thanks for visiting Maine Environmental News, the most comprehensive online source available for links to Maine conservation and natural resource news stories and events. Since the start of 2009, I have posted more than 16,000 news articles and announcements. Be sure to check not only today's stories, but take a look at the headlines from the past several days as well. Articles often come to my attention a few days after they are published. ~ Jym St. Pierre, RESTORE: The North Woods |
Defining Wilderness: Defining Maine
Event - Posted - Sunday, February 05, 2012
This book discussion series is offered by the Maine Humanities Council. The discussions will be held at the Cary Memorial Library in Wayne on four Mondays: Feb 13, Mar 19, Apr 23, May 14. Discussion leader: Carol Kontos, English professor at UMA. |
Windfall
Announcement - Sunday, February 05, 2012
We can all agree that energy independence is a worthy objective, right? Alternative energy sources like solar power can help free the U.S. from fossil fuels and the grip of unstable Persian Gulf states. And wind power — wait, not so fast, says “Windfall,” Laura Israel’s urgent, informative and artfully assembled documentary. An account of rural Meredith, in upstate New York, when wind turbines came to town, the film depicts the perils of a booming industry and the bitter rancor it sowed among a citizenry. ~ Andy Webster, New York Times |
Intro to Winter Camping, Feb 10-12
Event - Posted - Friday, February 03, 2012
Introduction to Winter Camping with David Butler. This course will provide information about the skills to maximize your winter camping experience. At Hidden Valley Nature Center, Jefferson, Feb 10-12. |
Tracking with a naturalist, Feb 10
Event - Posted - Friday, February 03, 2012
Join naturalist Nancy Holmes to learn how to identify the animal tracks you will (hopefully) see in the snow this winter. At Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association office, Jefferson, Feb 10, 3:30 pm. |
Dirty Tar Sands Oil Coming Through Maine? Feb 9
Event - Posted - Thursday, February 02, 2012
Learn about the environmental and safety risks of this proposed project and about ways you can join the effort to prevent Portland from becoming the tar sands capital of the eastern U.S. The Canadian oil and gas giant Enbridge is proposing to pump dirty tar sands oil from Ontario to South Portland, where it would be shipped by tanker to refineries along the East Coast or Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline passes next to Sebago Lake, the drinking water supply for more than 15% of Maine people, and could endanger Casco Bay and our fishing and lobster industries. At USM, Glickman Library, Portland, Feb 9, 7-8:30 pm |
The Wildness Within: Remembering David Brower
Publication - Wednesday, February 01, 2012
The twentieth-century environmental movement owes much to a single man: David Brower. For the hundredth anniversary of David Brower’s birth, his son Kenneth Brower, an acclaimed nature writer, has brought together the testimonies of twenty environmental leaders whose lives and careers were transformed by David Brower; the result is a book in which a repertory company of path-forgers reveal their deepest values and most moving experiences. Available May 2012 from Heyday. |
Reducing coastal erosion, Feb 8
Event - Posted - Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Megan Facciolo, district manager of the Hancock County Soil and Water Conservation District, will talk about reducing coastal erosion. At Lamoine Town Hall, Feb 8, 7 pm. Sponsored by Lamoine Conservation Commission. |
Managing Your Timber Harvest, Feb 8
Event - Posted - Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Maine Forest Service District Forester Morten Moesswilde will talk about harvest planning, working with professional foresters and loggers, different harvest methods, wood values, closing out the job, and other aspects of harvesting. At Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association office, Jefferson, Feb 8, 6-8 pm. |
Birds, Bats & Blades-Wind Turbines & Wildlife, Feb 7
Event - Posted - Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Steve Pelletier, Wildlife Ecologist, Stantec, speaks about bats and wind power. At Curtis Memorial Library, Brunswick, Nov 7, 7 pm. Sponsored by Friends of Merrymeeting Bay. |
Winter Extremes: Oh, Deer, Feb 7
Event - Posted - Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife Regional Biologist Keel Kemper will discuss current wildlife issues, including the effects of severe winters on Maine's deer herd. At Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association office in Sheepscot Village, Newcastle, Feb 7, 6:30 pm. |
Great blue heron flies into Merryspring, Feb 7
Event - Posted - Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Danielle D’Auria, Maine wildlife biologist, will give a presentation on the Great Blue Heron at Merryspring Nature Center, Camden, Feb 7 at noon. |
Smelt/Ice Festival, Feb 3-4
Event - Posted - Saturday, January 28, 2012
Ice Cutting-Smelt Fishing Festival. At Mailly Waterfront Park, Bowdoinham, Feb 3-4. Part of a yearlong celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Town of Bowdoinham. |
Family Winter Ecology Festival, Feb 4
Event - Posted - Saturday, January 28, 2012
This year’s Family Winter Ecology Festival will offer a variety of free indoor and outdoor activities for the entire family. At Merryspring Nature Center, Camden, Feb 4, 10 am to 12:30 pm. |
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Opinion: Islands can help fight global warming
The Working Waterfront - Sunday, February 28, 2010
It is tempting in Maine, founded on stable granite rather than a fragile atoll, to presume concerns of rising seas are remote. But the rapid change means the past is an inadequate guide.
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GE looks to build wind turbines in Britain
Portland Press Herald - Sunday, February 28, 2010
General Electric is considering building wind-energy turbines in Britain as the country prepares to spend $120 billion boosting its offshore wind capacity. ''When you deliver machines of the size and scale of these units you need to be close to where these wind farms are located." |
Investment in U.S. clean energy stalls
Portland Press Herald - Sunday, February 28, 2010
The political stalemate in the United States stands in sharp contrast with the situation in other countries that are major competitors now and into the foreseeable future -- especially China and the European Union. In these countries, investment is booming in the development and production of low-carbon-emission energy technology such as wind and solar power and improved electric power grids. |
Letter: Rush to wind power
Sun Journal - Sunday, February 28, 2010
Gov. John Baldacci’s task force has rushed plans through the Legislature to meet his power generation goals to allow companies to erect about 1,700 windmills on about 340 miles of Maine’s mountaintops. Those 400-foot-high turbines will be set on huge holes blasted in 15,000-40,000 acres of unspoiled forests. Where are the tree-huggers and the wildlife activists on this issue? |
Letter: Sensible clean energy future
Sun Journal - Sunday, February 28, 2010
J. Dwight seemed a reasonable man, so I was surprised at his Perspective column in the Sun Journal Feb. 17. Offering a series of false assertions about wind power, he neglects mentioning its indisputable benefits, nor the overwhelming threat of climate change. |
Opinion: Delve into a clever kingdom
Maine Outdoor Journal - Sunday, February 28, 2010
Recently, I bought Bernd Heinrich's ''Winter World," a wonderful nature book by one of the world's more prolific and entertaining naturalists. He owns a cabin west of Farmington. Here in Maine, Heinrich spends time with meticulous, scientific studies of our fauna and flora. |
Editorial: Better science necessary to protect fish stocks
Portland Press Herald - Sunday, February 28, 2010
It's easy for the industry to blame the regulators for the closure of the sardine cannery in Prospect Harbor. However, there is a case to be made that the problem is not over-regulation but under-regulation. Preserving the fish stocks and the jobs that depend on them is the best way to avoid more tragic losses like the Prospect Harbor closure from shutting down what's left of one of Maine's most important industries. |
Letter: Fishing permit banks trying to address severe problem
Portland Press Herald - Sunday, February 28, 2010
While there are 3,000 fishermen along the eastern Maine coast between Penobscot Bay and Canada, none of those fishermen is currently catching groundfish. There are two reasons for this. First, the fish disappeared inshore 15 years ago in eastern Maine. Second, federal fisheries managers just allocated future fishing rights based on how many fish fishermen caught starting 15 years ago -- when no one was catching fish in eastern Maine. |
Letters: Pull trigger on guns in Acadia?
Portland Press Herald - Sunday, February 28, 2010
I do not want to see open carry in Acadia or on the Appalachian Trail. However, I am in favor of allowing concealed carry of personal firearms for citizens who have permits....Whatever the rationale, it would change the experience of visiting a national park in Maine; it has nothing to do with hunting, which always has been banned in Acadia; and it really doesn't appeal to many members of the NRA or SAM who don't care about the swagger of carrying handguns in public. |
Opinion: Wind project comes at great cost
Portland Press Herald - Sunday, February 28, 2010
It is time to take a step back from industrial mountaintop wind power and to develop an energy policy that is not driven by the profits to be made from federal subsidies. After this mountaintop gold rush has played out, Mainers will be left with a despoiled landscape and the magic of the mountains will be gone forever. |
Surf, tides may shape future of beloved beach
Portland Press Herald - Sunday, February 28, 2010
The shifting Morse River has eaten away sand dunes to within 25 yards of the bath house and septic system at Popham Beach State Park. This weekend, an unusual trifecta of ocean surf and tides could solve the decades-old erosion. A tidal surge and a pounding surf, followed by astronomical high tides, may be enough to recut the original river channel, which will result in a visibly enlarged beachfront. |
Greenhouse project promotes self-sufficiency
Bangor Daily News - Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Greenhouse Project already has built several small greenhouses, including one at the Brooksville Elementary School, which has been growing vegetables throughout the winter months. The hope of founders Tom Adamo of Penobscot and Tony Ferrara, is to encourage more people to grow their own food. |
Future engineers check out wind, electricity at annual expo
Bangor Daily News - Saturday, February 27, 2010
1,000 or so students who visited the more than 60 exhibits at the 12th annual Engineering Expo at the University of Maine. The Advanced Structures and Composites Center helped attendees put together model wind turbine platforms. |
Letter: Help save Acadia
Sun Journal - Saturday, February 27, 2010
What is the need for looser gun regulations in Acadia? "Look Mom, there's Old Faithful. Look Dad, there's a Smith and Wesson." Will there now be calls for rifles on Katahdin? |
Super Bowl of oil-spill drills coming here
Portland Press Herald - Saturday, February 27, 2010
An unusual scene is set to unfold off the Eastern Promenade next month, involving hovering helicopters, Coast Guard boats and Maine Marine Patrol vessels. The activity will be part of a major oil-spill response drill on March 24, when as many as 1,000 emergency workers will descend on Portland. |
Port of Eastport set to spend $6.5M in expansion
Bangor Daily News - Saturday, February 27, 2010
With the infusion of $4.5 million in state transportation bonds and another $2 million in federal stimulus money, the port of Eastport is poised to diversify. Right now, the port’s only customer is Domtar, a paper mill in Baileyville that sends pulp all over the world. But soon there may be two new facilities in Washington County, one that would produce wood chips and a second that would manufacture wood pellets. |
Acadia National Park official clarifies marine proposal
Bangor Daily News - Saturday, February 27, 2010
An Acadia official on Friday clarified where marine protected areas in the park would exist if any such areas were created within the park by the federal government. Earlier reports suggested that waters outside the existing park boundary on Mount Desert Island and Isle au Haut would be included in proposed marine protected areas, but David Manski, head of Acadia’s resource management division, said that is not the case. |
Campobello park seeks to offset loss of visitors
Bangor Daily News - Saturday, February 27, 2010
There is no doubt the international park on this small island is a treasure shared by both Canada and the U.S. But park officials have noticed a marked downturn recently in the number of visitors crossing from the U.S. to the Canadian island to enjoy the park. When the U.S. implemented new border crossing requirements last year, visitors apparently thought crossing the border too difficult. |
Letter: No conscience
Bangor Daily News - Saturday, February 27, 2010
What happened here in Millinocket, I didn’t want happening at Fraser Paper in Madawaska. Young people are leaving the area. Businesses are closing. Many concessions were given away here at our mill and what good did that do? Now you see the higher-ups getting big bonuses. Don’t these people have a conscience? |
The Atlas of Global Conservation
Other - Friday, February 26, 2010
No one has ever tried to collect everything we know about nature on planet Earth — until now. On Earth Day 2010, The Nature Conservancy and University of California Press will publish The Atlas of Global Conservation, bringing together for the first time such information as where animal populations are concentrated, which species are in imminent danger of extinction, where forests are disappearing most rapidly, and where nature is thriving. |
Calculating the value of carbon in trees
Other - Friday, February 26, 2010
Marketplace - Delegates at the global climate summit failed to figure out a way to stop the destruction of the world's forests. But some lawmakers think they have a solution, and it relies on financing from some of America's biggest polluters. |
Wyoming wind tax, rules move through Legislature
Other - Friday, February 26, 2010
The Wyoming Senate voted Friday to impose the nation's first state excise tax on wind energy production, and committees in both legislative chambers advanced new regulations on the state's fledgling wind industry. |
Opinion: 50 Simple Ways to Get Off
Other - Friday, February 26, 2010
Orion - What I want is for us to think like members of a serious resistance movement. That means a commitment to winning. For me, winning means living in a world with more wild salmon, more migratory songbirds, more amphibians, more large fish in the oceans, and for that matter oceans not being murdered. It means less dioxin in every mother’s breast milk. It means living in a world where there are fewer dams each year than the year before. More native forests. More wild wetlands. It means living in a world not being ravaged by the industrial economy. |
Maine trailing N.H. in tapping Canadian power
Portland Press Herald - Friday, February 26, 2010
Maine shouldn't expect lower-cost, Canadian hydroelectricity to flow through the state via new transmission lines in the near future, a top Hydro-Quebec executive said Thursday. Hydro-Quebec plans to concentrate first on expanding its exports to New England with a line through New Hampshire. He did have advice, however, for how Maine can lower electricity prices: Diversify a fuel mix that's too heavy on natural gas, and build enough transmission to handle more wind and hydro generation. |
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Natural Resources Council
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Do I Dare to Plant a Peach? | | It's a sign that Maine and the nation are getting hotter, according to a new analysis by the U.S. De... | | 1/30/2012 12:00:00 AM |
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Maine Organic Farmers and
Gardeners Association
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The myth of the self-made yeoman |  By Gene Logsdon – No figure is more endearing and enduring in agriculture than the lonely plowman out there on the horizon who raises himself by his own bootstraps to financial success. Only problem is, there is no occupation more dependent on the cooperation of society and nature to achieve success than farming. | | 11/2/2011 12:00:00 AM |
Sharp, careful eye brings Maine mushrooms from forest to table |  By Avery Yale Kamila – On a crisp morning at the end of October, chef David Ross and I step off a dirt road in Kennebunk and head into a forest dominated by pines and smaller hardwood. Our objective: To track down a few chanterelles and any other wild mushrooms we can find this late in the season. This trip will mark one of the last of the year for Ross, who is an avid mushroom forager and the owner of 50 Local in Kennebunk. | | 11/2/2011 12:00:00 AM |
New climate prediction: ‘Weird’, getting weirder |  By Seth Borenstein (AP) – For a world already weary of weather catastrophes, the latest warning from top climate scientists paints a grim future: more floods, more heat waves, more droughts, and greater costs to deal with them. A draft summary of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press says the extremes caused by global warming could eventually grow so severe that some locations become “increasingly marginal as places to live.” | | 11/2/2011 12:00:00 AM |
What to feed your chickens to get the best eggs |  By Nina Lalli – "I have a theory, and I don't think you're gonna like it." Justin was seated across from me at a communal table in a "Secret Restaurant." We had met not half an hour before, but were now deep in discussion about what chickens should eat to produce the best-tasting eggs – an obsession of mine recently. | | 11/1/2011 12:00:00 AM |
Factory farming: not just on land anymore |  By Wenonah Hauter – When most people think of factory farming they typically think of feedlots, hog factories or chicken operations–not massive open net pens growing millions of fish in our oceans. However, factory fish farming will soon pose many of the same threats to the environment and to consumers as its land-based counterparts. | | 11/1/2011 12:00:00 AM |
Bt resistant rootworm spreads | | By Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji – Bt is a toxin from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which produces a large family of similar proteins that target different insect pests; and quite a few of them have been incorporated in genetically modified crops to act as ‘biopesticides’. Unfortunately, the pests soon develop resistance to it. | | 10/31/2011 12:00:00 AM |
Cranberry juice beats extract at fighting infection |  By Christine Lepisto – Just between you and me, ladies, what do you do when you feel that irritating burn, knowing it can only mean a urinary tract infection? Do you run to the doctor's office for antibiotics, only to fight the yeast infection that sets in when drugs knock other systems out of balance? Then you probably haven't heard yet that cranberries can fight infections naturally, and very effectively. | | 10/30/2011 12:00:00 AM |
‘Hobby farm’ couple do part, feed hungry |  By Bill Nemitz – It's not uncommon for someone to show up at the Bread of Life Soup Kitchen in Augusta with a bag full of fresh broccoli, tomatoes or other leftovers from their garden. In recent months, however, Glenn and Rachel Powers have taken that kind of community support to a whole new level. They're giving away the farm. | | 10/30/2011 12:00:00 AM |
New England shrimp target cut in half | | AP – Portland: Fisheries regulators have set the start date for the shrimp season and halved the target for the amount of shrimp to be caught by New England fishermen. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission on Friday set a target of 2,000 metric tons, compared with 4,000 metric tons the year before. | | 10/29/2011 12:00:00 AM |
The life of a seaweed gatherer |  By Daniel Klein – Most of the seaweed we get these days is farmed. But way up in northern Maine, Larch Hanson is still harvesting it wild in its many varieties on the rugged coast. This video isn't about the details of that process, however. It's about the essence of life for Larch, who rises at dawn to cut seaweed and then writes Zen poems about it. | | 10/28/2011 12:00:00 AM |
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