The most comprehensive online source of conservation news and events in Maine and beyond, edited by Jym St. Pierre
RUMFORD FALLS TIMES • January 6, 2025
The investigation into the release of black liquor into the air Dec. 10 from the ND Paper mill, which resulted in brown snow, is ongoing and the town continuing to work with the mill on a resolution. The status update followed a report from Maine Environmental Laboratory that on Dec. 19 there was a somewhat elevated pH on the Three Fields Complex.
WHITE HOUSE • January 6, 2025
Today President Biden will take action to protect the entire U.S. East coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California, and additional portions of the Northern Bering Sea in Alaska from future oil and natural gas leasing. In protecting more than 625 million acres of the U.S. ocean from offshore drilling, President Biden has determined that the environmental and economic risks and harms that would result from drilling in these areas outweigh their limited fossil fuel resource potential. With these withdrawals, President Biden is protecting coastal communities, marine ecosystems, and local economies – including fishing, recreation, and tourism – from oil spills and other impacts of offshore drilling.
TIMES RECORD • January 6, 2025
National and local conservation groups have joined together as the “Free the Andro” coalition to push for open water flows on a major river that winds between Brunswick and Topsham. The group — formed by Maine Rivers, American Rivers and the Merrymeeting Bay Chapter of Trout Unlimited — announced Monday that it plans to fight for “unfettered native fish passage at the Brunswick-Topsham dam,” located just upstream of the Frank J. Wood Bridge. The group is calling for either dam removal or redesign as the dam’s license comes up for renewal.
MAINE MORNING STAR • January 6, 2025
The threat of climate change and more restrictive right whale protections – as well as several years of more modest landing totals – have some in the lobster industry second-guessing their future in the business, yielding subtle, but real, changes in the makeup of the fishery. “There are fewer variable professional fishermen than there were 20 years ago, but there are more fishermen fishing full-time, offshore,” said Theresa Burnham, a postdoctoral research associate with the University of Maine. “Licenses overall are decreasing over time, as well. So the question is: Who is remaining?” Burnham is one of a handful of researchers looking at social indicators related to the lobster fishing industry for clues as to how the fishery is changing and what those changes might mean for the broader economy.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • January 6, 2025
Central Maine Power Co. customers began paying 7% more in their monthly bills Jan. 1 to help fund $3.3 billion of upgrades to transmission lines, poles and other equipment in New England. Versant Power ratepayers can also expect increases, though smaller, later this year. Federal regulators are apportioning about $280 million of the region’s costs to Maine’s two major utilities, with the remainder assigned to utilities in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. The costs are divided based on load, or how much electricity each service area uses. New England’s transmission is a nearly 9,000-mile system.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • January 6, 2025
EXCERPT: While the deadline to file bills is not until Jan. 10, lawmakers also are likely to resume debates on topics including climate change. House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, said Republicans want to repeal Maine’s net energy billing program, which provides generators with credit for renewable power they produce and send to the electric grid, and a 100-megawatt cap on hydropower plants. Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle, cited the same issues.
ASSOCIATED PRESS • January 6, 2025
When Jimmy Carter chose branding designs for his presidential campaign, he passed on the usual red, white and blue. He wanted green. Emphasizing how much he enjoyed nature and prioritized environmental policy, the color became ubiquitous. Nearly a half-century later, environmental advocates are remembering Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100, as a president who elevated environmental stewardship, energy conservation and discussions about the global threat of rising carbon dioxide levels. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to abandon renewable energy investments, echoing how President Ronald Reagan dismantled the solar panels Carter installed on the White House roof. But politics aside, the scientific consensus has settled where Carter stood two generations earlier.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • January 6, 2025
Upward of 30 Maine fishermen have applied for just seven slots available in a short, experimental shrimp season due to start in February.The tasty, long-prized pink crustaceans have been off limits to local fishermen for a decade because of low population levels, which scientists attribute to climate change and warming waters in the Gulf of Maine. But in December, the Maine Department of Marine Resources, in cooperation with the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission Northern Shrimp Board, announced it was seeking fishermen interested in participating in a special winter sampling research program to try and gauge the species’ health and population.
PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • January 5, 2025
The eastern U.S. is on track for a frigid week as a polar vortex stretches south, bringing below-normal temperatures to Maine. Starting Monday, much of the eastern two-thirds of the country will see temperatures 12 to 25 degrees colder than usual for this time of year. In Portland, temperatures were only expected to be about 6 degrees below normal Sunday and Monday, said Jon Palmer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray. The interior parts of Maine will see the chilliest conditions, with lows in the single digits and below zero in some spots.
MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • January 5, 2025
Maine lakes are warming two times as fast as the air around us, according to the Maine Climate Council. Less ice coverage and warmer waters increase summer stratification, which deprives the bottom waters of a pond or lake of oxygen. Fish need oxygen; if there is not enough dissolved oxygen in the lake water, they die. Warmer waters promote algae and vegetation growth, including invasive species that plague the lakes. While most people value its skating, fishing and snowmobiling benefits, a seasonal ice cap also protects the water below from shoreline runoff — less ice means less protection from chemicals, salt and nutrients in the runoff and declines in water quality.
MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • January 5, 2025
The need for alternative sources of energy and a desire for energy independence prompted President Jimmy Carter to install the first solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1979. The panels were later removed by the Reagan administration in 1986 and placed in storage. In 1991, the array of 32 solar panels formerly atop the White House was brought to Unity College. Sixteen of the panels were used to heat water for more than a decade. The college, now known as Unity Environmental University, is still in possession of 28 of the panels while four others have found new homes. The university has held on to them because of their historic nature and because they’re a reminder of Carter’s work to advance renewable energy efforts.
MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • January 5, 2025
H-1B visas allow 65,000 skilled workers to come to the U.S. each year to fill specialized jobs, often in technology, health care, higher education, scientific research or other STEM fields. Locally, they’re favored by companies like The Jackson Laboratory, Eastern Maine Medical Center, UMaine, Idexx and Wex. Elon Musk, who’s has been tapped to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, says H-1B visas are the reason he and many other immigrants have found success in the U.S. He is prepared to “go to war on this issue.” Anti-immigration Republicans have criticized the program. President-elect Donald Trump has historically opposed H-1B visas, but last week appeared to change course, saying the country “needs smart people.”
SUN JOURNAL • January 5, 2025
Maine has lost about two weeks of winter temperatures and snow cover since the early 20th century. The warmer winters have had a stark effect on snowmobilers in the past few years around the Lewiston/Auburn area. Snow is usually accompanied by rain or warm temperatures soon after melting most, if not all, of the freshly fallen snow. The more frequent winter rain has caused washout problems along trails. The Perkins Ridge Sno-Travelers club has focused a lot of its efforts on grooming for other winter activities, such as snowshoeing, skiing and fat-tire biking. Some winter recreationists are hopeful that winter recreation activities will continue in Maine despite warmer winters; others are less confident.
MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • January 5, 2025
Tens of thousands of gallons of firefighting foam that leaked from tanks at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station last summer have been sent out of state for disposal. On the receiving end were incinerators in Ontario and Arkansas, and the people living near those incinerators are rightfully concerned that the toxic chemicals could be hurting them.“Study after study shows we don’t build incinerators of any kind in white, middle-class neighborhoods,” says Gail Carlson, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Colby College. Until we can take full responsibility for our own chemical mismanagement, we have to stamp out mismanagement.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • January 5, 2025
Dozens of smelt camps used to dot Maine’s tidal rivers four or five decades ago. The season began shortly after Christmas and ran through the end of March, but climate change has ripped that tradition apart. Several camps have gone out of business and the ones that are left have shortened seasons, if any at all.
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • January 4, 2025
Just like in Maine, the people of Quebec embrace the wilderness through outdoor activities like snowshoeing and skiing, hiking and biking, ice skating and canoeing. Conserved land and trail systems are scattered throughout the province, which is home to 28 national parks, and that doesn’t count trail networks like Sentier des Caps de Charlevoix. Plus there are downhill ski mountains and — of particular interest to me — a 9-mile ice skating trail called Domaine de la Forêt Perdue, which roughly translates to “field of the lost forest.”
BANGOR DAILY NEWS • January 4, 2025
Regulators and three natural gas pipelines serving Maine have reached agreements on rate increases that advocates said are smaller than anticipated but may still lead to higher prices for customers. Specifics on the changing rates tied to the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, Algonquin Gas Transmission and Granite State Gas Transmission, which serve businesses and large electricity generators in the region, are still under wraps and will need federal approval later in 2025. Though Maine’s climate goals seek 80 percent renewable energy generation by 2030, natural gas remains a key source for the state and currently generates nearly half of New England’s power.
ASSOCIATED PRESS • January 4, 2025
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute are suing Vermont over its new law requiring that fossil fuel companies pay a share of the damage caused over several decades by climate change. The federal lawsuit filed Monday asks a state court to prevent Vermont from enforcing the law, which was passed last year. Vermont became the first state in the country to enact the law after it suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather.
MORNING SENTINEL • January 4, 2025
While warming winters are leaving many recreation businesses who rely on cold and snow without a vital lifeline, others are turning to man-made snow: like Quarry Road Trails in Waterville. “We’ve become a mecca of sorts because nowhere else has snow, quite literally,” said Victor Esposito Jr., Quarry Road’s lead ski coach. “People come from all over, 20, 30, 40 miles, because we’re not a two-hour drive like most of the resorts and we don’t charge anywhere near as much: And we actually have snow.”
SUN JOURNAL • January 4, 2025
While visiting a remote cabin on Spencer Lake, Ron Joseph made friends with an ermine, had an encounter with a bobcat and used an axe and a pry bar to break the ice of the lake to get water.
