People

Bio

Hannah completed an A.B. in Chemistry at Bryn Mawr College (2005), and taught at Shelburne Farms in Vermont and the Pocono Environmental Education Center in Pennsylvania before moving Maine for an internship with the Wells Reserve Research Program.

Currently, Hannah is helping with the new exhibits for our visitor center, designing a set of interpretive trail signs focusing on habitat managment and stewardship of Wells Reserve ecosystems, and writing articles and stories to help people learn about the Reserve's research and stewardship projects.

What is your choice of mascot for Wells Reserve and why?

Spartina patens (salt hay).

You might expect a mascot to be an animal, but plants can be just as charismatic if you take the time to get to know them! Salt hay is a thin wiry grass with small purple flowers that has been important here at Laudholm Farm throughout history.

Maine's earliest settlers chose Wells as a home because of the expansive meadows of salt hay, what poet John Greenleaf Whittier called "the low green praries of the sea."  Colonists didn't have to clear or plow the land to harvest salt hay.  They simply had to cut and stack it at the right time, then save it to feed thier cows and horses throught the winter.

Today the Wells Reserve, the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, and other conservation partners protect Maine's marsh meadows.  The high marsh, the zone where salt hay grows, is home to bird pecies like the saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrows, who make their nests there, and the snowy egrets, who wade among the grasses to hunt for fish.  Birds, fish, and insects travel, but the salt hay is always there to see and it is the home to all these animals.

What is your favorite place at Wells Reserve?

My favorite place is the sand delta at the mouth of the Little River.  At low tide, you can walk there and make deep footprints in the ripple-marked sand which wash away with the next tide.  You can see how the sand has been sorted by grain size depending on how fast the water, which was above it and between it only a few hours ago, was flowing.