The Wrack

The President's budget eliminates funding for the National Estuarine Research Reserve System in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2018. The complete budget process includes Congress, however, which is demonstrating it has its own spending priorities.

Last update: March 22, 2018

We like the sound of a new caucus announced this week. The Congressional Estuary Caucus is a bipartisan group focused on the importance of estuaries to the nation's environment, communities, and economy.

Last update: February 2019

Kennebunk resident Paul Dest, for 16 years the director of the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, was honored on December 12 with the 2016 Dr. Nancy Foster Habitat Conservation Award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dest was presented with his award at the National Summit on Coastal and Estuarine Restoration and 25^th meeting of The Coastal Society in New Orleans.

Dr. Jason Goldstein will oversee the Wells Reserves fish studies, salt marsh restoration activities, and long-term environmental monitoring program. He will expand the reserves shellfish program, currently focused on green crab research, into lobster and Jonah crab ecology.

Beach-based businesses, a powerful economic engine for Maine, are generally little prepared for storm surge and coastal flooding. Yet lessons learned from previous disasters underscore how important the recovery of businesses is to the overall recovery of a regions economy.

Green crab burrowing activity is weakening salt marsh creek banks, causing them to erode.

Friends and staff of four National Estuarine Research Reserves — Wells, Great Bay, Waquoit, and Narragansett —are expected to line the banks of the Little River over the weekend for Bleachers on the Estuary.

Removing a small dam from Goff Mill Brook in Arundel reconnects seven miles of stream habitat to the estuary, benefiting brook trout, other migratory and freshwater fish, and the watersheds ecology.

Jeremy Miller, research associate at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm, is no stranger to Wells Harbor. But recently he saw something he'd never seen before. Or at least, he thought he did.

The Wells Reserve at Laudholm has become the first nonprofit in Maine to meet 100 percent of its electricity needs with solar energy, with 248 solar panels that are expected to generate 73,000 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy while preventing 45 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere each year.