The Wrack

Throughout much of my professional life, I have been involved in various issues related to coastal conservation and public access. My activities have included:

• The Practical? acquisition of lands along the coast that provide direct access for residents and visitors, and that protect wildlife habitat
• The Educational  organizing forums, lectures, and workshops that explore legal and policy issues relating to coastal ownership, use, and access
• Writing and Publishing  most recently, co-editing the 3-volume Maine Coastal Public Access Guide

So it was only natural that the Wells Reserve (and yours truly) would team up with University of Maine Sea Grant and the Maine Coastal Program to revise and publish Public Shoreline Access in Maine: A Citizens Guide to Ocean and Coastal Law.

This concise, full color guide, just released, is a summary and analysis of the laws, policies, and court decisions that have helped define ownership of, and public access to, Maines coast.

Download Public Shoreline Access in Maine: A Citizen's Guide to Ocean and Coastal Law (6 MB)

Robert and Rose Marie are avid lepidopterists, which is a fancy word for people who are enthusiastic about butterflies and moths. This couple's passion focuses on butterflies. Since 2007, they have been busy each year collecting information for the Maine Butterfly Survey.

Now that the butterfly survey has ended, they have turned their butterfly catching talents to producing butterfly checklists for natural areas. That is what brought them to the Wells Reserve. Robert is the primary netter and Rose Marie is the photographer.

Using drones in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System.

This year's Laudholm Nature Crafts Festival was the kind of community we should all want to live in. More than 160 volunteers worked together as a tireless, friendly, and welcoming team to make 3,500 visitors and 122 participating artisans feel like there was no better place to be.

The Reserve held its sixth annual Monarch Rescue yesterday! Two education staff and seventeen wonderfully enthusiastic volunteers of all ages set out in search of monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars in fields that will be mowed within the next couple of weeks. Select Reserve fields are mowed each year in an effort to maintain this vital habitat, rather than allow it to eventually grow into forest. The mowing also serves to keep invasive plant species in check.

Each year since 2010 (with the exception of 2011, when no rescue was conducted), the Monarch Rescue teams were tasked with combing the fields while inspecting individual milkweed plants to look for signs of monarchs. Any found eggs and caterpillars were then brought to a field not slated for mowing that year. Milkweed leaves with eggs on the underside were stapled to secure milkweed leaf undersides. Caterpillars were moved to secure milkweed plants. The graph below shows the number of eggs and caterpillars found during each of the six rescues.

The Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge 50th anniversary prompts a remembrance.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/21/2016, and?Making It At Home's 8/24/2016 issue.

August 21^st is my 38^th birthday. The odometer keeping track of my trips around the Sun just rolled over 22.2 billion miles. Theres still plenty of tread on the tires. I am beginning to notice a few twinges of maturity, though. Joint pains, hair loss, reflexive stubbornness, the irrepressible need to give advice  the signs of creeping codgerdom.

We have 19 native goldenrod species in Maine, but they're not to blame for itchy eyes and runny noses. The real culprit is ragweed, which blooms at the same time and is pollinated by wind.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/7/2016, and?Making It At Home's 8/11/2016 issue.

The orange ruffles hadnt been there last week, but now they were impossible to miss. Overnight, it seemed, a chicken-of-the-woods had returned to roost on the old oak stump in our yard.