The Wrack

This summer, in our fifth year working with our partners to improve aquatic habitats in Branch Brook, we took on a Herculean task: Remove a four-foot-long wall of large granite blocks, trapped sticks, and sediment from the brook, restoring access to a seven-mile network of stream habitat for native brook trout and a host of other aquatic organisms.

Erosion had caused stones from old bridge abutments to fall into the brook, creating a barrier and raising the upstream water level by several feet. But getting heavy equipment to the site was impractical. How would we maneuver the massive chunks of granite?

If youre a clean water junkie like me, this weeks response by the EPA to the mine wastewater spill into Colorados Animas River  that their own contractors inadvertently caused? is a fascinating and sad event to watch from the sidelines.

The daily updates on the EPAs website are quite good and informative? nice transparency and responsiveness by the agency so far. (I wonder if there was a pre-written Disaster Response Plan.)

Critics are legion, however, particularly on the anti-government / right-wing side.

I think this is a great example of people seeing what they want to see and how opposing camps deliver their storytelling in real time.

Early this summer our 12-year-old granddaughter from Ohio visited us here in Wells. We had heard about the reserves kayaking program and hoped she might be interested in trying it. We could sense a bit of trepidation on her part as she had never been in a kayak and would not know anyone in the group.

We met the others on a sunny morning in front of the barn and were greeted by the smiling and enthusiastic leaders, Suzanne and Kate. They would watch over Allie as neither of her grandparents could manage a kayak. We could sense our granddaughter begin to relax, especially upon being introduced to several who were also from Ohio.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco?Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 8/9/2015.

My car, a Volkswagen Jetta with a diesel engine, generates 140 horsepower. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to ride in a horse-drawn carriage down I-95 to my office at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm, towed by 140 horses. Using eight feet as the average length of a horse, and pairing the horses together, my anachronistic folks wagon would rumble along behind an equine train more than 560 feet long.

I wonder what our top speed would be.

As the warmest part of the summer is upon us here in southern Maine, the movement of fish in Branch Brook has slowed down and researchers here at The Reserve have caught a break from their fishing efforts. We recently removed our fyke net from the river at the Route 9 intersection but are continuing to monitor the trap at the top of the fish ladder at the Kennebunk-Kennebunkport-Wells Water District and are finally having some time to look at our data of what was caught, tagged, and recaptured this year and compared to last. So far, some interesting results!

Sometime between this past Friday evening and Saturday morning, the copper beech tree chrysalis shell was abandoned, and a monarch took to the sky! This monarch will most likely continue the northward path of its parents? monarchs take 3-4 generations to reach their northernmost extent in the summer migration. Perhaps the offspring of this monarch will make the journey, over 2,000 miles, to the same branches of oyamel fir trees of Mexican mountains that their great-great grandparents overwintered on last year.

I'm interested in the relationship between human communities and their environments. That is, how human activities have impacted watershed environments, coastal ecologies, and others and how environmental changes such as climate change and sea level rise are affecting human communities especially in coastal regions.

Flowers and foliage abound in the native plant border that welcomes visitors to the reserve. York County Master Gardener volunteers have nurtured the garden over a decade to form a gorgeous display.

Jeremy Miller embraces the long view. His projects depend on it. As lead technician for our system-wide monitoring program (SWMP), as state coordinator for monitoring marine invasives (MIMIC), and as lead scientist on the reserve's larval fish study, Jeremy adds pieces to puzzles without predefined shape. He knows that patterns begin to emerge only after years of methodical, meticulous data collection.