Can’t Save the Forest for the Trees
In forests, we expect slow change. Trees gain height and breadth by small degrees, and the mix of species shifts gradually over decades. But reality no longer conforms to our expectations. Many tree species...
Category: Sense of Place
Gardening Our Way to Community Resilience
Picture your community transformed. In place of drab lawns around houses, town buildings, schools and businesses, there is a colorful collage of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, perennial vegetables and annual crops —...
‘Forever Chemicals’ on Farmland: A Slow-motion Disaster
Maine farmers are resourceful and resilient, but nothing could have prepared them for this invisible and insidious disaster. “We are… the human collateral of PFAS-contaminated biosolids,” observed organic farmer Nell Finnegan of Albion, casualties...
Dodging Disaster
Weather disasters inflicted $145 billion in damages in the U.S. last year. The Northeast escaped largely unscathed, but that could change at any moment. More than 40 percent of Americans live in counties hit...
‘All Other Life Exists within Their Shelter’
Along a stretch of shore I routinely visit, chestnut-gold rockweed and barnacle-encrusted rocks form a natural collage that is quintessential Maine. The sprawling rockweed encompasses two species: willowy manes of knotted wrack and the...
Lending Support to Climate Action
In a summer awash with climate catastrophes, stories of creative solutions float like lifeboats. One Maine example is particularly heartening: an unusual partnership between philanthropists and state policy leaders that has directed more than...
Investing in Place
The balance of deposits in Maine’s financial institutions is roughly $45 billion. That figure raises an obvious question to experts in socially responsible investing like Scott Budde, who runs Maine Harvest Federal Credit Union:...
Ending the ‘Silent Spring’ on Commercial Forest Lands
In timber operations, like this one in Allagash, herbicides are typically applied after clearcutting to kill emergent hardwood species and foster growth of planted forests. Photo by Hilton Hafford. At a public hearing...
