Now that the foliage is turning, the bright yellow leaves of invasive Asiatic bittersweet vines are easy to spot at Round Top Farm, Salt Bay Farm, and Whaleback.
We’re looking for intrepid volunteers to join a “Bittersweet Brigade” that will help us monitor and control the vines at all three locations on an ongoing basis.
The Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands is planning a selective timber harvest at Dodge Point this winter and next. Road improvements associated with the timber harvest, along with improvements to the Old Farm Road Trailhead Parking Lot and Ice Pond Dam, are slated to start this week.
The work is part of a cycle of periodic tree harvesting and maintenance at this location with the goal of maintaining forest health and improving recreational opportunities at this popular preserve.
Coastal Rivers education programs will now have an even greater reach, thanks to the recent hiring of Education Assistant Angela DesVeaux. Angela will support our much-loved Education Director Sarah Gladu by coordinating Camp Mummichog, Coastal Rivers’ summer nature day camp, as well as by teaching school groups and public programs. In the past 10 years, participation in the education program has quadrupled to nearly 4,000 youth and adults in a year. In order to create more teaching capacity and physical space for this vital program, Coastal Rivers (formerly DRA) initiated a capital campaign in 2015. Thanks to the support of …
Talent blooms at Nature Photography camp This year, a new session of Camp Mummichog summer day camp offered the opportunity for youth to try their hand at nature photography. Campers experimented with aperture and depth of field, perspective, shutter speed, lighting, and editing. They turned their lenses on sweeping landscapes, framed portraits and snapped candids of each other, and sprawled in the grass to capture a bug’s-eye view. The session included a field trip to Monhegan Island on the Hardy Boat for hiking, a visit to the museum, and more opportunities for photography. Below is a selection of photos taken …
Working up the year’s supply of firewood takes some doing. Sometimes I succumb to woodchopper’s zealotry to get the job done. Oak makes mighty fine firewood, giving me the most for my effort, and with that in mind, I sized up a huge red oak that had clearly seen better days a long time ago.
Many of the great gnarled branches were dead, bare of bark and twigs. Indeed, some of them were …
We are looking for 5 volunteers to help bring the Four Winds Nature Program to k-2 students at Great Salt Bay School.
Four Winds is a Vermont–based organization that provides natural science education curriculum and volunteer training. This program is just one of the ways Great Salt Bay School is bringing more outdoor education to its classrooms.
Creating and maintaining trails where people of all ages and walks of life can enjoy quiet natural places is a big part of what we do at Coastal Rivers. What many may not realize is how much work goes on behind the the scenes to make that happen. It is the loving and dedicated work of dozens of volunteers who make it possible to keep up with nearly 50 miles of trails. Each preserve has at least one volunteer steward, for example, who visits regularly to check for storm damage, broken bog bridges on trails, and other issues. Often the …
Mark Ward and Michael Uhl of “Talking Trash” organized a presentation and community forum on August 22 on the sticky topic of recycling and trash disposal in Lincoln County.
As promised the evening of the event, Michael and Mark are sharing some materials and resources that were discussed during the forum.
For some months now, I have been receiving regular updates from my friends, Sarah and Rich, who a year ago bought a country place with fields and a farm pond big enough to provide suitable surroundings for their bounding passel of kids. Rich has long yearned, privately, to become a gentleman farmer. Sarah has been too busy to yearn for anything more than peace and harmony. Now, they’ve got it all.
One of their great pleasures has been this body of water “down in the back forty,” the farm pond, which I would estimate …
The River~Link trail continues to grow not only in length but also in popularity. Taking note of this increasing demand, the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands is preparing to create a new additional trailhead and parking area at Dodge Point. Work has already begun on the trailhead, located at the northern end of River~Link on the west side of River Road, well south of the existing Dodge Point parking area. River~Link – described as “a taste of the North Woods in our backyard” – was conceived in the late 1990’s and is now coming to fruition through a groundbreaking …
New Trailhead under construction for River~Link at Dodge Point Read More »
