The Wrack

We are putting teachers on the estuary again this summer by offering a free workshop that will give educators data-driven climate change activities to bring back to their classes. The workshop will train up to ten educators in reserve-style environmental monitoring, "coastal blue carbon" concepts, and ways to understand and address climate change.

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

Say it with us! Join the 2017 #iheartestuaries campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and IRL on February 12, 13, and 14. Raise your voice on behalf of estuaries. Call out to Congress with a simple message: "I care about estuaries and this is why…"

Some 1,200 students participated in 49 field trip programs during spring and fall this year. Thank you, docents and teachers!

It sounds cool: Blue carbon. Have you heard of it? What does it make you think?

Last Thursday, I was fortunate to be among about 75 people who gathered at the Footbridge Beach parking lot in Ogunquit to unveil a rock dedicating the estuary in memory of Isabel Lewando who died in 2011. Isabel came to Ogunquit in the 1950's and established herself as a model, artist, writer, and photographer. She was also a life-long defender of the environment, particularly the Ogunquit River and beach.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 9/21/2014.

With a too-short summer and the back-to-school fracas, anyone would be pardoned for missing the official Congressional resolution naming this coming week “National Estuaries Week,” the annual celebration of the places where rivers meet the sea.

Before you get too excited, please understand that the resolution is merely pending, and that estuaries don’t get the whole month. According to Congress, the entire 30 days of September have, in recent years, been reserved for Gospel Music Heritage, Bourbon Heritage, Prostate Cancer Awareness, Childhood Obesity, Honey, and even Self-Awareness. (And you thought our legislators didn’t do anything – shame on you.)

Resolved or not, 1/52nd of a year certainly seems like a worthy amount of time to devote to estuaries, those humble places of mud and marsh that do so much.

As a warm-up to the 2014 #iheartestuaries campaign, I asked all of our staff to fill in the blank in this sentence: "I love estuaries because __________." Here are the responses…

As we rebound from winter’s darkest depths, springs begins to stir in the hormonal systems of other species, particularly those who mate seasonally. Chemically, love is arriving. How did St. Valentine know?

Sixty-six second graders from South Berwick are out on the trails today, split into groups with six Wells Reserve docents. It's cool and gray, but most of them are prepared for their couple of hours in the woods, along the salt marsh, and on the beach.