The Wrack

Volunteers remove 200 armloads of invasive plants from five sites along reserve trails.

The sixth edition of the State of Casco Bay report holds a section on marine invasive species. Get that fact sheet here.

Assessing the Yankee Woodlot with Team Lorax 6+ years after a carefully planned selective harvest.

Summing up the year for Maine's part in the Marine Invader Monitoring and Information Collaborative.

I took a hike on a brisk November morning and was surprised to see a man in camouflage preparing to shoulder his bow beside the Muskie Trail entrance. I learned he was a hunter participating in the reserve's annual deer harvest program.

This program was initiated because of ecological problems caused by an overpopulation of deer. Because the reserve uplands are a designated state wildlife sanctuary, no hunting had been allowed for decades. The deer density in the 1990s was estimated at 100 per square mile, while a healthy "carrying capacity" is closer to 15/mi². Locals report having seen the field along the Muskie Trail full of deer in early mornings and evenings.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 5/24/2015.

The small bird my boys found in the backyard last weekend was olive green with an orange crown like a dirty hunter’s hat. It showed no signs of violence, but it was definitely dead. No rigor mortis, so it wasn’t a winter casualty emerged from the snow. …that’s as far as our “CSI: South Portland” investigation went before I got a shovel and buried the bird six inches under. My seven-year-old placed a cantaloupe-sized rock over the grave and we went on with our day.

It was only after going back inside that evening that I began to wonder what species of bird it had been.

The following was published in the Biddeford-Saco Journal Tribune Sunday edition, 11/2/2014.

From reports, it sounds like this year’s midterm election is a doozy, money-wise: across the country, campaigns are spending record sums marketing their candidates and causes.  So I read, anyway: I do not watch broadcast TV, I have an ad blocker on my computer, and I only listen to satellite radio and MPBN. Voluntarily [and gratefully] deaf to the din from most of the marketing wars, I rarely hear about the latest advances in breakfast cereal, let alone the biannual election season onslaught.

About the only political advertising I do see are ads in newspapers (bless you, candidates, for feeding our starving print publishers), and outdoor campaign signs.

The reserve works with Dr. Brian Beal, one of the leading scientists looking at the impacts of green crabs on soft-shell clam populations.

Once invasive species get into an ecosystem, it's nearly impossible to get them out.

The ultimate invasive species, the one that has penetrated to every corner of the map, left no waters or winds untouched, and helped all the others spread so quickly, is Homo sapiens.