Reserve System valued by Congress
Scott Richardson ~ 2009-12-16
The U.S. Congress has passed a consolidated appropriations bill that included the highest numbers yet for the National Estuarine Research Reserve System’s operations, while also funding a new program for the system: the NERRS Science Collaborative. The total amount appropriated is $23.5 million. The bill (H3288) now awaits the President’s signature.
Update: The bill was signed December 16, 2009.
Status of watershed conservation in southern Maine
Scott Richardson ~ 2009-12-04
The Wells Reserve has produced or assisted with every key conservation planning document prepared for southern Maine watersheds over the past decade. The most recent issue of the Watermark newsletter includes a chart to show which plans cover each town and watershed. You can download the watershed conservation chart here (it’s a small PDF).
If you would like to see the complete issue of Watermark—which includes stories on Sanford’s conservation plan, the updated Discovery Program, and more—you can download the full newsletter here (4MB PDF).
Was this chart helpful to you?
Watch the Web
Scott Richardson ~ 2009-12-04
Ten years after first setting foot onto the worldwide web, Wells Reserve and Laudholm Trust are striding into a major redesign of their websites. The launch is scheduled for January.
Over the past few months, we have been working with iMarc, a nearby web strategy and design company, to prepare for a merging of wellsreserve.org and laudholm.org into a unified web presence. This effort is long overdue.
In the past decade, our web offerings have grown dramatically to accommodate the expectations of an increasingly wired world. Our web server delivers tens of megabytes of data every day and often responds to 500,000 page requests a month.
Our online audience is as varied as the programs and activities that fit under the Reserve-and-Trust umbrella. People depend on our websites for planning trail walks, arranging school visits, making scientific connections, obtaining maps, making donations, renting the barn, scheduling a visit, keeping current, and much more.
iMarc is crafting a site that will combine a solid database-driven back end with creative, user-focused graphic design. With the new site, we will send a clearer message to our diverse audiences, provide an ocean of information gracefully, and inspire our web visitors to support the four pillars of our combined missions.
Watch for it in just a few weeks.
[This article originally appeared in the Watermark newsletter, volume 26 issue 1, published in November 2009.]
What would you like to see on the new website?
30 seconds to tell a story
Scott Richardson ~ 2009-10-28
New trail features rediscovered foundation
Scott Richardson ~ 2009-10-08
Those who’ve studied Laudholm history know that the current barns were built in the first decade of the twentieth century, after a 1902 fire burned the old barns to the ground. Some may recall that the fire “was started by burning, wind-blown shingles from a fire at the Goodwin farm a quarter mile away.”*
A couple of years ago, Charles Lord became curious about where the Goodwin farm stood, so he asked his father’s sister what she remembered. She pointed him “just up the road.”
Not long after, Charles located a likely spot, with a few stones suitable to a foundation just visible beneath a mass of thick brush near a forest edge.
Last week, Charles led an AmeriCorps team into the woods and asked them to clear the foundation and create a new trail for reaching it. That team did an incredible job—cutting small trees and invasive plants, raking out the foundation—and today Charles led a few of us to see the site.
The Goodwin homestead appears to have been built as a typical 19th-century house-ell-barn structure near the roadside, but only the foundation survives. In the coming months, we will try to piece together some details to this story. Meanwhile, to visit the site follow the Wildlife Loop of the Yankee Woodlot Trail and watch for a wide path to a rediscovered piece of Laudholm’s history.
- *From page 16 of Joyce Butler’s Laudholm: The History of a Celebrated Maine Saltwater Farm, published by Wells Reserve & Laudholm Trust in 2005.
First Punkinfiddle 5K Road and Trail Run - Results
Scott Richardson ~ 2009-09-29
The Punkinfiddle 5K Run started at 9 am on Saturday, September 26. Thirty-nine runners competed in this inaugural event. Here are the results:
MEN
| 1. | Dave Saltmarsh | 18:39 |
| 2. | Edward Fitzpatrick | 20:03 |
| 3. | Greg Foley | 20:43 |
WOMEN
| 1. | Jeanne Hackett | 19:40 |
| 2. | Katherine Reid | 21:33 |
| 3. | Kelley McInness | 25:13 |
Age group winners for the women were: Meghan Brandon and Sarah Poire (30-39), Ellen Foley and Nancy Smith-Jewell (40-49), Joy Eon and Mary Rial (50-59), and Bonnie Cote and Jean Smith (60-69).
Age group winners for the men were: Thomas Beutler (19 & under), Pete Toomey and Jameson Voishnis (20-29), Jon Sevigney and Jose Perez (30-39), Bill Brown and Tom Malitskey (40-49), Paul Toohey and Jim Berger (50-59), and Michael Payne (60-69).
Congratulations to these runners and everyone else who tested themselves on the course. Thanks to Mary Bishop and Bob Winn for organizing the event.