Charles Fergus loves nothing better than to rev up his walk-behind DR brush hog and mow his fields.Photo courtesy of Garet Nelson He’s not aiming for anything like a golf-course close cut, or a neat suburban lawn. Or even a nicely manicured pasture. He just wants to cut back the pencil-thick aspens and other trees…
It’s not easy being a whitetail deer in Maine in the winter, especially northern Maine. The snow piles deep, the frozen winds howl down out of Canada and food is scarce, especially foods that provide the necessary calories to help you cope with the harsh weather. Enter the deer wintering area. Or “deer yard” as…
The forest — any forest, really — doesn’t just stretch out across the land like a blanket (or a washcloth if it’s a small patch of woodland). It goes up and down as well. But this vertical dimension is something we overlook, even those of us who find forests endlessly fascinating. White PineFor instance, we…
There’s something about the winter woods — the profound silence, the sheer whiteness. Snow whispering through the branches of the firs or slanting sunlight. The, well, purity and profound timelessness of it. But that’s our human perception. Far from being a place caught out of time, the winter woods are a happening neighborhood. It may…
By JOE RANKIN Forests for Maine’s Future writer Quickly now. This is a quiz. What is the most common tree species in Maine? You might have said pine. It is, after all the Pine Tree State. Or the iconic white birch, perhaps. But you’d be wrong. The most common tree in the state is…
By JOE RANKIN Forests for Maine’s Future Writer In 1962 Rachel Carson’s classic enviro-expose Silent Spring was published, laying out how indiscriminate pesticide use was decimating nature, particularly bird populations. The book helped shape the environmental movement and led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and some of the United States’ most…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future writer Most visitors to Maine probably have a list of things they want to do and see. They want to go to the coast. They want to eat lobster. And they would like to see a moose. Moose are the iconic Maine animal. One that epitomizes the mythos…
By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer Everyone who walks in the Maine woods has a story about wildlife — the deer that bounded through the clearing; the moose high-stepping onto the trail; the mother turkey leading a batch of poults through shafts of sunlight; pileated woodpeckers dancing on a downed log. But they’ve…
These parcels aren’t as well known as the state’s parks, but that’s changing By Joe Rankin Forests for Maine’s Future Writer When most people think about public lands in Maine, they think state parks like Mt. Blue or Two Lights. Or maybe Baxter State Park and Katahdin. Acadia National Park, maybe. But there is a…
