Maine Audubon » conservation

The Piping Plover and Least Tern Monitoring Project is back for the 2012 season!

webmaster — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 20:24:44 +0000

We are now well on our way into spring and our feathered friends, the Piping Plovers are back from the south and are already hard at work finding mates, making nest scrapes, laying eggs, and even hatching some chicks.

Piping Plover & Least Tern Team 2012; l-r Maggie Gousse, Traczie Bellinger, Laura Zitske, Michelle Fournier, Erik Ndayishimiye

The Piping Plover and Least Tern Project team launched its activities in mid-April and protection of nesting sites is well underway. This year the team director, Laura Zitske, was joined by four energetic and dedicated new people:

Traczie Bellinger, Seasonal biologist
Michelle Fournier, Seasonal biologist
Maggie Gousse, intern
Erik Ndayishimiye, intern

Maine Audubon and project partners, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge), are committed to making this year’s season a success for plovers and terns on beaches in southern and mid coast Maine.

We will share the team’s experiences in the field here and keep you updated on the progress of our work. We can’t protect these rare birds without your help, so we will be providing tips along the way so that you can help us protect these amazing beach-nesting birds.

Stay tuned!

Written by Erik NDAYISHIMIYE.

Interactive Loon Count Map

sgallo — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:12:51 +0000

For 27 years, volunteers across the state have been rising early on “Loon Count Day” (always the third Saturday in July) and counting all the loons they can find on their assigned lake or pond from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m. Now, all that count data is available to the public on an interactive map. Click on any dark blue lake to see the results for that lake, or search by town to locate a lake near you. Results for each year of the count for the whole state, including the 2011 count, can also be found at the bottom of the Maine Loon Project home page. To sign up for the 2012 loon count, on July 21st, please e-mail Susan Gallo, sgallo@maineaudubon.org with the town, lake, or general area where you’d be willing to count.

Bat Conservation highlighted on Bill Green’s Maine Outdoors Tonight

webmaster — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:00:14 +0000

The Bat Conservation project will be highlighted tonight on Bill Green’s Maine Outdoors on Channel 6 News tonight. Bill went up to a bat hibernacula last week, and he’ll discuss White-Nose Syndrome as well as the current status of bats and ways to get involved with monitoring bats this summer with Maine Audubon.

Read at WCSH 6 »

Learn more about Bat Conservation at Maine Auudbon »

Building better roads—for people and wildlife

webmaster — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:25:11 +0000

This spring, Maine Audubon has been excited to host workshops around the state to teach contractors, road commissioners, planners and others who work on our roads about restoring habitat at stream crossings.

Wood turtle, photo by Tom Hodgman

“Around 90 percent of our culverts could be barriers to wildlife who depend on these crossings to get to different pieces of their habitat,” said Maine Audubon biologist Barbara Charry, who studies how to mitigate the impacts of roads on wildlife. “But often we can reach solutions that benefit both wildlife and a road’s ability to handle things like storm-water flows. That’s becoming extra important as we see roads wash away in extreme weather brought on by climate change.”

Workshop presenters came from a variety of state and federal agencies, and participants got credit for their time through Maine DEP’S Voluntary Contractor Certification Program.