Natural Resource Management

From sessions on climate action and solid waste to ocean acidification and green infrastructure, the 2017 Maine Sustainability & Water Conference on Thursday, March 30 at the Augusta Civic Center will feature an expanded agenda on urgent topics affecting Maine, New England, the country, and the globe.

The new Interior Secretary likes regulation, sort of, and energy production a lot. He sounds ready to break through regulatory and policy gridlock in many rural communities. The question remains, though, whether his publicized love of the outdoors and hunting makes him a fighter for the environment, writes Fellow Jessica Hall.

Having secured about $5 million in funding for the project, the University of Maine System announced Friday that it is moving ahead with a major expansion of a local applied marine research and education facility.

The U.S. is one of the largest consumers of wood and paper products. Recent investigations into illegal logging in Russia, the Amazon, South East Asia and Africa indicate it’s a widespread and highly lucrative enterprise. It’s also highly destructive – causing the loss of ancient forests and habitats critical to wildlife. And chances are American consumers are unwittingly contributing to the problem. Some environmentalists believe one solution is to track every step of the supply chain to ensure products that make it to the American market come from legal wood.

Forests could actually turn into a source of CO2, according to a study that paired climate forecasts with an analysis of records on more than two million trees across North America.

The North American Community Environmental Leadership Exchange (NACELE), held October 14-17, 2013, convened Indigenous environmental practitioners from around North America in the Capay Valley, about 90 minutes from Berkeley, California. Thirty indigenous environmental leaders participated: tribal leaders, activists, ethnobotanists, NGO workers, scholars, young leaders, native scientists, cultural practitioners, and restoration ecologists. Attendees then took part in Bioneers 2013, and delivered a panel in its Indigenous Program.

Dr. Tracey Osborne, partnering with Amazon Watch on the Climate Alliance Mapping Project, built a platform that factually and compellingly demonstrates the geographic footprint of Amazonian oil reserves and the human and natural resources its extraction threatens. Specific outcomes of this Switzer Leadership Grant project include:

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