FSM invites you to remember the importance of clean water in the final days of #DrinkingWaterWeek! In the last 40 years, the Forest Society of Maine has conserved more than 800 miles of shoreline of lakes and ponds, which promote a clean water supply. Some of that shoreline is on Branch Lake, through a conservation project done in partnership with the City of Ellsworth, Trust for Public Land, and Frenchman Bay Conservancy, and with funding from The Land for Maine’s Future Program. This project conserved 730 acres of largely intact forest at the southern end of the lake, which is the primary drinking water supply for the city of Ellsworth. The conservation easement was designed for watershed and habitat protection, low-intensity recreational access, and forest management. At the time it was conserved in 2010, this was the City of Ellsworth’s number one conservation priority.

To learn more about the project, and where you can hit the trail, visit the Conserved Lands page.

FSM is using game cameras to document wildlife on our Nickerson Tree Farm property in Greenville. Our staff is discovering which animals inhabit these lands. We captured footage of a fisher making its way through the forest. Although they are sometimes referred to as “fisher cats”, this is a misnomer – fishers are actually part of the Mustelid family, along with weasels and otters! Check out our social media accounts to see the short video. FSM is excited to see the results from these game cameras, and we look forward to sharing more in the future.

John Hagan, ecologist and friend of FSM, was recently featured in an interview on the Living on Earth podcast with Paloma Beltran and Jennie Doering. On the Living on Earth podcast, Hagan discussed the way his organization, Our Climate Common, is using a technology called LiDAR to map forests in the North Woods, to identify old growth forests to better conserve them.

If you’d like to listen or read more, find that here: Living on Earth | John Hagan. John gave a talk on this at an FSM event last year, and more recently worked with FSM to write and publish Maine Forest Conservation Easements for the 21st Century. If you’d like a PDF copy of the publication, reach out to us by email.

John was also recently featured on Voices for Maine’s Environment, Natural Resources Council of Maine’s (NRCM) podcast.