American Bittern
An American bittern silently stalks tiny fish along the shoreline of an unnamed beaver pond near Moosehead Lake. Bitterns are familiar in many of the wetlands; flying in aerial highways in the early summer to and from the waterways to gather food for hungry babies.

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Black Bear
Black Bear by Several miles deep in the summer forest, a black bear feeds on wild blackberries near the West Outlet of the Kennebec River.

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Blue Flag Iris
Ruby-throated hummingbirds and muskrats are just a few of the forest habitants that use the blue flag iris as a food source. These showy flowers bloom profusely in the forest wetlands.

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Cow Moose
Moose are common within the boundaries of the proposed Maine Woods National Park and is the region’s largest denizen. The summer months have moose wading into shallow ponds and lakes to feed on succulent vegetation, and to escape marauding biting insects.

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Debsconeag Deadwater
The Katahdin massive, leading the Baxter range, looms in the background above the Debsconeag Deadwater on the West Branch of the Penobscot River.

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Forest Fog
Towering white pine trees are shrouded by a cool, wafting blanket of fog, glowing with crimson at dawn as the daybreak warms. 

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Northern Raven
Nestled between Big Moose Mountain and Little Moose Mountain is a lovely, pond-filled valley. Along the southern shores of the ponds are large cliffs, the source of echoes from a calling raven. Could there be a raven’s nest on what seems to be a perfect place – these cliffs?

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Red Pines
Red pine trees frame the brilliance of an autumn sunrise in Maine’s great northern forest.

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Spruce Grouse
A male spruce grouse pauses while feeding along the forest edge.

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White-Tail Deer Family on Fawn Pond
A doe white-tail deer feeds on succulent vegetation at the water’s edge. The fawn watches mom intently, learning the land that is its home, and emulates her by grasping some vegetation. The fawn is still dependent on her mom’s warm milk, but is learning valuable life lessons about food types and locations.

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 COPYRIGHT © LEE ANN SZELOG & THOMAS MARK SZELOG ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The post The Maine Woods National Park Photo-Documentation Project appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

91±ŹÁÏ

“Over another rise of ground, below him, he saw a sort of sprawling house. It was not really a proper house—theÌę boards went higgledy-piggledy in all directions—but it did seem to belong just where it was.”

– Yolla Niclas, The Island Shepherd

I. The Trouble with Horizons

Understanding a local celebrity like Ray Phillips is a daunting task. After a considerable amount of time investigating his story and writing about it, I still feel myself working clumsily with the details of his life. Central to my uneasiness is an ever-present sense of insurmountable distance. Ray’s daily horizon must have been very different from my own.

“[Ray Phillips] is depicted as at once a biblical shepherd, a Homeric relic of some seaward odyssey, an 18^th century pioneer, an old fisherman with clever yarns, and a modern American consumer of canned pineapple and fortune cookies.”

I approach Ray Phillips far removed from the time and place of his circumstances. I was born nearly forty years after he died. I have lived in Maine for four years, spent probably two cumulative weeks on its coastal islands, and less than twenty-four hours on Monhegan Island, while Ray spent nearly half a century living across Monhegan’s harbor on an isle of his own. I did not hear Ray’s story firsthand, but found it in a June 2013 Downeast Magazine article on “The North Pond Hermit,” where he appeared on a list of historical hermits in Maine.[1] I have spoken to only a handful of Monhegan residents on the matter of his life and possess one hour-long recording of a conversation with a man, now living in Brunswick, who visited the hermit as a child and was the subject of Yolla Niclas’s 1959 children’s book, The Island Shepherd.[2]Ìę The rest is all textual fragments that, at times, provide contradictory information.

Furthermore, Ray’s own lifestyle complicates even his generational context. He appears to have been living in a time period unto himself—an amalgamation of near-and-distant past and present that is incongruent with the actual time in which he lived. There are several historical traditions within his persona. He is depicted as at once a biblical shepherd, a Homeric relic of some seaward odyssey, an 18^th century pioneer, an old fisherman with clever yarns, and a modern American consumer of canned pineapple and fortune cookies.

There is also the problem of focal length. How near or distant from the day-to-day physicality of Ray’s life is my lens adjusted to capture? Am I working with the idealized hermit, dwelling in an Edenic landscape around which newspapers have “spun fantasies,” and to which people are drawn from all over the country?[3] Or am I looking at the hermit’s habitat up close—mired in material ruin and personal inconsistencies, which complicate, if not collapse, the hermit’s legend into fragments and ambiguity? Neither alone can address the complexity and significance of an individual who was both a private soul and public hermit.

I therefore attempt to draw Ray’s image—the legend and the human—through several mediums—old newspaper articles, books, photographs, conversations and necessarily, my own matrix of associations and memories, which even before I’ve digested the details of this man’s life, begin to fill out that image with archetypal expectations for aged solitary characters. Sitting here – socially, geographically, temporally “from away” – ÌęI draw together a mix of hearsay and supposed fact to sketch out some semblance of an individual with a legacy in current memory.Ìę In short, I am apprehensive about making assertions. I prefer to call my findings what they are, and have been, for any hermit-seeker—speculations.

Ìę

II. Somewhere Between Near and Far: The Life of Ray Phillips

Ray Phillips, the Hermit of Manana Island, lived on an islet off the coast of Monhegan from 1930, when he left New York in a sloop for Maine’s southern coast, until his death in 1975. There is some speculation about what brought him to the island, because it was this part of his life that he kept hidden. Some say he had once worked in the meatpacking industry in New York City, had gotten tired of the “plasticity of it all” and decided to leave modern civilization.[4] Some newspapers quote him saying that he disliked politics and disapproved of the course society was taking. One newspaper article called him a “Depression Dropout.”[5] Others say he was “unsuccessful in love” and so “took to the sea.”[6] Maybe his brief part in WWI and his exposure to mustard gas, which some claimed damaged his social skills, had something to do with it.[7]

Whatever the reason, Ray came to live on Manana Island and built a driftwood shack for himself. There he tended sheep, would fish and lobster to suit his needs and lived on a small veteran’s pension and social security checks. He had no electricity or running water, and likely ate a lot of canned and processed food, as there was no evidence of a garden near his shack. His sheep and a goose named Donald Duck reportedly kept him company in his isolated home. Their constant presence was said to have given him a distinct odor.

Though he was new to the island, Ray was not new to Maine. He grew up in Newport, and attended the 91±ŹÁÏ where he was said to have studied horticulture. In 1918 he was drafted into WWI and, following his time in the army, moved to New York City where he was either a grocer, fisherman, food inspector, or stock broker. He’d heard the fishing was good off the coast of Monhegan so he set sail for the island with the intention of leaving “the New York traffic and dirt.”[8] He did not settle on Monhegan, however, but built a home on Manana—a tiny islet just across the harbor. He owned one-sixth of the island but was its sole inhabitant.

Although a harbor separated Manana and Monhegan, making his dwelling somewhat remote, Ray’s shack was visible from Monhegan Island as was Monhegan Island from his shack. While his position allowed him to observe the goings on in Monhegan from an outside perspective, making him to some a guardian of sorts, people in town always had Ray on their periphery—his shack and figure an anachronistic, yet comforting presence. Ray was an iconic feature of the landscape claimed by the people who saw him as part of the natural outline of an otherwise barren islet.

Despite his isolation, Ray was a social man. He often took his small fishing boat to Monhegan to get supplies and talk to fellow islanders. He also accommodated the journalists and tourists who visited Manana to ask him questions about his 19^th century lifestyle and sneak a peek inside his peculiar home. In the 1950’s photographer Yolla Niclas came to the island and photographed Ray with a local boy, David Boynton, who used to ferry tourists over to visit the hermit. The resulting images were published in a children’s book called The Island Shepherd.

Some visitors would also write Ray letters seeking advice, to which he often sent friendly responses. Many painted Ray as a philosopher of sorts. Journalists drew comparisons between his lifestyle and that of Henry David Thoreau while highlighting an extensive collection of canonical literature in his home and reporting that he took notes on the walls of his shack. This is an area of dispute, possibly hyperbole, and where those who knew him say the real man confronts the legend.[9] Ray, however, never solicited attention, nor acted differently because of it. He is described as regarding his publicity as curious and amusing.

Ray was well liked by the people on Monhegan, although some saw his lack of ambition as laziness. But as the decades passed, Ray reportedly grew more removed from the residents. While Monhegan acquired modern conveniences—electricity chief among them—Ray grew increasingly attached to his sheep. He often made “baaing” sounds in his speech to a degree of unintelligibility. He thought once of bringing a woman to Manana Island, but felt he had not the money or “skill” for marriage and as the years passed he stayed on his island increasingly often.

One winter afternoon, on a rare trip to Monhegan, Ray was paddling across the harbor when his hands froze to the oars. Stranded in frigid waters, Ray fell seriously ill with pneumonia; an illness from which he never fully recovered. People in town tried convincing him to move onto Monhegan where he could be looked after, but Ray preferred to live out his days on Manana. He told the concerned residents that he would light his kerosene lamp each night to signal that he was okay. So for the months that followed, the islanders turned west at sundown—reassured by the sight of that singular flame.

And then one evening in spring the kerosene lamp went unlit. Having suffered a heart attack, Ray was discovered dead the next morning alone on his island of nearly half a century. It was May 10^th, 1975, and he was 83 years old.

III.Ìę From Far Away: The Island Shepherd in Eden

David Boynton describes Monhegan during Ray’s lifetime as “rhythmically different” from the mainland.[10] Set apart from the faster-paced, mobile networks of transportation and communication in southern Maine, Monhegan’s tempo has historically been a slower one. When Maine’s mid-century tourism advertised motoring vacations around the state[11]for example, Monhegan offered a more “rustic” tourist experience, like that “of a century or so ago,” characterized by simplicity, moderate consumption, and a beautifully preserved, remarkably diverse landscape for recreation.[12]

Though Monhegan today has modern conveniences like the mainland, it still maintains a sense of its past. The environment is carefully managed. Three quarters of its surface is covered in trees. It has headlands, rolling pasture, a freshwater pond and rocky coves—essentially, “almost all the natural landscapes of mid-coast Maine” are compressed in its one-and-a-half-mile length.[13] There are pelagic and passerine birds – raptors, waterfowl, puffins, gulls and terns. Blueberries, conifers, and lupine grow beside small cottages and old captain’s homes. The place evokes New England of a century passed—the last vestiges of a slower, easier, ostensibly better time—and is adorned in the summers with painters capturing it all on their easels. The whole scene is straight out of a Barbara Cooney children’s book or a Sarah Orne Jewett short story. It’s not quite paradise, but from the vantage point of the ferry deck, appears pretty darn close.

Ray Phillips, photographed often in this landscape, demonstrates an antiquated lifestyle on what is already, as Mark Warner deems it, a “fabled island.”[14] The coupling is ready-made for a timeless tale.[15] Ray, with his photogenic features—a reportedly “very attractive man” with “nice eyes”[16]—knit cap, billowing beard, flock of sheep, and lonely island hut, gives way almost instinctively to idealism and legend. Some primordial penchant for storytelling takes over and roots the man in deep time. His story seems to develop naturally out of our narrative traditions, often with little help from the “facts.”[17]

It is that same mythos of “non-reality” which governs what George Lewis calls “the Maine that never was.”[18] This Maine, advertised as a rural “Vacationland” for lost urbanites, “exists as an earlier, perhaps even timeless place
from which one can grasp and understand ‘Life as it should be.’”[19] Ray’s life apart on Manana offers the curious tourist an analogous, if not identical, version of the transcendental ideal. The shepherd’s story appears so entrenched in Lewis’s mythic Maine paradise, one wonders if the Hermit of Manana Island could have existed without it; if that Maine made him—the hermit that never was.

In Western literary traditions, Paradise is an imaginary landscape—the ideal first landscape, fitted to the needs of humans—a story of a distant memory of a dream. Joseph Rykwert, in his study of the architectural manifestations of Adam’s implied hut in Paradise, puts it this way: “All of these [architects] have spun fantasies around the framework of the lost plan, since paradise must, as Proust sharply observed, necessarily be a lost one.”[20] These spun fantasies, he argues, are evidence of a persistent vision haunting two horizons—one is of a distant past in which we are permanently barred from Paradise and the other is of a future in which we imagine ourselves to have regained what was lost. Keeping the memory of origins alive is essential to that ideal future. Rykwert thus echoes architectural philosopher Marc-Antoin Laugier’s declaration, “Let us never
lose sight of our little hut.”[21]Ìę It is unsurprising national character is commonly exemplified in the architecture of small cottages and hermitages.[22] Such huts represent an original form, performing as mementos of an origin story, reminding us to always keep it “in sight.”[23]

Ray’s “rambling shack,” as David Boynton refers to it, functions as a primitive hut very literally kept in sight. From Monhegan, Ray’s dwelling once stood in clear view. David described the sight of Ray’s home as “comforting,” a staple in the periphery of their daily lives on Monhegan.

Today, Boynton says, “it’s still a little odd” for him to look at Manana and not see the hermit’s hut. About a decade ago, Ray’s hut was burned down by a resident who felt that it was a “hazard” and a “liability,” with all the summer tourists poking around it.[24] Today, just above where the shack used to stand there’s a new, “somewhat unusual” building, which Boynton feels is out of place—“That kind of jumps out at me still, that’s wrong. It should be the hermit’s dwelling.” Boynton’s observation points to a lost structure, formerly fundamental to Manana. Yet, the loss is replaced by what Rykwert calls, “the haunting persistence of the vision.”[25] Following the hut’s physical erasure, the hermit’s story remains—the spot where his shack once stood, a persisting memory of a man that represented a life lived apart, as one newspaper headline put it, “his way.”[26]

In a New York Times Letter to the Editor, a reader commented on “The Price of Utopia on One Island,” praising the piece as a “letter from home,” but asking the author for more current news on the island, as it had been a decade since her last visit. She specifically asked after Ray Phillips: “And the hermit, is he still grazing his sheep on Manana, taking them over to the island by boat?”[27] The respondent is concerned about whether things have changed on Monhegan since she was last home. In her response, there’s a hint of a wish, a desire that the island should always remain, as she quotes from the Times article, “a million light years away” from the rest of the world. The Hermit of Manana Island is essential to the integrity of that utopian landscape.

Ray Phillips, who preferred, according to David Boynton, “nineteenth century living” and “lived a much more primitive lifestyle than anyone else” on Monhegan during the mid-twentieth century, is an object of nostalgia. He was noteworthy largely because, to interested outsiders, he represented gestural “traces of us.”[28] He was more than a historical memento, a substitute for what David Lowenthal calls “the vanished landscape,”[29] to which the nostalgic seeker glances backward. For visitors, Ray and his sheep living in isolation on a tiny island evoked “a congruent social universe
of an earlier epoch.”[30] When people saw Ray they were not looking at a static object in a museum. They were peeking in his windows for a glimpse of atavistic activity—a man interacting with the world as if that “earlier epoch.” were still in play.

Lowenthal talks about nostalgia as a kind of existential homelessness. It is “to live in an alien present,” he argues.[31] Nostalgia is a “retreat,” a “counterweight,” an “absolution,” and “atavistic longing for a natural order.”[32]It is a yearning for a distant imaginary landscape wherein lies some sense of origin, which offers redemption—a home. Rooted in a “sense of estrangement,” nostalgia focuses on objects that represent those homebound sentiments but in their immediate present are out of place. In terms of nostalgia, Lowenthal argues, the “object of the quest must
be anachronistic.”[33]

This is particularly salient considering Ardis Cameron’s sense of “true places
where authenticity and realness are said to dwell.”[34] Authentically real spaces, she argues, “find expression in the discursive imaginary topographies of Otherness.” They are fundamentally intangible, defined by their inaccessibility, “and so come down, not in maps, but in stories of alterity that mark home from away.”[35] True places are found in tales told from and of away. Thus, the visitor—the “stranger with a camera,” as Cameron calls them—is chronically estranged, bound to sit at a distance, telling stories about a far off, imaginary scene, always just out of reach.

Hermits, as Edith Sitwell documents in English Eccentrics, traditionally embody that escapist ideal the “stranger with a camera” seeks: “Whilst these [hermits] of varying respectability were trying, in their several ways, to preserve their lives, others, equally, or more praiseworthy, were trying to escape the consequences of being alive.”[36] The hermit’s choice to retreat from society for the sake of finding a spiritual home provides a model for other, less visionary, common folk fettered to the trivial material concerns of society.

Ray Phillips is similarly defined by remoteness. A visitor takes a trip “away”—from home, from mainland Maine, from Monhegan Island—to the hermit’s isle and addresses letters to that same far-off place seeking counsel. Ray’s lifestyle, sustained by sheep and sea, is furthermore antiquated, and thereby eccentric, to the urbanite visitor who does not know a goose from a duck.[37] “His way” on an island of his own, in a home of his own making, among sheep that were “like family,”[38] bears qualities fundamental to “the good life”—namely, freedom and self-sufficiency. Ray’s hermit persona exemplifies the modern state slogan, “Maine: Welcome to the way life should be. The place where you can establish your life’s course, where you set your own boundaries.”[39]

“There are also the practical problems of economy and environmental sustainability. Given Monhegan’s economic dependence on summer tourism, this involves constant negotiation between islanders who want to work and live by their own terms and the kind of experience—’the rustic kind of a century or so ago”—which the island markets to summer visitors.[1]‘”

Yet, the need to maintain a sense authenticity creates problems for the Mainer identity. Nathaniel Lewis points out that language advertising Maine tourism—“’The reality,’ according to čó°ùŽÇłŸłŸ±đ°ù’s”—describes a vast, untouched wilderness, attractive for its physically and spiritually redemptive qualities.[40] The result, argues Lewis, is “a long-enduring tension in our identity:Ìę Whether Maine is ‘The Way Life Should Be’ as the welcome signs at the state border once read, or whether it is ‘The Way Life Used to be.’”[41] Maine as “Vacationland,” depends on the vestiges of the state as it existed in its romanticized pioneering past. Visiting is supposed to signify a return to a “true place,” an ‘original’ American place, and, insofar as vacations have historically been designed as “getaways” from the tedium of daily life, one that is all the more real because of its perceived distance from the precincts of (over)civilization. Thus Maine, like Monhegan’s hermit, offers a true “homeland of the soul” for its annual pilgrims.

Maintaining this sort of authenticity is hard work. It is a tricky balancing act between one’s own sense of identity and the expectations of the outsider. There are also the practical problems of economy and environmental sustainability. Given Monhegan’s economic dependence on summer tourism, this involves constant negotiation between islanders who want to work and live by their own terms and the kind of experience—“the rustic kind of a century or so ago”—which the island markets to summer visitors.[42] Monhegan Island’s downtown area is called Monhegan Plantation, which summons associations with national landmarks and museums like Plimouth Plantation. In direct conversation with these overtones, Ted Bernard insists, “[t]his is a working island culture, not a living history museum” (emphasis added). [43]

One year-round resident Bernard interviewed for his study on Monhegan’s strategies for social, economic, and ecological sustainability put the problem this way: “If we’re not careful, success will cause us to change this place to accommodate the tastes and meet the expectations of these short-termers. Then we’ll no longer have something unique to show.”[44] Simultaneously, there is the matter of too many tourists. As Bernard points out, “Might Monhegan tourists at some point be repelled by too many encounters with other tourists?”[45] At issue here are the islanders’ self-awareness of the gaze of the outsider and how that awareness implicates them in an inauthentic project of building authenticity. Bernard surmises that at the root of this problem is how to simultaneously create a haven for the self and a haven for the tourist, “Island people don’t want to ruin either what tourists come to experience or what they themselves cherish.”[46] How then does one live life their own way, while accommodating the ways of others?

While Ray Phillip’s popular reputation paints him as Manana’s sole shepherd, a reclusive holy man, with emphasis on the books he kept in his home and the notes he was said to have scribbled on his walls,[47]“[Ray] wasn’t a particularly deep thinker, or doing it for philosophical reasons, so much as, this is just how he enjoyed living,” says David Boynton.[48] In an interview with the Boston Globe, Ray recognizes that his simple life apart identifies with American transcendentalist ideals, but suggests that such comparisons are more unconscious associations, by-products of his lifestyle choices. Ray maintains they are not are not intentionally ideologically motivated:

“I don’t think I’m different from other people; any number of people think the same as I do
It’s people from the city and freak journalists who want to look for something to write about. There are 500 people just like me up the Maine coast who live on islands, maybe with some sheep, practically alone. I’m nothing unusual.”[49]

Ray insists on his normality and rejects the idea that his lifestyle is reactionary to the urban New York scene he left forty years before. He is not making a political statement, or asking for attention.[50] He is simply living a life that fits him.

Ray, however, was said to bear all of the speculation and publicity with modest incredulity and a good-natured indifference. Ray did not solicit attention, and at times was said to “baa” at tourists who overstayed their welcome, but he often let people come into his home to poke about. In fact, he had a remarkable sense of humor about it all.

David Boynton tells a story about Ray’s interaction with a man who came to survey the electrical needs of Monhegan when electricity was to be installed: At first, Ray told the surveyor he didn’t need or want electricity in his home, but as the man turned to leave Ray suddenly thought of something for which he could use it. He told the surveyor: “I’d like to get a big red flashing sign that says ‘The Shepherd’s Club’ and put it on my front porch and flash it at Monhegan.”[51] Ray knew that he was one of Monhegan’s tourist attractions—a “real icon” along with a set of unverified Norse runes one could find on Manana—which curious visitors may ogle at in person or purchase a postcard photo of to send home.[52] Yet, there is no evidence that Ray felt his lifestyle was spoiled by the presence of others. Ray’s handling of tourists is admirable in that it is hospitable, but also largely ignores their expectations. Regardless of whether or not Ray was under a spotlight, he went on living his life as he always had, while laughing at outside interest.

It is clear that what for one person is a retreat, for another is life and livelihood and most certainly hard work. Ray Phillips perhaps teaches us that expectations “from away,” should be challenged—not anticipated and imitated. While Ray’s celebrity as a “hermit” drew many to him, I speculate his true charm—like Maine’s—arises from instances in which he challenges that characterization, dismisses its idealistic implications, and dismantles his own legend as the Hermit of Manana Island.

IV. Up Close: The Hermit in Ruin

It’s difficult to address Paradise without its loss, Eden without ruin. Their interaction is what makes the story after all.[53] Likewise, the simple, obvious fact of island life—its particular sensitivity to the reality of edges and entropy—deems the latter term unavoidable and necessary to discuss.

As Joseph Rywkwert demonstrated in the many architectural manifestations of Adam’s implied hut, conceptions of Eden or Paradise are not stationary artifacts of cultural memory, but constantly subject to process. Caitlin DeSilvey points out in her analysis of the mutability of cultural artifacts, that this holds true for the job of any archivist and often poses considerable challenges to scholarly analysis. She observes in her work that perhaps “the drive toward stabilizing the thing was part of the problem.” The problem is that “protected stasis” is illusory.[54] Loss due to decay is always part of the picture whether we acknowledge it or not.

Acknowledging ruin has value in that “the disarticulation of the object may lead to the articulation of other histories, and other geographies,” says DeSilvey.[55] In ruin, we recognize other possible lives—tales—amongst the eroded bits of an object, because decay also possesses its own direction and movement. It is in this “admixture of waste and life, of decadence and vitality,” through which the “procreative power of decay” is at work, making re-creation possible.[56]

Upon inspecting the details of Ray Phillip’s life, his legend begins to break down. He loses some of his mystique. The image is gap-ridden, discordant and ill-fitted in places—perhaps too puzzlingly human for our liking. Tales of Ray, the bearded, reclusive holy man on a mythic Maine isle are much easier to tell. Collecting all of these eroded bits and erroneous details, which are the most tangible materials of Ray’s life, undercuts the felt-presence his legend provided.

The mystical fallout is all part of the natural processes of storytelling—the discrepancies between stories as they happened from some vantage point and the stories we tell ourselves and others at a displaced time. Yet, the ruins of those forgotten, half-told tales are valuable in that they have the potential to offer a more complete picture of a story’s ethos. I turn, then, to those perplexing, oft-discarded, details of Ray Phillips’ life and circumstances in the hopes that it will lead me to a fuller articulation—“other histories,
other geographies”—of the hermit’s saga.

Folklore surrounding hermits often foregrounds the hermit as a redeemer, some kind of solution to the ruinous forces affecting the alienated modern individual. Yet, how the hermit’s answer to the human condition plays out – in other words, how the hermit secures their own survival and preserves their person – is often dramatized for effect.

In popular imaginings Ray lives simply and enjoys “the good life.” Monhegan artist Elaine K. Miller writes in her blog: “[Ray] would walk along the island, gazing out to sea, contented with his life” on tiny tree-less Manana, a place “only suitable for seagulls,” though somehow “perfect” for him.[57]Ìę However, the closer we get to how he managed to survive its logistics, obstacles, and everyday monotony, the magic of it all begins to lose some of its quality. It seems that any real Paradise is necessarily interacting with its own ruin.

Island living, Ted Bernard explains in Hope and Hard Times, involves a constant awareness of limits and boundaries, outside of which is an ever-changing, at times volatile, expanse unfit for habitation. Keeping a small island like Monhegan habitable is a primary concern. Given that islanders continually ferry waste and needed goods to and from the mainland, residents are careful to moderate their resource use, repurpose where possible and compost organic materials.[58] Island living is a continual interaction with waste—a respect for both its threats and possibilities.

Miller writes in her blog that Ray Phillips was “a smart recycler long before it was savvy.”[59] Known to re-use even the envelopes he received to write back to his many pen pals, Ray was a master salvager. His dwelling was made of driftwood and recycled parts of old ships. He used his bathtub for storing sheep sheerings, and decorated his home with old fading buoys. The construction of his home itself was a restitution of ruined parts, taken from their original contexts and brought into a new order, which seemed to be decaying itself.

DeSilvey reflects that decay “[sparks] simultaneous—and contradictory—sensations [for her] of repugnance and attraction.”[60] Ruin disrupts order, confuses the articulation of an object, and makes structures unsafe for human occupation.[61] The resulting ambiguity is thus repulsive, even threatening. Simultaneously, as Hans Grumbrecht elaborates in “Identifying Fragments,” there is something attractive about things which are out of place or do not look as they should. ÌęThe constant play of “emerging” and “vanishing” forms, means that we never reach, “a state that we would associate with ‘completion’ or ‘rest,’” and so are continually refused “the corresponding sense of relief.”[62] Our “intuition of a lack” immediately stimulates an imaginative “restitution” of the ruined object.[63] In other words, loss to ruin compels us to explore the gaps.

Given the compelling nature of ruined objects, it’s no wonder Ray’s “rambling”—structurally dubious—shack attracted so many curious visitors, eager to gain entrance, draw speculations and take home animated accounts as souvenirs. Ray’s home therefore easily gains currency within Lewis’ “invented” Maine—an idiosyncratic portrait of “quaint folkways, downeast humor, and the [parodied] accent.” ÌęThis Maine effectively “transforms a potentially negative image,” by “minimizing or romanticizing local poverty [and] other pressing social issues.”[64]

David Boynton repeatedly referred to the physical details of Ray’s life euphemistically, as “interesting.” He says of Ray’s house, “well it was interesting. It was pretty dirty because the sheep lived there,” adding, “not a place that I’d want to live.”Ìę Ray’s “interesting lifestyle” is characterized by a dwelling mired in ruin—floors littered in sheep feces, rooms in disrepair, and the whole home sitting on a foundation of, what looked like, eroding toothpicks.[65] Additionally Ray, says one interviewee in Elisabeth Harris’s documentary, looked like a “homeless person,” adding “it wasn’t someone you’d want to invite home for dinner.”[66] Boynton said that because the sheep lived with him, an unpleasant odor usually hung around Ray, so “people didn’t want to stand real close”—likely difficult to address as Ray never installed plumbing in his home, though he’d purchased the materials.[67]

Seeing Ray in the context of ruin, in the context of what many considered to be poverty, complicates his popular characterization. Some, said David Boynton, thought the hermit was “lazy,” that “his lifestyle was at a very low level and
 [he didn’t have] the ambition to fix it up.” This creates a very different picture of Ray in contrast to higher ideals about idyllic isolation. Ray’s income comes largely from social security checks and he often discussed the prospect of a wife, plumbing, and electricity as “too expensive” for him. Yet, there was no mention of laziness in the newspaper articles on Ray—only commentary on the distinction between his “civilized life” and the day he decided to “go fishin’” and never returned.[68]

“Year-round residents on Monhegan, too, have struggled to maintain the economic and environmental sustainability of their island in the face of external changes on the mainland, which marginalize them, and make it difficult to participate in larger markets. When tourists come to Monhegan they do not see the natural environment of Monhegan in the same way that locals do; specifically, the work that goes into maintaining its beauty or supporting its summer residents.”

As one of the poorest states in the nation, Maine historically wrestles with high poverty rates. Local writer Sanford Phippen characterizes the region as a challenging place to make a living: “this Maine is frustrating; it is hard on people. It is a life of poverty, solitude, struggle, lowered aspirations, living on the edge.”[69] When Ray characterized his lifestyle as commonplace and referred to the “500 people just like [him] up the Maine coast” in an interview with the Boston Globe, he was not only directing the journalist’s attention to other reclusive Maine folk, but to their circumstances, the few resources many possess to meet the challenges of an unforgiving landscape. Like many hard-working, resourceful Mainers, it’s clear that Ray, too, was constantly “living on the edge.”

Year-round residents on Monhegan have also struggled to maintain the economic and environmental sustainability of their island in the face of external changes on the mainland, which marginalize them, and make it difficult to participate in larger markets. When tourists come to Monhegan they do not see the natural environment of Monhegan in the same way that locals do; specifically, the work that goes into maintaining its natural beauty or supporting its summer residents. Michael Burke similarly reflects on the relationship between Mainers and their surroundings: “their experience and conception of the environment was not a rural fantasy, not a restorative wilderness, not a refuge from the realm of culture, not simply an idea at all, but a real place to be put to use, and heavy use at that.”[70]

In one well-known anecdote concerning Ray, yet another man arrives on Monhegan to offer the islanders his services. This time, instead of marketing modern electricity, the man on the dock was pitching spiritual salvation. When the pastor approached the old hermit, supposing the destitute-seeming elderly man to be in desperate need of saving, Ray said, “Well that’s great but can you come over to my island and help me put my roof up first?” The pastor told him he didn’t have time to help with a roof, and Ray replied, “Well that’s too bad. I guess you don’t have time to save my soul either.”[71] In this episode, Ray privileged the physical demands of household upkeep over the pastor’s spiritual idealism. Ray was devoted to a temple of his own—with all its broken parts, slanting driftwood shutters, and animal debris—his home, his way.

Maine realist writer Carolyn Chute sees the true Maine, the version most honest in its exhibition, in landscapes “studded with the detritus of human work and play.” She writes:

Home is supposed to be private isn’t it? Lots of us have assorted useful stuff around our yards—tractors, tractor parts, truck tires, wooden skids, plastic industrial pails, rolled up chicken wire, tree houses (the lopsided kind made by kids), old cars, old appliances. This comes from freedom, from not worrying what other people think. Visitors don’t look at your stuff anyway
They mostly look at you. They come to visit you, the person they know quadriptillions of rumors and truths about
There’s no hiding you. You don’t need to. °ŐłóČčłÙ’s freedom.[72]

Freedom for Chute, as I suspect it did for Ray, emancipates the individual from the illusion of preserved charm. Freedom is to openly acknowledge and engage with the ruinous forces that are fundamental to the “admixture of waste and life, of decadence and vitality,”[73] which constitutes any home.

When Ray was asked in an interview about whether he was happy living on Manana Island he said: “I’m very contented I have everything
except youth. I’d like to be young, I’d like to be 16
I’d like to get hold of that ram standing up on the mountain. I’d like to slit his throat.”[74] Ray confronts the reality of his own mortality and is unashamedly nostalgic for his youthful contests with nature in heroic, imagined fables of his own making. In Ray’s statement, too, there is a wish that he could have stayed a bit longer with his sheep on Manana; that there, where he tended his flock, ate canned pineapple, flipped through Reader’s Digest by kerosene light, and opened his shack to countless visitors—there, by the shifting sea water, clear as day on the horizon, that was his Paradise.

About the Author

Taylor Cunningham graduated from the 91±ŹÁÏ in May 2016 with majors in English and Anthropology and a minor in Folklore. Her honor’s thesis, “’Persuading the Secret’: In Search of Maine’s Hermits,” explored Maine’s most fantastically idiosyncratic hermit characters and the important roles they play in regional oral histories. Taylor now lives in Boulder, Colorado with some stellar pals from Maine, works as a juice bar barista at Whole Foods, and writes for WhoWhatWhy, a nonprofit news site, in her spare time. She will be attending New Mexico State University in the Fall to pursue an MFA in fiction.

Notes

[1] “Haven for Hermits,” Downeast Magazine, June 2013.
[2] Yolla Niclas, The Island Shepherd (New York: Viking Press, 1959).
[3] Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s house in Paradise: the Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (Greenwich: Museum of Modern Art, 1972), 13.
[4] Marguerite Del Giudice, “He lives his way—alone on a Maine isle,” Boston Globe, Feb. 2, 1975.
[5] Phyllis Austin, “Depression Dropout Going Strong at 76,” Evening Star (Washington D.C.), May 25, 1973) A-3.
[6] Del Giudice, “He lives his way.”
[7] Elaine K. Miller, “The Hermit of Monhegan Island,” E. K. Miller Fine Art, July 12, 2015, http://ekmillerfineart.com/blog/95105/the-hermit-of-monhegan-island.
[8] Robert Uzzell, “Hermit of Manana Island, Likes His Way of Life,” Maine Coast Fisherman, Oct. 1954, 10.
[9] David Boynton, in-person interview, August 20, 2015.
[10] Interview August 20, 2015
[11] Stephen Hornsby, Richard Judd, Michael Herman, and Kimberly Sebold, Historical Atlas of Maine (Orono: 91±ŹÁÏ Press), Plates 71-2.
[12] Ted Bernard, “Into the Eighth Generation: Monhegan Island Maine, “ in Hope and Hard Times: Communities, Collaboration and Sustainability, Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2010, 2010: 72
[13] Bernard, Hope and Hard Times, 67
[14] Mark Warner, Monhegan: a Guide to Maine’s Fabled Island (Camden: Down East Books, 2008).
[15] In a response to a “Letter to the Editor,” concerning a Times article he wrote on Monhegan Island in 1972, journalist Jason Mark describes “Monhegan and her sister island” as, “steeped in primeval wonder.” (Harriet Kline, “Fond Memories of Utopia,” New York Times, Jun. 4, 1972.)
[16] The Hermit of Manana, directed by Elisabeth B. Harris (2006; Maine International Film Festival.), .
[17] In a response to a discussion board on Ray Phillips, a descendant of Ray’s writes: “I find it odd how rumors start and after a time seem to be passed on as truth or perhaps myth or one might even say romanticized history
you mention the Manana Island hermit and this is where, perhaps through mis-information or rumor or perhaps history retold too many times, you break off into fiction.” Suffice it to say the author of this letter was not happy about Ray’s depiction as a former stock-broker who “snapped” and left the world for an idyllic life apart on a Maine island (“Discussion on Ray Phillips,” Briegull.com, 2001, http://briegull.com/Monhegan/ray_phillips_discussion.htm).
[18] George Lewis, “The Maine That Never Was: The Construction of Popular Myth in Regional Culture,” Journal of American Culture 16, no. 2 (1993): 91-100.
[19] Ibid., 91.
[20] Rykwert, “On Adam’s House,” 13.
[21] Ibid., 44.
[22] Thoreau’s log cabin at Walden Pond, or Lincoln’s log cabin, for instance.
[23] Rykwert, “On Adam’s House,” 31.
[24] Interview, August 20, 2015.
[25] Rykwert, On Adam’s House, 13.
[26] Del Giudice, “He lives his way,” 33.
[27] Kline, “Fond Memories of Utopia,” XX4.
[28] David Lowenthal, “Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory,” Geographical Review 65, no. 1 (1975): 8.
[29] Ibid., 9.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Lowenthal, “Past Time, Present Place,” 2.
[32] Ibid, 5.
[33] Lowenthal, 4.
[34]Ardis Cameron, “When Strangers Bring Cameras: The Poetics and Politics of Othered Places,” American Quarterly 54, no. 3. (2002): 411.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Edith Sitwell, English Eccentrics (New York: Vanguard Press, 1957).
[37] Ray reportedly named his goose Donald Duck in jest, because so many visitors would show up on Manana and ask him about his pet duck.
[38] Miller, “The Hermit of Monhegan Island.”
[39] Qtd. in Lewis, “The Maine That Never Was,” 97.
[40] [40] Qtd. in Michael D. Burke, “Introduction,” in Maine’s Place in the Environmental Imagination, (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), viii.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Bernard, “Into the Eighth Generation,” 70.
[43] Ibid., 72.
[44] Ibid., 79.
[45] Ibid., 72.
[46] Bernard, “Into the Eighth Generation,” 65.
[47] Del Giudice, “He lives his way.”
[48] Interview, August 20, 2015
[49] Del Giudice, “He lives his way.”
[50] Neither was Ray a purist. Twice a year he is said to have gone into town on the mainland to get a haircut and sleep in a hotel bed.
[51] Del Giudice, “He lives his way.”
[52] Ibid.
[53] N.B. “Genesis,” the biblical creation story and a term, which the OED defines as, “the action of building up from simple or basic elements to more complex ones.”
[54] Caitlin DeSilvey, “Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things,” Journal of Material Culture 11, no. 3 (2006): 324-6.
[55] Ibid., 324.
[56] Ibid., 320-4.
[57] Miller, “The Hermit of Monhegan Island.”
[58] Bernard, Hope and Hard Times.
[59] Miller, “The Hermit of Monhegan Island.”
[60] DeSilvey, “Observed Decay,” 320.
[61] N.B. The ruins of the hermit’s dwelling were burned down, because they were believed to be structurally unstable and dangerous to visitors.
[62] Hans Gumbrecht, “Identifying Fragments,” in The Powers of Philology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 10-15.
[63] Ibid.
[64] Lewis, “The Maine That Never Was,” 91-100.
[65] Interview, August 20, 2015.
[66] The Hermit of Manana (2006).
[67] Interview, August 20, 2015.
[68] Del Giudice, “He lives his way.”
[69] Qtd. in Lewis, “The Maine That Never Was,” 91.
[70] Burke, Maine’s Place in the Environmental Imagination, 6.
[71] Miller, “The Hermit of Monhegan Island.”
[72] Wesley McNair, The Quotable Moose: a Contemporary Maine Reader (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994), 229.[73] DeSilvey, “Observed Decay,” 324.
[74] Del Giudice, “He lives his way.”

Works Cited

Austin, Phyllis. “Depression Dropout Going Strong at 76.” Evening Star (Washington D.C.). May 25,
1973. A-3.

Bernard, Ted. “Into the Eighth Generation: Monhegan Island Maine.“ In Hope and Hard Times: Communities, Collaboration and Sustainability. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2010.

Boynton, David. In-person interview. August 20, 2015.

Burke, Michael D. “Introduction,” in Maine’s Place in the Environmental Imagination. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.

Cameron, Ardis. “When Strangers Bring Cameras: The Poetics and Politics of Othered Places.” American Quarterly 54, no. 3. (2003).

Del Giudice, Marguerite. “He lives his way—alone on a Maine isle.” Boston Globe, Feb. 2, 1975.

DeSilvey, Caitlin. “Observed Decay: Telling Stories with Mutable Things.” Journal of Material Culture. 11, no. 3 (2006).

“Discussion on Ray Phillips.” Briegull.com, 2001. http://briegull.com/Monhegan/ray_phillips_discussion.html.

Gumbrecht, Hans. “Identifying Fragments,” in The Powers of Philology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

“Haven for Hermits.” Downeast Magazine. June 2013.

Hornsby, Stephen, Richard Judd, Michael Herman, and Kimberly Sebold. Historical Atlas of Maine. Orono: 91±ŹÁÏ Press. Plates 71-2.

Kline, Harriet. “Fond Memories of Utopia.” New York Times. Jun. 4, 1972.

George Lewis, “The Maine That Never Was: The Construction of Popular Myth in Regional

Culture,” Journal of American Culture 16, no. 2 (1993): 91-100.

Lowenthal, David. “Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory.” Geographical Review 65, no. 1 (1975).

McNair, Wesley. The Quotable Moose: a Contemporary Maine Reader. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994. 229.

Miller, Elaine K. “The Hermit of Monhegan Island.” E. K. Miller Fine Art. July 12, 2015. http://ekmillerfineart.com/blog/95105/the-hermit- of-monhegan- island.

Niclas, Yolla The Island Shepherd. New York: Viking Press, 1959.

Rykwert, Joseph. On Adam’s house in Paradise: the Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History. Greenwich: Museum of Modern Art, 1972.

Sitwell, Edith. English Eccentrics. New York: Vanguard Press. 1957.

The Hermit of Manana. Directed by Elisabeth B. Harris. Maine International Film Festival. 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFWqx_g4PLs.

Uzzell, Robert. “Hermit of Manana Island, Likes His Way of Life.” Maine Coast Fisherman. Oct. 1954, 10.

Warner, Mark. Monhegan: a Guide to Maine’s Fabled Island. Camden: Down East Books. 2008.

Special thanks to Jennifer Pye at the Monhegan Museum for inviting me to the Monhegan, and helping me sift through archival material early on in the research process. And deepest gratitude to Sarah Harlan-Haughey for her wealth of knowledge on medieval outlaws and eccentrics, in addition to inspiring this hermit study and encouraging me to trust and pursue my own questions.

The post Eden & Ruin: Monhegan’s Island Shepherd appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

¹ Postdoctoral Research Associate, School of Forest Resources, 91±ŹÁÏ
² Associate Professor, School of Forest Resources, 91±ŹÁÏ
³ Assistant Professor of Forest Management and Economics, School of Forest Resources, 91±ŹÁÏ
⁴ M.S. Graduate, School of Forest Resources, 91±ŹÁÏ
⁵ E.L. Giddings Professor of Forest Policy (Retired), School of Forest Resources, 91±ŹÁÏ

Maine’s Changing Forests and Forest Products Industry

At near 90% forest cover, Maine is one of the most forested states in the U.S. (McCaskill et al. 2011). This plentiful natural resource and the forest products industry that capitalizes on those resources have been integral to the economic and social identity of Maine for centuries (Judd 2007). However, Maine’s forests and the people and industries that rely upon them are undergoing rapid change (Ohm 2016). These changes are a result of myriad causes and have different effects across the state.

The forest products industry has undergone significant transformation, with fewer, larger processors and, in recent years, significant shutdowns and mill closures due to global and national economic and technological factors, including manufacturing increasingly moving to other countries and the U.S. recession (Lilieholm et al. 2009, Anderson and Crandall 2016). In southern Maine, coastal areas, and along rivers and lakes, development pressures from residential and second homes have fragmented forests and significantly reduced forest cover (Bell 2007). As a result, state and regional proposals to protect lands from development (Foster et al. 2010, Foster et al. 2012, Lilieholm et al. 2010, New England Governors Conference 2009, Wiersma 2009) and preserve natural areas have gained traction (Foster et al. 2010, Foster et al. 2012).

Over the last few decades, industrial forest holdings have been greatly reduced, replaced by a host of landowners such as timber investment management organizations (TIMOs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) (Hagan et al. 2005, Lilieholm 2007). Shifts in ownership have impacted the physical and socio-cultural landscape of Maine forests. Historically, forest products companies supported a culture of open land use on their large tracts of private land (Acheson and Acheson 2009, Lilieholm 2007). Fragmentation of the landscape has resulted in multiple new owners with different ideas about private property, which has increased the disruption of Maine’s open land use traditions (Acheson and Acheson 2009, Lilieholm 2007).

At a broader scale, concerns over fossil fuels and global climate change present a host of challenges and opportunities for forests, communities, and the forest products sector (Bilodeau et al. 2009). In the 1970s and more recently, the mid-2000s, record-high fuel prices spurred interest in forest-based biofuel and bioproducts innovation. Currently, interest in biomass remains strong as a way to support low-value wood markets (Fishell 2016). From forest protection to innovative new wood markets, there are a diversity of opportunities for Maine’s forests and forest products sector. However, there is long-standing concern and controversy about how the state’s large and less-populated North Woods should or should not be used.

In 2007, a public outcry arose when the Plum Creek Timber Company, Inc. (Plum Creek) proposed rezoning of thousands of acres near Greenville, Maine, and the Maine Land Use Regulatory Commission (LURC) held a series of public hearings to allow citizens to air concerns about and support for the proposal (Anderson et al. 2012). Controversy began again in August 2016, when President Obama designated 87,500 acres of formerly privately owned land near Mount Katahdin and Baxter State Park as the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument (NPS 2016, Sharon 2016). Residents supported protecting the land, and it generated excitement about potential opportunity for economic innovation through tourism in Maine’s woods and waterways (Critical Insights 2015). However, the polls that demonstrated majority support for land protection did not address the importance that historical use of forestland plays in the identity of Mainers.

“The juxtaposition of five forest products mill closures in the last two years (Ohm 2016) and the controversy around Plum Creek and the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument provides an opportunity to improve strategic, inclusive decision-making about Maine’s forest resources and investment in forest-dependent communities.”

Maine’s forests are 95 percent privately owned, and the forest products industry has historically controlled much of this land. Maine residents have long used this private land as a common-property natural resource, leading to a strong sense of shared value and ownership around management of the state’s forests (Acheson and Acheson 2009, Judd 2007). Despite the potential economic opportunities that the national monument provides, many residents of nearby communities expressed anger and concern over this perceived top-down, federal decision about forests that they considered their generational, common inheritance (Pérez-Peña 2016, Sambides 2016).

The juxtaposition of five forest products mill closures in the last two years (Ohm 2016) and the controversy around Plum Creek and the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument provides an opportunity to improve strategic, inclusive decision-making about Maine’s forest resources and investment in forest-dependent communities. The controversy around the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is not a singular example. Research demonstrates a need to understand public values and perceptions, and engage people in the decision-making process before an issue becomes a political controversy (Anderson et al. 2012, van der Horst 2007, Wester-Herber 2004). Maine is in a critical transition period where decreases in forest products industry employment have left many residents and communities wondering what’s next. The key to successful rural development may lie in understanding the values, views of forest management, and trusted sources of information for current and former mill communities and for the Maine public. If innovative wood markets are developed, such as biofuels or nanocellulosic products, will Maine residents support this forest products industry shift? Addressing this question requires a diverse portfolio of forest-based economic, environmental, and social answers, and the intersection of collaborative forest bioproducts research and development could provide one answer.

Forest Bioproducts Research Institute

In 2006, the 91±ŹÁÏ was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR), “Investing in Maine Research Infrastructure: Sustainable Forest Bioproducts.” This grant was supplemented with significant matching funds from the Maine Economic Improvement Fund in recognition of the importance of forests to the state. Funding supported the creation of the Forest Bioproducts Research Institute (FBRI) to promote forest health for a stable bioeconomy (natural resource-based economy), by understanding and separating wood components, and creating and commercializing new bioproducts. An NSF Sustainable Energy Pathways (SEP) Program award supported multi-disciplinary research, including our survey of Maine households to better understand residents’ views towards forests, forest practices, and the forest products industry. FBRI is now working to move its scientific results from a diverse array of projects into action. One action that FBRI hopes to move forward is a biorefinery that will turn wood components into products like biodiesel, or plastics, typically made from petroleum.

The public’s concerns and values will need to play a central role in decision-making in order to successfully turn scientific knowledge and results into bioproducts (Burningham and Thrush 2004, Lee et al. 2015, Upreti 2004, van der Horst 2007). Place-based values may play a significant role in project support or opposition (van der Horst 2007, Wester-Herber 2004). Transparency and site-specific communication to address community concerns about biorefineries may decrease the likelihood of project opposition (Upreti 2004, van der Horst 2007). Our survey of Maine residents contributes important insights for moving toward successful forest bioproducts development to provide diversified economic, environmental, and social opportunities for Maine communities.

Survey Description

We mailed 3,000 surveys to two Maine populations: (1) a “Statewide” sample; and (2) a “Mill Town” sample that included households within a 10-mile radius of the 10 pulp and paper processing facilities active in 2010. We mailed surveys to at least 125 households in each of the Mill Towns. It is likely that forest-based biorefineries would be co-located with pulp and paper mills (Dickerson and Rubin 2008, Benjamin et al. 2009), and resident attitudes in Mill Town communities are particularly important in evaluating the acceptability of and support for future projects. We excluded the Mill Towns from the Statewide results. Our response rate was 42% for Mill Towns and 41% for the Statewide sample.

We did not survey residents under the age of 18, which may account for our older median age of respondents, 55 years, as compared to the state average of 42 years. Respondents were mostly male and had high levels of education. We asked respondents to select one of ten income brackets based on their total household income. The majority of Statewide respondents’ incomes fell within the $50,000 to $74,999 bracket and the majority of Mill Town respondents fell into the $35,000 to $49,999 bracket. The 2008 median household income for Maine was $46,581, which fell within the Mill Towns’ most-common household income bracket, and was below the most common bracket of our Statewide sample (U.S. Census ACS 2008). Nearly 90 percent of both samples owned homes, and on average, respondents had lived in their communities for long periods of time (Statewide: 27 years; Mill Towns: 33 years). We found that 41 percent of our Mill Town respondents were currently or had been employed by the forest products industry compared to 13 percent of our Statewide respondents.

The Value and Management of Maine Forest Resources

We asked Mill Town and Statewide respondents to rank in order of importance five Maine forest uses (Table 1). Respondents considered Maine forests to be important sources of environmental and economic value. Mill Town and Statewide respondents saw the protection of water, air and soil to be the most important function of Maine forests, and both groups ranked the use of forests to support plants and animals as very important. There was a significant difference between Mill Town and Statewide respondents’ views of Maine forests as a source of economic wealth, and Mill Town residents considered forests to be more important than Statewide respondents (Marciano 2013). About one-fifth of Mill Town residents considered Maine forests to be an important source of economic wealth, whereas one-third did not consider forests to be a source of wealth. The majority of Statewide residents did not see the Maine forests as important sources of economic wealth.

Respondents’ viewed forests as a source of protection for environmental resources, which was reflected by their responses to our question regarding important forest management objectives (Table 2). Both populations highly ranked the management of forests to maintain water quality, wildlife populations, soil nutrients, and wood supplies for the forest products industry (Table 1). There was a significant difference between Mill Town and Statewide respondents’ views of the importance of maintaining forest productivity to ensure wood supplies to the forest products industry. It was an important objective for both populations, though more so for Mill Town respondents.

Table 1. Respondents’ rankings of the importance of Maine’s forest uses

Table 2. Respondents’ ratings of forest management objectives

The Future of Maine’s Forest Products Industry

The shifting role of the forest products industry in the state may have contributed to varied perspectives of the future importance of the industry. About one-fifth of both populations believed that the industry would increase in importance, over one-third of both samples thought it would remain constant, and just under one-third of respondents thought it would decrease in importance (Marciano 2013). This variation could be a result of relatively low knowledge about emerging technologies in the industry, such as biorefineries, and the diversity of products that a biorefinery could produce. We found that about one-quarter (Mill Town) to one-third (Statewide) of respondents had not heard of biorefineries, and another third had heard of them, but were unclear about what they do (Marciano 2013). Through community engagement, this uncertainty surrounding biofuels is important to address, as FBRI and other organizations begin steps toward commercialization and biorefinery facility proposals. One facility could produce a variety of bioproducts, and some valuable industrial chemicals may be byproducts generated during the same process. This is a significant departure from Maine’s long-standing “wood-in-paper-out” forest products model, and it will need to be better explained to the public.

With this in mind, we sought to understand respondents’ perspectives about expanding the types of wood-derived products. Both populations expressed a preference for the benefits of expanding wood-derived medicines and pharmaceuticals (Table 3). Mill Town residents considered wood pellet production for heating to also be highly beneficial, and Statewide respondents considered it significantly less so. Both groups considered bio-plastics and electricity generation to be generally beneficial. There was greater within-group disagreement about the benefits of various biofuels, especially ethanol and biodiesel (Figure 1). Public concerns about ethanol production are well documented (Delshad et al. 2010; Johnson et al 2011; Mohr and Raman 2013), and may have affected this disagreement about the potential benefits of biofuels.

Table 3. Respondents’ views of benefits from sustainably harvested Maine wood bioproducts

Public support for facility siting has played a key role in the success or failure of other bioenergy facilities (van der Horst 2007), and likewise the Maine public’s support will be important for biorefinery success (Marciano 2013). A recent study found that biomass-based economic development in rural communities faces significant challenges, and may depend on subsidies, new markets, technological innovation, and production of high-value forest bioproducts (Crandall 2017). The likelihood of success of a new bioproducts industry will require further collaboration, innovation, and significant public engagement.

The process toward commercialization and facility siting may also depend on the involvement of trusted sources of information (Savvanidou et al. 2010; Van de Velde 2011). Respondents considered the 91±ŹÁÏ’s School of Forest Resources to be the most credible source of information. 91±ŹÁÏ researchers and the Maine Forest Service were considered very credible, as was the U.S. Forest Service. The forest products industry was also considered credible, and Mill Town respondents considered it significantly more credible than Statewide respondents. Environmental and business groups were both considered less credible, and Mill Towns considered environmental groups significantly less credible (Table 4). Both groups considered the media the least credible source of information.

Table 4. Respondents’ ratings of credibility of forest products industry information sources

Discussion and Conclusions

Our objective was to understand how Mill Town and Statewide residents’ values, views of forest management, and perception of credible sources of information might play a role in Mainers’ support for biorefineries and their products. This research provides one perspective on the question, “what’s next for Maine forests?” as well as critical input for policymakers and organizations hoping to attract biorefinery investment in Maine. Our results suggest that Mainers value forests, and research suggests that values matter in environmental, forest, and energy policy (Anderson et al. 2012, van der Horst 2007, Wester-Herber 2004).

Mill Town and Statewide respondents considered the protection of water, air and soil to be the most important function of Maine forests. Respondents also highly valued the use of forests to support plants and animals. Both groups rated most highly managing forests to maintain water quality, wildlife populations, soil nutrients, and wood supplies for the forest products industry. Mill Town respondents considered managing forests for wood supplies for the forest products industry significantly more important than Statewide respondents. A proposed facility siting that is perceived to impact water or air quality, soil health, or compete with current industry wood supply could face public opposition. In Mill Towns, the impact of a biorefinery on wood supplies critical for forest products industry uses would be an important factor to discuss.

“The divisive opinions and controversy around the Plum Creek rezoning proposal and the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument provides critical context for the role that values play in forest management and policy processes. In both cases there was a feeling that people “from away,” or outside of the Maine and local communities, were driving the process.”

Our results suggest that residents have a strong sense of place and community identity, as respondents from both populations had lived in their communities for two to three decades, on average. There is evidence in the literature that place-based identity, and the industrial legacy of a location plays a role in the likelihood of energy facility siting controversy (Devine-Wright 2011; Devine-Wright and Howes 2010, Upreti 2004, van der Horst 2007, Wester-Herber 2004). These results could provide researchers and policymakers a starting point for a discussion around the impacts of a biorefinery on forest resources that Mill Town and Statewide residents value. Transparency in early proposal stages may avoid facility site failures due to public opposition, many examples of which have been well documented in the literature (Upreti 2004, van der Horst 2007).

The divisive opinions and controversy around the Plum Creek rezoning proposal and the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument provides critical context for the role that values play in forest management and policy processes. In both cases there was a feeling that people “from away,” or outside of the Maine and local communities, were driving the process (Anderson et al 2012, Pérez-Peña 2016, Sambides 2016). This suggests that for a biorefinery proposal or siting process, community engagement is most effective if led by credible sources of information from Maine. Despite increasing politicization and shifting levels of trust in science (Gauchat 2012), our results suggest that the 91±ŹÁÏ is trusted and respected source of credible information for both populations.

Our respondents considered the 91±ŹÁÏ School of Forest Resources, researchers, and state forest service to be the most credible sources of information about the forest products industry. Mill Towns also regarded the forest products industry as a credible source of industry information. Our results provide an opportunity for these trusted groups to take a transparent leadership role in community development of biorefineries, including a discussion about values, forest management, and biorefinery products.

Biorefineries can make a diverse array of products, some simultaneously. Mill Town and Statewide residents expressed a preference for biorefinery production of medicines and pharmaceuticals, and there was disagreement within each sample about the benefits of producing bio-fuels. This disagreement may be due to well-publicized concerns about ethanol (Delshad et al. 2010, Johnson et al 2011, Mohr and Raman 2013). Biofuels will likely be an important biorefinery product in Maine, and addressing public concerns and uncertainty early in the commercialization process will be important (Pendse et al. 2012). The institutions and groups that respondents considered credible have an opportunity to listen to these concerns to help the public understand what a biorefinery is, what it might produce, and the potential socio-economic tradeoffs of bioproducts manufacturing.

As respected voices, researchers at the 91±ŹÁÏ can help the public to understand our commitment to a research cycle that does not stop at peer reviewed journal articles, but becomes a part of an actionable and engaged process toward solutions. Collaborative FBRI research has grown social capital in the form of networks of cross-disciplinary researchers, industry representatives, non-governmental organizations, and state partners. In the next steps toward commercialization of products, and eventually toward facility siting, these trusted organizations and individuals could take the lead in a process to engage mill town communities and the general public in a discussion about biorefineries. Public hearings were a common approach in the Plum Creek and Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument process, but by the time they were held there was already significant opposition to the proposals.

“Early engagement may help reveal yet unknown issues and opportunities for the communities that care deeply about Maine forests, and in the process build social and economic wealth.”

Our respondents expressed concerns and hopes that could provide the foundation for community information and listening sessions prior to a site proposal. There are examples of successful inclusion of public participation in forest resources decision-making, such as consensus-based stakeholder workshops, and acknowledgement, respect, and inclusion of stakeholders’ local knowledge in the decision-making process (Hampton et al. 2011, Lyons et al. 2014). Early engagement may help reveal yet unknown issues and opportunities for the communities that care deeply about Maine forests, and in the process build social and economic wealth. Many of our rural communities have been built upon the forest products industry, and they have a stake in and should have a voice in decisions about the future of Maine forests. Through a collaborative, transparent process, Maine has a promising future for a diverse and healthy forest products industry that is dynamic, innovative, and sustainable for communities and our valued natural resources.

Acknowledgement of Funding Sources

This research was supported by the 91±ŹÁÏ’s Forest Bioproducts Research Initiative (National Science Foundation Grant No. EPS-0554545), the SEP Integrated National Framework for Cellulosic Drop-in Fuels (National Science Foundation Grant No. EPS-1230908), and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture McIntire-Stennis program through the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station.

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The post What’s Next for Maine’s Forests? Mill Town and Statewide Community Perspectives on the Value, Management, and Future of Maine Forests appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Not unlike the canary in the coal mine the small islands on our coast will be first to see the impacts of climate change. Although the effect appears mild at the moment, the changes are gradual; seemingly minor changes have a profound cumulative effect. This new body of work is a perceptual exploration of island culture and the impending impacts of climate change. Informed by recent island travels and environmental research, this work investigates ideas of independence, strength, beauty, adaptation, and survival. My approach to this work is personal, curious, psychological and at times darkly humorous. These atmospheric etchings, small representational oil paintings, and larger dreamlike oil paintings provide a window into the narratives of island culture and climate change. This multi-tiered approach will catch your eye (and reel you in) with its apparent levity, subsequently leaving you with an impression of its gravitas.

The Memory of Trees

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Your Heart

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Requiem

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Rising Tides

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Night Garden

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Waiting in the Rain

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The Acid Sea

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The post Tiny Catastrophes appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

In the last few years, scholars¹ have discussed the compounding effect of climate stressors and political unrest in Arab nations leading up to the Arab Spring uprisings.² They have highlighted the environmental changes that led up to the regime changes, and the possibility for international multilateral cooperation in a volatile climate future.^3;4 An ever-growing migration out of Syria, driven by long-term warming and drought, has spread concern about refugee health and wellbeing across the world. The issue has rapidly changed from a question of why we are seeing such drastic ecosystem changes, to how to deal with its human toll. The unprecedented rapidity and frequency with which natural disasters are occurring globally continues to impact civil society and increase health and safety risks. Combining climate modeling, worst-case scenario planning and well-timed government interventions continues to be the best way to prevent large-scale climate migration.

“Decreased precipitation and increased warming may render the region unlivable within 100 years, leading to an even greater refugee crisis.”

While droughts have been common in this region, the ongoing drought that started in 2006 is unprecedented in length and magnitude, and has increased the strain on families with limited natural resources and extreme material poverty.¹ÌęThe drought is not a direct result of the warming climate, but is worsened and lengthened by climate change, exhausting the small storehouse of resources that rural communities had built.² The combination of increased immigration to the urban outskirts and rapid resource depletion became a catalyst for civil discontent as food and societal resources diminished.¹ Syria’s government, unprepared for this extreme and extraordinary event, was unable to deal with the sudden exodus of rural families into cities, and met them with no assistance.

“The possibility that increasing drought will render Syrian migrants unable to return is a real concern that neighboring countries must prepare for. In effect, even while countries are discussing next steps, it is critical to plan for the possibility that current climate refugees will not be able to go back to Syria, and migration will not slow.”

Climate is a driver for the destabilization of the region,³Ìęand in order to understand the future security issues throughout the region, it is vital to incorporate climate predictions. Models⁴ agree that both an increase in warming, and decrease in groundwater availability may lead to permanent drought. Decreased precipitation and increased warming may render the region unlivable within 100 years, leading to an even greater refugee crisis. Additionally, the possibility that increasing drought will render Syrian migrants unable to return is a real concern that neighboring countries must prepare for. In effect, even while countries are discussing next steps, it is critical to plan for the possibility that current climate refugees will not be able to go back to Syria, and migration will not slow.

Forecasting regional security

The unprecedented migration out of Syria has continued to increase over the past few years. As of October 1, 2016, the United Nations has accounted for over 4 million Syrian refugees who have left for surrounding countries, reducing the previously assessed Syrian resident population of 22 million by almost 20%.⁴ For Syrians trying to stay in the region, even a drop in population this large may not help to alleviate the strain of water depletion. While under different circumstances this outflow of migrants could lower water stress, the coupling of increased drought and exhausted water reserves means Syria will continue to suffer from resource loss.

“If crops and animals using groundwater don’t have what they need, the cycle of resource loss will continue and an increasing number of people will be affected. While further resource loss is a very real danger for Syrians, it could also mean the continuation of long term ecosystem damage leading to desertification.”

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) is a data-gathering satellite monitored and run through institutions including NASA, JPL, and a coalition of Universities. Using measurements of earth’s gravitational field, the program monitors ground water reservoirs globally.⁵ Scientists involved have calculated that the Arabian aquifer system that Syria shares with its neighbors is currently being depleted by more than -10 mm/yr^-1.⁶ This means that all of the rain, fog and snow in Syria can’t account for the water 60 million residents are using, making the Arabian aquifer the world’s most overstressed.6 If crops and animals using groundwater don’t have what they need, the cycle of resource loss will continue and an increasing number of people will be affected. While further resource loss is a very real danger for Syrians, it could also mean the continuation of long term ecosystem damage leading to desertification.

While aquifer depletion is extremely dangerous on its own, the situation will continue to be worsened by predictions of decreasing precipitation throughout the region. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has modeled a number of climate scenarios for the next 100 years. If the world warms 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, precipitation forecasts for Syria decrease from their current meager levels of 25 cm/yr^-1, 6 to between 0-20 cm/year^-1.⁷ This would be followed by further depletion to 0-15cm/yr^-1 by 2100 at an increasing rate of warming. The combination of a rapidly depleting groundwater system, and precipitation levels that are unable to supplement usage, mean Syria will suffer from increasing water insecurity. This coupling of a rapidly depleting watershed and precipitation loss would intensify the drought, forcing residents to migrate in even larger numbers.

Governance Implications

Though the implications of climate models highlight the necessity of either increased governmental resource management or migration from the Syrian region, it will be impossible for the population to successfully relocate in total. In reality, the lack of strong government leadership increases the likelihood of a resource-depletion, which may lead to civil strife and migration as residents use all resources available to them, and the government is unsuccessful in securing transnational assistance. Even if robust negotiations were currently possible, with ongoing fighting between the Assad regime and transnationally backed local insurgents, it would still be difficult for Syria to secure the resources it would need to counter the swift water losses brought by a changing climate.

It will also be difficult for the global community to continue to care for refugees. Even with the current accommodations being offered by the European Union and the United States, if the drought continues as projected, a continued influx of new residents into regions that are already resource strained could make housing climate refugees more difficult for neighboring Hungary, Turkey, and Greece. As populist and protectionist movements grow in countries outside of the region, a lack of access to international support for the refugees could mean increasing destabilization throughout the region.

Within the context of wider implications worldwide, Syria can serve as a teachable moment for international response to natural disasters. The Syrian drought, overlooked by much of the developed world, became a strong driver in political unrest that led to mass migration. The destabilizing effects have been clear as far away as Britain, where the influx of new residents fleeing conflict and drought in the Middle East may have impacted the results of the Brexit vote.⁸ÌęClearly, the destabilization of one region can lead to reverberations worldwide, a problem that could be minimized with early intervention during natural disaster-driven humanitarian crises.

Moving Forward

Governments must begin to plan for worst-case climate scenarios. Increasing desertification in the mid latitudes and severe weather in the north may continue to increase the number of climate refuges globally, and bring subsequent housing and concerns for refugee safety. The combination of environmental and social destabilization has already proven to be a trigger for civil unrest, and it is likely that this type of conflict will happen more often, in ecosystems with existing cycles of water or food insecurity. These can be exacerbated in areas prone to drought, flooding or temperature extremes, as these natural cycles see increased frequency and magnitude.⁹ Regional social tensions coupled with resource scarcity means that building cultural ties beyond state boundaries will be crucial in order to maintain stability. Dialogue between governments must therefore include the shared safeguarding of resources, and planning for natural disasters, in order to mitigate security concerns and prevent violence.

“Even as an increasing number of nations are called on to house refugees, governments must utilize climate forecasting as a tool for decision making and scenario planning.”

The destabilization of Syria has highlighted the strong connection between climate change and regional security, including the reverberating global impacts that regional destabilization can bring. Even as an increasing number of nations are called on to house refugees, governments must utilize climate forecasting as a tool for decision making and scenario planning. Each geographic region will have specific concerns brought on by local climate changes, though issues such as clean water, air pollution and food security are shared. Sea level rise and coastal flooding, droughts, wildfire and the increase of natural disasters can all be drivers of conflict if there is not a strong government system to secure the health and safety of residents. The social challenges brought on by the increased warming of the 20^th century and subsequent natural disasters, are continually growing.⁹ As the climate continues to warm, increasing change may bring long term displacement and unrest, a reality for which the international community must jointly prepare.

Works cited

¹Kelley, Colin P., Shahrzad Mohtadi, Mark A. Cane, Richard Seager, and Yochanan Kushnir. “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought.”ÌęProceedings of the National Academy of SciencesÌę112, no. 11 (2015): 3241-246. doi:10.1073/pnas.1421533112.

² Gleick, Peter H. “Water, drought, climate change, and conflict in Syria.”ÌęWeather, climate and societyÌę6 (2016): 331-40. Accessed April 28, 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1. Web. December 2016.

³ Werrell, Caitlin, and Francesco Femia. “The Arab Spring and Climate Change.” Center for Climate and Security. 2013. Accessed April 29, 2017.https://www.climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com%2f2012%2f04%2fclimatechangearabspring_preface.pdf&p=DevEx, 5061.1.

⁴Cook, Benjamin I., Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Ramzi Touchan, David M. Meko, and Edward R. Cook. “Spatiotemporal drought variability in the Mediterranean over the last 900Ìęyears.”ÌęJournal of Geophysical Research: AtmospheresÌę121, no. 5 (2016): 2060-074. doi:10.1002/2015jd023929.

⁵“A third of the world’s biggest groundwater basins are in distress.” UCI News. January 01, 0188. Accessed April 29, 2017.

⁶ Richey, Alexandra S., Brian F. Thomas, Min-Hui Lo, John T. Reager, James S. Famiglietti, Katalyn Voss, Sean Swenson, and Matthew Rodell. “Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE.”ÌęWater Resources ResearchÌę51, no. 7 (2015): 5217-238. doi:10.1002/2015wr017349.

⁷ Birkel, Sean. “Climate Reanalyzer.” Climate Reanalyzer. Accessed April 29, 2017. http://cci-reanalyzer.org.

⁸ “Refugee crisis ‘decisive’ for Brexit, will break EU apart – Austrian FM,” RT International, accessed April 29, 2017, https://www.rt.com/news/349055-refugee-crisis-brexit-austria/.

⁹ “Natural catastrophe losses at their highest for four years.” Munich Reinsurance. Accessed April 29, 2017. https://www.munichre.com/en/media-relations/publications/press-releases/2017/2017-01-04-press-release/index.html.

The post What We Should be Learning from Syria: Climate, Planning and Worst Case Scenarios appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

Hancock Co. bluets (Houstonia caerulea)¹ bladder campion^E (Silene vulgaris) bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) bluets cherry (Prunus spp.) buttercup^E&NÌę (Ranunculus spp.) dandelion^EÌę (Taraxacum officinale) Canada toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) forsythia^E (Forsythia spp.) chickweed^E (Stellaria media) strawberry (Fragaria vesca) cinquefoil^E&N (Potentilla spp.) violets (Viola spp.) clover^E (Trifolium spp.) cow vetch^E (Vicia cracca) crown vetch^E (Securigera varia) daisy^E Asteraceae fall dandelion^E (Scorzoneroides autumnalis) hawkweed^E&N (Hieracium spp.) iris (Iris spp.) lupine^E (Lupinus polyphyllus) maiden pink (Dianthus deltoides) raspberry (Rubus spp.) wild rose^E&N (Rosa spp.) sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) wild mustard^E&N (Brassica spp.) yarrow^E&N (Achillea millefolium) 2014 Knox & Waldo Co. bluet bluet blackberry (Rubus occidentalis) dandelion^E bunchberry bluet serviceberry (Amelanchia spp.) Canadian mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) bluntleaf sandwort (Moehringia lateriflora) strawberry cherry bunchberry violet chickweed^E chickweed^E dandelion^E cinquefoil^E&N hawkweed^E&N clover^E Japanese honey-suckle^E (Lonicera japonica) daisy^E lilac^E (Syringa spp.) fall dandelion^E onion (Allium spp.) false baby’s breath^E (Gallium mollugo) sheep laurel terrestrial-water-starwort (Calitriche terrestris) strawberry dogwood (Cornus spp.) violet hawkweed^E&N wild pansy^E&N (Viola bicolor) narrow leaf plantain^E (Plantago lanceolata) beach pea (Lathyrus maritimus) smooth sandwort (Minuartia glabra) yarrow^E&N 2015 Hancock & Washington Co. bluets black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) blackberry bunchberry blackberry blue-eyed grass^E&N (Sisryrinchium montanum) cherry bunchberry bristly sarsaparilla (Aralia hispida) Japanese honeysuckle^E violets cinquefoil bunchberry dandelion^E cinquefoil^E&N smooth Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) clover^E hawkweed^E&N cow wheat (Melampyrum lineare) sheep laurel fall dandelion^E red sorrel^E (Rumex acetosella) dewberry dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum) goldenrod (Solidago spp. & Euthamia spp.) hawkweed^E&N meadowsweet (Spirea alba) wild rose^E&N sheep laurel St john’s wort^E (Hypericum perforatum) winterberry (Ilex verticillata) whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) 2015 Knox & Waldo Co. bluets Autumn olive^E (Elaeagnus umbellata) Aster (Aster spp. & Symphyotric spp.) cherry black chokeberry blackberry black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) dandelion^E blue-eyed grass^E&N blue-eyed grass^E&N strawberry bluets bluets violets bunchberry bristly sarsaparilla Willow (Salix spp.) buttercup^E&N bunchberry Canada toadflax chickweed^E common bladderwort (Ultricularia macrorhiza) wild chives (Allium schoenoprasum) chickweed^E cinquefoil^E&N cinquefoil^E&N clover^E clover^E crown vetch^E daisy^E dandelion^E dewberry (Rubus spp.) hawkweed^E&N dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum) Japanese honeysuckle^E goldenrod iris goldmoss stonecrop (Sedum acre) lady’s bedstraw^EÌę (Galium verum) gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa) lilac^E hawkweed^E&N pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica) common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) raspberry bush honeysuckle (Diervilla lonicera) red sorrel^E lady’s bedstraw^E strawberry queen anne’s lace^E (Daucus carota) Trillium (Trillium erectum) rabbit foot clover^E (Trifolium arvense) yarrow^E&N wild rose^E&N smartweed^E (Polygonum spp.) meadowsweet St john’s wort^E sulfur cinquefoil^E (Potentilla recta) Canada thistle^E (Cirsium arvense) day lilies^E (Hemerocallis spp.) cow vetch^E whorled loosestrife wild rose^E&N yarrow^E&N yellow hop-clover^E (Trifolium campestre)

¹ scientific Latin binomials only given once at first occurrence of species
^E exotic introductions
^E&N species / biotype complex represented by both native and exotic introductions

The post Table 1. Flowering plant taxa observed flowering in Maine blueberry fields (2014-2015). appeared first on The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability.

91±ŹÁÏ School of Nursing
Assistant Professor of Nursing

Abstract

This article explores the need for continued research on the solid waste disposal processes used in caring for infectious hospitalized patients. Current disposal processes were implemented in the 1980s when the focus was on preventing contagion from human blood and blood contaminated products. Medical solid waste challenges have evolved over the last three decades, and now include a need to address the spread of multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs), increasing complexity of conditions and occurrence of co-morbidities that require multiple procedures for each patient, and a growing use of disposable patient care products that increase the waste stream exponentially. Developing strategies for minimizing the spread of infectious diseases will facilitate modernization of solid waste disposal processes to address emerging issues while supporting environmental health and sustainability.

“Lack of preparedness in medical waste management has other serious consequences beyond the potential spread of disease; shortfalls in disposal processes negatively impact the environment.”

When an infectious outbreak occurs, healthcare professionals are tasked with executing infection control processes that include waste management. These waste management procedures require a pre-determined, structured strategy. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in Texas underscored a lack of preparedness evidenced in infection control procedures and management and disposal of medical waste (Steenhuysen, 2014). Lack of preparedness in medical waste management has other serious consequences beyond the potential spread of disease; shortfalls in disposal processes negatively impact the environment. The protocols implemented to protect against microbial transfer via fomites from isolation units and isolated patients (operational orientation) may produce negative environmental impacts as compared to integrated indicators (i.e., dated waste disposal processes) (Little et al., 2016). Deleterious effects to the environment and community could result from an insufficient waste stream process where microbes can potentially transfer to many surfaces from the point of generation to the final treatment facility (Lubick, 2011).

To improve medical preparedness, in November, 2014, President Obama requested 6.18 billion dollars to test for, treat, and prevent the spread of Ebola in hospitals. This budget included funds for staff training to address the logistics of medical waste removal (Daly, 2014). Support for developing procedures to effectively isolate individuals with dangerous infections – which included a waste management component – was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC; 2014, 2015) and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS; Koonin et al., 2015).

At the federal level, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) implements regulations to ensure the safety of workers on the job; individual states are authorized to define and regulate waste disposal processes for healthcare institutions operating within their borders. The Department of Transportation oversees the packaging and transportation of medical waste in Maine (Maine Department of Environmental Protection [Maine DEP], 2016). Solid waste is defined simply as solid materials that do not include biomedical or hazardous waste. According to Maine’s Biomedical Waste Management Rules (Maine DEP, 2016), biomedical waste “may contain human pathogens of sufficient virulence and in sufficient concentrations that exposure to it by a susceptible host could result in disease,” yet the rules provide no guidance for quantifying microbial virulence and no standard for evaluating the risk of contagion from medical solid waste (p. 2). Safe and efficient processing of biomedical waste mandates examination of current disposal processes to prevent the spread of specific microbes of concern and to address the issue of sustainability. This article highlights the need for focused examination of medical solid waste disposal protocols based on a convergence of factors including pathogen evolution (evidenced by increases in the number of microbes of concern); existing waste disposal process that are not specific for evolving infectious agents; increasing production of medical waste; growing complexity of patient profiles; and paucity of research focused on medical waste disposal processes, in developed nations, particularly from a sustainability perspective.

Increase and Changes in Microbes

The emergence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the 1980s focused attention on protocols for handling potentially infectious solid waste. The Medical Waste Tracking Act (MWTA) of 1988 imposed strict regulations on U.S. healthcare organizations in response to medical waste washing up on the east coast, an event that heightened public fears about the spread of HIV. Prior to implementation of MWTA there were just two classifications of hospital waste: solid waste contained in garbage bags and designated for municipal solid waste landfills, composting, or recycling, and biomedical waste containing disease-causing chemicals or infectious materials (Epstein, 2015).

The MWTA delineated new medical waste categories as follows:

• Cultures and stocks of infectious agents
• Human blood and blood products
• Human pathological wastes, including those from surgery and autopsy
• Contaminated animal carcasses from medical research
• Wastes from isolated patients with highly communicable diseases
• Used sharps (needles, scalpels, etc.) and certain unused sharps

(Fields, 1989)

• Dialysis and surgical waste

MWTA guided state waste disposal regulations and mandated disposal of patient care generated waste through the use of specific, standardized receptacles at a time when blood borne infections (e.g., HIV) were of extreme concern: red bags for biomedical waste; clear/white/black bags for general solid waste that is not classified as biomedical waste; and hard secured containers for sharp objects such as scalpels and needles. Like many states, Maine updated state guidelines by revising the basic definition of biomedical waste to include refuse associated with bodily fluids (e.g., pleural fluid, peritoneal fluid and fluids drained through canisters and tubing, dressings, disposable sheets, and blood). All of these liquids and patient care items have been found to carry infectious microbes (Chapter 900; Maine DEP, 2016). However, Maine’s updated disposal protocols do not delineate waste handling procedures based on the known or suspected presence of specific pathogens of concern. Wastes generated through caring for infectious patients are currently processed in the same manner as wastes from a non-infectious patient.

Classifications of pathogen virulence are defined by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (2015). Today’s most feared pathogens are broadly classified in Category A, B, or C, information that must be considered in all discussions of medical waste (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease [NIAID], 2015). Category A pathogens (e.g., Ebola, plague, anthrax, and smallpox) are of the greatest concern, with infected patients requiring the most intense caregiver preparedness. These agents pose an extreme risk to national security and to public health as they are easily disseminated, have a high mortality rate, and knowledge of infection has a propensity to cause panic and social disruption. Category B pathogens are moderately easily to disseminate, and may result in modest morbidity and low mortality (e.g., Hepatitis A, Salmonella). Pathogens in Category C can be engineered for mass distribution because of their availability, ease of dissemination, and potential high morbidity and mortality (e.g., influenza, multidrug resistant organisms [MDROs]), (NIAID, 2015). The surge of antibiotic resistant organisms such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), penicillin-resistant pneumococci (PRP), and antibiotic-resistant gram negative bacteria is of increasing concern as the health care community confronts the emergence of a new generation of resistant organisms (Karpiak & Pugliese, 1991; Rao, 1989) and a growing variety of infectious diseases. Patients with MDROs are treated in contact isolation, where healthcare providers must wear disposable gowns and gloves in patient rooms to limit transfer to others. Isolation protocols acknowledge that MDRO infections are easily transferred, yet current waste disposal practices do not differentiate in treatment protocols for wastes from infectious and non-infectious patients; all waste (i.e., biomedical and general solid waste) is treated the same regardless of the infectious/noninfectious diagnosis of the patient.

“Solid waste from patients with MDROs impacts environmental sustainability in several ways. Additional waste is generated in caring for isolated patients (e.g., disposable gowns and gloves) when compared to non-isolated patients, and items are disposed of as general medical waste, which is then disposed of in landfills or incinerator and then sent to landfills.”

Increasing Waste Production

Since the inception of the MWTA, the quantity of waste generated in healthcare settings has increased dramatically. In 1991, Rutala and Weber found that hospitalized patients generated about 15 pounds of combined solid and medical waste per day. Considering total hospital waste (e.g., operating room disposables, food, pharmaceuticals, laboratory, patient care), the American Hospital Association ([AHA], 2015) estimated that patients could potentially generate 25 pounds each, or 60% more solid/medical waste per day, due in large measure to the increasing use of disposables. In addition, preliminary results (Saber et al., Unpublished Raw Data) from a study in one Maine hospital found that treating one MRSA-infected patient could produce 10.2 pounds of solid waste per day, 71.5 pounds of solid waste per week, or approximately 1.7 tons of solid medical waste per year. With increasing incidence of infectious disease (including infection with antibiotic resistant pathogens), and exponential growth in hospital waste production, it is clear that hospitals have a vested interest in developing safe, efficient, and sustainable protocols for processing, transporting, and disposing of biomedical and solid waste that is produced while caring for patients with infectious diseases (i.e., MDROs).

“The fundamental basis of sustainability depends on a healthy environment.”

Solid waste from patients with MDROs impacts environmental sustainability in several ways. Additional waste is generated in caring for isolated patients (e.g., disposable gowns and gloves) when compared to non-isolated patients, and items are disposed of as general medical waste, which is then disposed of in landfills or incinerator and then sent to landfills. The large quantities of waste could overload decontamination systems, creating interim storage challenges (Little et al., 2015). In addition, the fundamental basis of sustainability depends on a healthy environment. Infected waste that is improperly disposed of may present human and environmental risk factors as microbes are insidiously spread through fomites (David & Daum, 2010). The microbes, then, will continue to spread and pose environmental threats (CDC, 2013; David & Daum, 2010).

Complexity of Patients

Today’s hospital patient profiles contrast starkly with those of patients in the 1980s, most notably in the increasing complexity of health conditions. For example, in the 1980s comorbidities were limited and isolating patients with infectious diseases was not a routine practice. Today, isolation is standard procedure for patients with infectious diseases and a variety of comorbid conditions including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, Crohn’s disease, chronic obstructive lung disease, cancer, and drug and alcohol addiction. Enhanced technologies mandate the use of disposable supplies in treating these patients, who frequently require a greater number of bedside procedures, significantly increasing solid waste output. A major component of today’s medical waste stream includes disposables generated through direct patient care such as gowns, masks, and gloves, all of which are considered non-hazardous and are discarded in bags with unregulated waste (Saber et al., Unpublished Raw Data).

The Global Spread of Infection

Increasing global mobility presents significant opportunity for the spread of infectious agents (Tatem et al., 2006). The rate of transmission of highly contagious infections (e.g., Ebola, Avian Flu) and MDROs (Moulton et al., 2013; Zhou et al., 2014) is increasing exponentially. In 1968, during the last influenza pandemic, there were 261 million air travelers worldwide; in 2012, that number skyrocketed to nearly 3 billion annually (International Civil Aviation Organization, 2012; Warren et al., 2010).

Paucity in the Literature

A review of literature focused on disposal of medical wastes generated in caring for infectious patients in the U.S. highlights a deep gap in knowledge. This lack of literature is evidenced by searches of relevant databases such as Scopus, PubMed, CINAHL, Science Direct, Web of Science, Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management and others that yielded limited results (see Figure 1). Search criteria targeted research studies concerning management of infectious medical solid waste in U. S. health care facilities, such as hospitals or nursing homes, written in English. Because regulations differ between countries, those studies conducted outside the U. S. were excluded. A (2003) study conducted by Neely et al. examined the surface of waste disposal containers in patient rooms finding that single use containers were significantly less contaminated than reusable containers that had been cleaned. In a longitudinal investigation, Jagger et al. (2010), observed that more than 10% of sharps injuries to nurses and surgical technicians occurred during or after disposal; Perry et al. (2012) also investigated injuries involving sharps disposal and found that promptly replacing full sharps containers was critical in ensuring disposal safety. In a more recent study, Vatovec et al. (2013) used qualitative methods to investigate a variety of end-of-life care settings to identify the environmental and occupational and public health impacts of waste disposal on clinical practice. Researchers found that recycling efforts were limited by infectious waste contamination, including from reusable needle boxes harboring viable bacteria, and subsequently concluded that safe and effective waste disposal is an area of concern. The lack of literature on the topic of infectious solid waste disposal in the U.S. may be attributed to existence of a structured, regulated disposal process. These studies also indicate that disposal processes may not effectively protect health care workers or the community from emerging health challenges and suggest that re-examination of medical waste disposal processes is required.

In the 1980s, the worldwide HIV contagion focused infection prevention strategies on bloodborne pathogens. Concerns today include HAI, MDROs, and highly contagious diseases that are transmitted through dermal contact and contact with bodily fluids other than blood. This increase in potential infection scenarios further highlights the need to update solid waste disposal guidelines for waste generated in caring for infectious patients.

There is a substantial body of hospital waste management research conducted in developing countries such as India (Kumar et al., 2014; Patil, & Pokhrel, 2005; Singh et al., 2014), Iran (Davoodi et al., 2014; Oroei et al., 2014; Taghipoura & Mosaferi, 2009), and Nigeria (Coker et al., 2009; Olukanni et al., 2014). But studies conducted in industrialized nations including Europe (MĂŒhlich et al., 2003), the United Kingdom (Bates et al., 2008; Blenkharn, 2009), Italy (Giacchetta & Marchetti, 2013), and Portugal (Ferreira & Teixeira, 2010) are limited. Because U.S. waste disposal processes have long been defined, the lack of literature describing waste handling in the U.S. is not surprising.

Although regulated waste disposal systems exist in the United States today, deficiencies are apparent, based in part on changing patient pathologies. In 2010, an environmental survey conducted in 20 U.S. medical clinics found knowledge deficits among health care workers who were unsure of which solid wastes should be discarded in which containers (Savely et al., 2010). This study should inform the development of disposal protocols that will address two issues of equal concern: containing the spread of emerging infections and addressing sustainability concerns. A new model or algorithm delineating disposal protocols for solid wastes generated during infectious outbreaks (e.g., Zika virus, Chikungunya virus) is also needed.

Conclusions

Each year $120 billion is spent in the U.S. on frequently treated infectious diseases (Trust for America’s Health, 2014). These costs highlight the movement of infectious organisms once confined to healthcare facilities into our communities via fomites, including contaminated solid waste (David & Daum, 2010). Infection control is a significant problem as highlighted in a 2014 report evaluating American states’ capabilities to prevent, treat, and respond to infectious outbreaks. Five states scored eight (with 10 indicating the greatest capacity to prevent, treat, and respond), while 25 states scored five or less (Trust for America’s Health, 2014). Maine and seven other states scored 4/10. These findings indicate that most states are unprepared to deal with the spread of infectious diseases, including those currently monitored by state and federal agencies (CDC, 2015; Florida Department of Health [FDOT], n.d.; ProMED, 2015). In addition, burgeoning global travel has exacerbated the spread of disease including in rural and relatively unpopulated states such as Maine.

Medical waste disposal practices play an essential role in preventing the spread of disease, but current U.S. guidelines were developed more than two decades ago. Protocols implemented in 1988 cannot effectively address 21^st century healthcare concerns such as the exploding use of disposable patient materials, the growing number and type of infections (e.g., MRSA, Vancomycin resistant enterococcus [VRE], Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae [CRE], Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase [KPC], Clostridium difficile [C. difficile]), and safe handling of wastes generated during treatment of highly infectious patients.

Failure to effectively manage medical wastes puts healthcare workers, sanitation workers, patients, and the public at risk for contracting infectious diseases (Floridahealth.gov, n.d.), facilitates propagation of drug resistant organisms, and drives escalating healthcare costs. Implementing a comprehensive, up-to-date infection control system that includes modern medical solid waste management strategies for healthcare facilities is critical to limiting the spread of drug resistant microorganisms, fostering sustainability by decreasing production of solid medical wastes, preventing pandemics, and reducing healthcare costs.

References

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Oroei, M, Momeni, M., Palenik, C.J., Danaei, M., & Askarian, M. (2014). A qualitative study of the causes of improper segregation of infectious waste at Nemazee Hospital, Shiraz, Iran.ÌęJournal of Infection and Public Health, 7, 192-198. doi: 10.1016/j.jiph.2014.01.005

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Singh, A., Agarwal, A., Agarwal, V.K., Saxena, S.K., Agarwal, A.K., & Singh, H. (2014). Evaluation of bio-medical waste management practices in a tertiary care hospital of Rohilkhand Region in Uttar Pradesh, India. International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health, 3, 1187-1191. doi: 10.5455/ijmsph.2014.250620144

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Figure 1: Literature SearchÌę

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Low Tide at Otter Cliff
Low tide gives you more room to explore.

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Waves on Otter Cliff
The bright sun at dawn reflecting off the waves near Otter Cliff

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Snow on Otter Cliff
February in Maine. Enjoying the sun, snow, and water all at the same time.

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Ice Fishing on Eagle Lake
Checking on all the ice fishing traps.

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Ice Fishing Trap on Eagle Lake
Catching fish on Eagle Lake is a great way to enjoy Maine winters.

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Frozen Eagle Lake
Eagle Lake all frozen over looking towards Cadillac Mountain.

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(1=not at all believable, and 7=very believable) Environmental groups n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 516 13.2 18.0 18.6 22.9 15.9 7.0 4.5 3.49 (1.64) -2.557 0.011 Statewide 490 8.2 16.5 20.8 22.9 14.9 11.4 5.3 3.75 (1.62) Business groups n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 517 8.5 14.7 23.4 29.6 15.1 6.8 1.9 3.56 (1.41) 0.849 0.396 Statewide 488 7.4 15.2 26.0 32.6 12.1 5.1 1.6 3.49 (1.32) University researchers n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 517 1.5 2.1 4.4 15.7 21.9 33.3 21.1 5.38 (1.34) -0.512 0.609 Statewide 489 0.8 1.2 4.3 14.5 26.2 34.2 18.8 5.42 (1.23) Federal forest services n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean t p Mill Town 519 1.9 3.9 8.1 23.3 23.3 24.3 15.2 4.96 (1.44) 0.291 0.771 Statewide 484 1.7 2.9 8.1 22.9 28.9 24.0 11.6 4.93 (1.34) State forest services n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 516 1.9 1.7 3.7 17.6 23.8 30.8 20.3 5.34 (1.34) -0.969 0.333 Statewide 489 0.8 1.8 4.1 14.3 25.2 35.6 18.2 5.41 (1.24) Media n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 521 13.8 21.1 19.8 29.4 10.0 4.2 1.7 3.20 (1.44) 0.395 0.693 Statewide 487 15.0 18.1 22.2 30.2 10.3 3.3 1.0 3.17 (1.39) 91±ŹÁÏ School of Forest Resources n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 517 1.0 1.4 4.4 11.4 20.5 37.3 24.0 5.57 (1.26) -0.053 0.958 Statewide 488 0.4 1.2 3.7 12.1 23.4 36.9 22.3 5.57 (1.19) Forest products industry n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 518 4.6 6.9 14.3 20.5 22.6 20.5 10.6 4.53 (1.60) 2.447 0.015 Statewide 486 3.3 8.2 17.3 26.1 23.3 15.4 6.4 4.30 (1.46) Other n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Mean (SD) t p Mill Town 56 7.1 7.1 10.7 19.6 16.1 19.6 19.6 4.68 (1.83) 1.264 0.212 Statewide 30 23.3 10.0 6.7 13.3 6.7 23.3 16.7 4.07 (2.2

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¹School of Biology and Ecology, 91±ŹÁÏ
²Cooperative Extension, 91±ŹÁÏ

Abstract: In 2014 and 2015 we surveyed 28 wild blueberry fields in Hancock, Knox, Waldo, and Washington Counties, Maine. We assessed and recorded the diversity, richness, and total abundance of flowering wildflowers along field edges. We also measured the foraging density of the bee community in these fields during bloom. Wildflowers that occur in the crop field are often considered weeds by blueberry growers. Wildflower taxa richness was quite high in many of the wild blueberry fields, with a mean of 11 taxa / field. We found that wildflower or weed density increased through the season both years and that wildflower taxa richness was significantly greater along field edges compared to the field interior. Wildflower richness was correlated with wildflower taxa diversity. Bee species richness was also high at 43 species captured in 2014. Wildflower diversity along edges determined the density of foraging bees in wild blueberry bloom and the foraging density of bees was a significant determinant of % fruit set in wild blueberry fields. Therefore, our conclusions are that wildflowers along field edges indirectly enhance fruit set, which is a requirement for increased yield. Wild blueberry growers who allow wildflowers to grow along field edges may indirectly increase crop yields by increasing wild native bee abundance, which in turn should result in higher levels of pollination. Management of field edges to maximize wildflower diversity should be part of an integrated native bee conservation plan implemented by growers that includes pollinator reservoirs and tactics that minimize pesticide exposure.

Keywords: wild blueberry, weeds, wildflowers, bee forage, bee community

Introduction

In the spring and early summer, the authors can be found in wild blueberry fields seeking and studying bees. Wild blueberries are a composite of up to five species and hybrids of our native Vaccinium taxa (Jones et al. 2014). The most abundant species in this complex of wild blueberries is Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton, the sweet lowbush blueberry (Bell et al. 2009, Jones et al. 2014). The wild blueberry species complex are native plants in the understory of northern North American forests. They grow in a vegetative manner in mature forests. When gaps in the forest canopy occur, the plants receive sunlight resulting in flower and fruit production (Drummond et al. 2009). ÌęWild blueberry has been managed since the Native American people practiced the technique of slash and burn agriculture in Maine for wild blueberry production (Moore 1994). Forests were cut and burned and the resulting open habitat resulted in fruit production that was harvested for several subsequent years until the area became reforested. Early colonists copied this form of agriculture and practiced this traditional way of producing berries for commerce until just recently. Over the past 50 years, production has increasingly incorporated use of fossil fuels, mechanical equipment, pesticides, and honey bees (Drummond and Collins 1999).

“Increased wildflower diversity along field edges indirectly results in increased levels of pollination.”

Wild blueberries are entirely dependent upon bees for pollination services to produce fruit (Bell et al. 2009). Commercially reared honey bees and bumble bees are a very important production investment for pollination of wild blueberries (Drummond 2002, Drummond 2012, Asare et al. in review). However, investing in the rental or purchase of pollinators may not be economically viable over the long-term. First, hive rental costs for honey bees continue to escalate across the U.S. (Sumner and Boriss 2006, Rucker et al. 2012). Second, since 2006, honeybee populations have continually declined (National Research Council 2007). High rates of honey bee colony losses (averaging greater than 30%, vanEngelsdorp and Meixner 2010, Lee et al. 2015) have resulted in severe economic hardship for commercial beekeepers. Commercial bumble bees are not without their own problems, as some people believe they are a threat to wild native bumble bees (Colla et al. 2006). Although, Bushmann et al. (2012) in a two-year study did find evidence that the use of commercial bumble bees by growers resulted in an increased level of disease in the native wild bumble bee fauna in blueberry fields. Native bees are a natural resource that provide the valuable ecosystem service of pollination with a high value to Maine wild blueberry growers (Jones et al. 2014, Asare et al. in review).

Despite the instantaneous numerical advantage that commercial bees often provide growers, especially honey bees, native bees in the wild blueberry agro-ecosystem are on average more efficient pollinators on a per bee basis (Javorek et al. 2002, Drummond 2016). There are more than 120 species of wild native bees[1] associated with wild blueberries that we have documented (Bushmann and Drummond 2015). This is almost half of the native bee species richness throughout Maine (n=276 species, Dibble et al. in review). Many small wild blueberry farms in Maine rely exclusively on native bees for pollination (Rose et al. 2013 and Hanes et al. 2013), and farms that rent honeybees also benefit from additional pollination services from native bees (Asare et al. in review). These bees are a natural resource that have high economic value (Jones et al. 2014).

However, native bees are not always in high enough abundance to provide adequate pollination. Pathogens, pesticide exposure, and weather conditions affect their community abundance and foraging force (Ladurner et al.Ìę 2002, Mommaerts et al. 2010, Cameron et al. 2011, Bushman et al. 2012, Henry et al. 2012, Whitehorn et al. 2012, Pettis et al. 2013, Vanbergen 2013, Goulson 2015, Rundlöf et al. 2015, Drummond 2016). In Maine, floral resources appear to be the most important factor in determining their abundances in the wild blueberry agro-ecosystem (Groff et al. 2016). Although wild blueberry flowers provide a large food source for native bees, the bloom period only lasts three to four weeks and many native bee species need floral resources both before and after that period (Venturini et al. 2017a, 2017b). In addition, most wild blueberry fields are managed on a biennial cycle and so flowers are present for native bees only every other year (Yarborough 2009, Drummond 2016). Because native bees rely on alternative floral hosts when blueberry flowers are not in bloom, many farmers are beginning to plant pollinator reservoirs (Venturini et al. 2017a). It has been demonstrated in Maine that the planting of pollinator reservoirs can not only sustain native bee populations in blueberry fields, but increase their abundance resulting in increases in blueberry yield (Venturini et al. 2017b).

Wildflowers should not only be thought of as bee food resources that need to be planted in order to enhance bee pollinator populations. We have also shown that floral resources in landscapes surrounding wild blueberry can result in increased native bee abundance in wild blueberry fields (Bushmann and Drummond 2015, Groff et al. 2016). However, wild blueberry fields also have flowering resources within the field and along the field edges. Farmers and agricultural researchers often refer to these flowering plants as weeds since many species can reduce blueberry yield (Yarborough and Marra 1996). Many of these species do result in yield loss (Yarborough et al. 2017) and so are a focus of control. But are these plants (weeds) also a food resource for native bees that might enhance bee abundance and pollination? The trade-off between bee enhancement and weed increase might not be present along wild blueberry field edges, areas that are not significant in berry production because of shading and poor soils. Shading and poor soil along blueberry field edges often result in less berry production. Therefore, this trade-off between bee enhancement and weed increase might not be present along wild blueberry field edges. Can wildflowers exist such that their weediness is minimal, but their enhancement of bees is significant? To answer part of this question, we conducted a survey of the diversity and abundance of wild floral resources and native bees in and along the edges of wild blueberry fields in two of Maine’s major wild blueberry growing regions.

Methods

Field sites. We sampled blooming wildflowers that were likely to be visited by bees for either nectar or pollen along the edges and within 12 wild blueberry fields in 2014 and 16 fields in 2015. Native bees were sampled in the same fields during these years. In 2014, six fields were sampled in Hancock County and six fields were sampled in Knox and Waldo Counties for bees. In 2015, seven fields were located in Maine’s Downeast growing region (Hancock and Washington counties) and nine fields were located in Maine’s mid-coastal blueberry growing region (Knox and Waldo counties). Six of the seven fields in Downeast Maine were conventionally managed fields and located on the blueberry barrens; whereas, the remaining Downeast site was a small organic field. The sites in mid-coast Maine were a mix of organic and conventional fields.

Floral survey. In 2014, the Knox and Waldo County fields were sampled for wildflowers two times: once during early bloom (early May), and during the early fruit ripening stage in July.Ìę The fields in Hancock County were sampled for wildflowers three times, once during early bloom (early May), once during peak bloom (late May) and once during early fruit ripening in July.Ìę In 2015, each field was sampled three times: early bloom, during early fruit development, and during fruit ripening (May, June, and July; respectively). To sample a field, we walked a transect through the interior of the field and then a transect along the field edges and visually identified and assessed the abundance of all plants in flower. Plant taxa such as wind pollinated trees and grasses were not included in our surveys; although, see Stubbs et al. (1992) for records of wind pollinated plant pollen collected by native bees. Flowering plant abundance was quantified as the percentage of the transect the flowing plants made up and were classified as: 0%, < 1%, 1%, 2%, 3-5%, 10%, or > 10%. Plant identification was either determined in the field when known taxa were encountered or samples were pressed and taken back to the laboratory where specimens were keyed and verified by Dr. Alison Dibble, School of Biology and Ecology, 91±ŹÁÏ, Orono, ME. The Shannon-Wiener diversity index was calculated in an Excel spreadsheet (Shannon 1948).

Blueberry bloom and native bee sampling. Native bee abundance was determined in each surveyed field in both 2014 and 2015. Relative abundance was measured by placing water filled colored bowl traps (three colors: white, yellow and blue) in each field during bloom (see Bushmann and Drummond (2015) for more details). Bees were sampled using colored bowl traps on two dates; peak bloom (late May) and late bloom (early to mid-June).Ìę For each sample date, there were three replications of each color in each field.Ìę Cups were placed such that the top of the cup was even with the top of the blueberry canopy.Ìę Each cup was filled Ÿ full with water.Ìę A drop of unscented dish-washing detergent was added to the water to break the surface tension.Ìę Traps were left in the field for 24 hrs. At collection, traps from each site of the same color were pooled and brought back to the laboratory where they were placed in urine cups with 70% ethyl alcohol for sorting and identification. Individual bees in 2014 (but not 2015) were sent to Dr. Sara Bushmann (Blue Hill, ME), Dr. Rob Jean (Indianapolis, IN) and Dr. Jason Gibbs (University of Saskatchewan, Sask.) for identification to species. Richness and Shannon-Wiener diversity indices were estimated using the software EstimateS^TM (Colwell 2009).

To estimate absolute bee abundance or foraging density, the number of honey bees and native bees were counted in each of 15, 1.0 m² quadrats per site for 1 minute per field. Quadrats were placed arbitrarily across each field. Quadrat sampling was conducted at early bloom, peak bloom, and late bloom at each field during both years. The counts were averaged across the 15 quadrats and three sampling times to estimate the mean number of native bees foraging on 1.0 m² of wild blueberry flowers per minute (see Drummond 2012 for more detail).

In both 2014 and 2015 mid-May (early bloom), six blueberry clones (genetically distinct plants, referred to as genets) were arbitrarily selected within each of the 28 fruit-bearing wild blueberry fields. In each selected clone, we counted the number of flowers on each of six stems.Ìę The stems were marked with numbered metal plant tags. In late June, three marked stems from each clone were cut, placed in individual zip-lock bags, and brought into the laboratory where fruit-set was evaluated by counting the number of developing fruit on each stem and calculating the percentage of fruits based upon the original flower counts per stem (see Venturini et al. 2017b for more detail).

Statistical analysis: All statistical analyses were performed using the statistical software JMP12^Âź (JMP 2015). Prior to analysis, all nested subsamples of the wildflower and bee communities were pooled by estimating the average so that each field had a single measure of field edge and interior wildflower richness, diversity, and abundance. Native bee bowl trap counts and native bee foraging density (bees / m² / min) were averaged to obtain a single field-level estimate of bee relative abundance and absolute abundance, respectively.ÌęLinear Pearson correlation was used to determine the association among the three measures of the blooming wildflower community in wild blueberry fields; richness, diversity, and abundance. We used general linear models (ANOVA) to test the hypothesis that field edges had significantly richer and more abundant wildflower communities than field interiors (year, field location, and the interaction were fixed effects). To determine if native bee foraging density was dependent upon the floral resources along wild blueberry field edges we modeled native bee foraging density (bees / m² / min) as the dependent variable with year, wildflower diversity and their interaction as fixed effects. The effect of native bee foraging density on percent fruit set and yield were also modeled using general linear models with year and native bee density and their interaction as fixed effects. Residual of all models were visually inspected to determine if transformation of dependent or independent variables was necessary.

Results

Plant Survey 2014. In the Downeast (Hancock Co.) plant survey, the May sample documented seven flowering plant taxa. Both the edges and interior of the fields had less than 1% of the landscape area in alternative floral bloom, though the range varied from 0 to 5% in bloom.Ìę The July sample documented 20 taxa. The average land cover in bloom was less than 1% for both within and along the field edges with a range of 0 to 10% in bloom.

In the Mid-coast (Knox and Waldo Co.) plant survey, the May sample documented five plant taxa in flower, 14 taxa in the June sample, and 17 in the July sample along field edges and within the blueberry fields (Table 1). Each sample period had an average of less than 1% of the landscape in bloom for the edges and interior of the fields. Each sample date had a bloom range from 0 to 5% of the landscape in bloom. Overall, there was no difference between wildflower richness in the Downeast vs the Mid-coast wild blueberry fields (P > 0.05).

Violets were the most common flowering plant species being found in all twelve of the fields we sampled followed by dandelion (10 fields), bluets (9), bunchberry (8), clover (8), and cinquefoil (7). When plant species were assessed as a proportion of total flowering alternative plant bloom, violets were again the most important followed by dandelion, clover, wild strawberry, bluet, and wild cherry. There was a significant positive correlation between taxa richness (number of flowering plant species) and taxa diversity (Shannon-Wiener) of flowering plants (r = + 0.919, P < 0.01), but not between flowering plant richness or diversity and floral density (P > 0.05).

Plant Survey 2015. Downeast surveys documented five flowering plant taxa in the May survey, 10 in June, and 18 in July. The Mid-coast surveys recorded six flowering plant taxa in May, 25 in June, and 33 in July (Table 1). The total number of flowering taxa in and around fields increased over time as in 2014, but again there was no significant difference between Mid-coast and Downeast fields (P > 0.05). The average percent blooming land cover rating was less than 1% for both sets of fields both along field edges and within the field interior. Landscape bloom percentages ranged from 0 to 5% for our southern sites and 0 to 10% for our Downeast sites; although, the vast majority of sites Downeast were less than 1%. Eight percent of Mid-coast fields had no bloom in field edges; whereas, 30% of Downeast field edges had no bloom during the course of this survey.

Table 1. Flowering plant taxa observed flowering in Maine blueberry fields (2014-2015).

Cinquefoil was the most common flowering plant species being found in 14 of 16 fields we sampled followed by red sorrel (12 fields), blue-eyed grass (11) dandelion, dogbane, and hawkweed (9), and black-eyed Susan, bunchberry, meadowsweet and milkweed (8). When plant species were assessed as a proportion of total flowering alternative plant bloom, vetch, St. John’s wort, black-eyed Susan, clover, cinquefoil, and milkweed were the most abundant in terms of floral density. Flowering plant richness increased throughout the season over both years and both regions (F_(1,6) = 31.977, P = 0.001). There was no significant year effect or region x year inter-action (P > 0.05). There was a significant positive correlation between taxa richness and taxa diversity of flowering plants (r = + 0.539, P = 0.031), and between flowering plant diversity and floral density (r = + 0.689, P = 0.003), but not between taxon richness and floral density (P = 0.097); although, a trend does appear to exist.

In both years, a high proportion of the wildflower taxa were exotic (Table 1), but both exotic and native taxa are utilized by the native bee fauna in Maine wild blueberry.

Overall, pooling across both years, wildflower taxa richness was significantly correlated with taxa diversity (r = + 0.643, P = 0.0002), but richness and diversity were not related to floral density (P > 0.05). All three wildflower community metrics: richness, diversity and abundance were significantly greater along wild blueberry field edges than within field interiors (P < 0.05). Figure 1 shows that flowering plant taxa richness was significantly greater along field edges than field interiors over both years (field location: F_(1,52) = 97.234, P < 0.0001; year x field location interaction, P > 0.05) .

“Both exotic and native taxa are utilized by the native bee fauna in Maine wild blueberry.”

Native Bee Sampling. We recorded 43 native bee species by deployment of bowl traps in the 28 wild blueberry fields in 2014 and 2015 (Table 2). An estimate of the 95% confidence intervals about the bee richness is 34.9 – 51.0%, and the Shannon-Wiener estimate of taxa diversity is 2.95. The most abundant species were the sand bee Andrena carlini Cockerell; the social sweat bee, Augochlorella aurata Smith; the sand bee, Andrena rufosignata Cockerell; the sweat bee, Lasioglossum leucocomum (Lovell), the sand bee Andrena vicina Smith; and the sweat bee Halictus ligatus Say. Bumble bees are usually under-sampled by bowl traps and so relative abundance is likely underestimated. Our quadrat sampling is based upon visual estimates of the foraging honeybee and native bee community. Bumble bee queens are easily identified to genus and recorded during sampling. Quadrat sampling in 2014 revealed a bumble bee (Bombus spp.) queen density of 17.9% of the total native bee community. Our combined bowl trap and quadrat sampling suggest that sand bees (Andrenidae: Andrena spp.) made up the greatest relative abundance of the native bee community at 44.7%, followed by sweat bees (Halictidae), 24.3%. The third most abundant group of native bees were bumble bees (Apidae: Bombus spp.). Several of the fields were also stocked with honeybees. Honey bees comprised 48.2% of the total bee abundance in wild blueberry fields during bloom.

ÌęTable 2. Bee species collected with bowl traps in 2014.

Estimates of the bee community from bowl trapping are quite efficient at estimating richness, but less effective for estimating the bee foraging density during blueberry bloom. In 2014 and 2015 there was no correlation between native bee bowl capture numbers and the native bee foraging density recorded in quadrats (P = 0.61). Because of this we only used the bee foraging density (bees / m²/ min) to assess floral resource effects on the abundance of the bee community and the relationship between bee community abundance and pollination, measured as fruit set.

The plant community along the edge of wild blueberry fields explained the variation in the native bee foraging community abundance sampled in 2014 and 2015. A model including year, plant diversity and plant density suggests that year (F_(1,24) = 6.665, P = 0.017) and plant diversity was significant (F_(1,24) = 4.688, P = 0.041, Fig. 2). There was no year x plant diversity interaction (P > 0.05)

“The significant relationship between wildflower diversity and bee community foraging abundance suggests that not only is the abundance of floral resources important, but the abundance of a range of wildflower species is also important.”

Honey bees were stocked in 21 of the 28 fields. In order to assess the independent effect of the native bee community abundance on pollination level, we modeled fruit set and yield (kg berries / ha) with native bee foraging density only in the fields without honeybees (n=7). Native bee community abundance (logistic transformation) did explain variation in fruit set (F_(1,5) = 8.726, P = 0.032, Fig. 3). Year and the interaction of year and native bee community abundance was not significant (P > 0.05). The native bee foraging density did not explain yield (P > 0.05).

–

Discussion

We found that wild blueberry field edges were rich in wildflower taxa (Fig. 4). This wildflower community was significantly greater than the wildflower community in the field interiors. Weeds in wild blueberry fields are comprised of both native and introduced exotic wildflowers (our study, Table 1; and Yarborough and Hess 2002). They can cause crop loss (Jensen and Yarborough 2004, Yarborough et al. 2017) and should be controlled when economic thresholds are reached (Yarborough and Marra 1996, Yarborough and Cote 2016). Wild blueberry growers are reluctant to allow weeds to become problematic in fields, even though increased weed density has been shown to enhance native bees and resulting yield (Bushmann et al. 2012, Yarborough et al. 2017). However, the positive effect of within field weed densities on native bee species richness and abundance has not been found to be a consistent dynamic across all fields and years (Bushmann and Drummond 2015).

Field edges are not productive areas for fruit culture in most wild blueberry fields. This is due to the nature of wild blueberry fields. Fields are clear-cut sections of forest maintained in primary succession to encourage growth and flowering of wild blueberry plants (Yarborough 2009, Drummond et al. 2009). Therefore, field edges interface with shaded forest stands. Along the field edge wild blueberry plants are etiolated and generally lack flower buds due to the lack of direct sunlight (Bell et al. 2009, Jones et al. 2014). Because of reduced productivity, field edges are minimally managed by wild blueberry growers, except to prevent weed seed inoculum buildup and dispersal into field interiors.

“Bee size often reflects the flower species that is accessible for nectar extraction (Heinrich 1976), the main energy food for adult foraging bees. Therefore, from a bee community perspective, it is important that wildflower forage in a locale be highly diverse in order to provide food for all species and at the same time minimize competition.”

We found evidence that the wildflower community taxa diversity in this low productivity area of wild blueberry fields determines the native bee foraging density in a field. The Shannon-Wiener diversity metric of wildflower diversity is essentially a multivariate variance (Hill 1973) that represents both wildflower taxa richness and abundance. The significant relationship between wildflower diversity and bee community foraging abundance suggests that not only is the abundance of floral resources important, but the abundance of a range of wildflower species is also important. We found a richness of 43 bee species during the 2014 survey (n = 12 fields). This bee community richness was expected and is representative of the 127 bee species recorded by Bushmann and Drummond (2015) from 40 wild blueberry fields surveyed between 2010 and 2012. The range in bee size (measured as the inter-tegula (IT) distance) of the community that we documented ranged from 0.91 mm (Lasioglossum heterognathum (Mitchell)) – 6.7 mm (Bombus ternarius Say, queen) (see Chapin (2014) for details on IT measurements). Bee size often reflects the flower species that is accessible for nectar extraction (Heinrich 1976), the main energy food for adult foraging bees. Therefore, from a bee community perspective, it is important that wildflower forage in a locale be highly diverse in order to provide food for all species and at the same time minimize competition.

Native bee foraging density was also shown to determine fruit set, a measure of pollination level. This finding is consistent with previous studies of ours (Bushmann and Drummond 2015, Venturini 2017b, Yarborough et al. 2017, Asare et al. in review). The failure to show a direct relationship between the native bee foraging density or fruit set and yield is not surprising. Yield is dependent upon fruit set, but phenomena such as disease, weeds, and insect pests, can negatively affect yield; while fertility, weather, and irrigation can positively affect yield (Yarborough et al. 2017). Therefore, increased wildflower diversity along field edges indirectly results in increased levels of pollination. This response may be dependent upon the landscape that surrounds a particular blueberry field. Groff et al. (2016) showed that the landscape surrounding a wild blueberry field determines bee community abundance (30-50% of the variance in bee abundance explained by landscape). In addition, pesticide exposure (Drummond and Stubbs 1997, although see Bushmann and Drummond 2015) and weather (Drummond 2016) can determine the bee foraging density. On the other hand, the seed bank along field edges will for the most part determine the wildflower diversity along with management. The seed bank contribution is a stochastic property of the field in which the grower has no control. Therefore, relying upon wild blueberry field edges to enhance the bee community and resulting pollination has a high degree of uncertainty that we cannot quantify at this point.

Pollinator plantings or “pollinator reservoirs” in which growers till a section of their field and plant wildflowers for bees is a method that reduces some of this uncertainty. This practice has been shown to be successful in both wild blueberry in Maine (Venturini et al. 2017b) and in highbush blueberry in Michigan (Blaauw and Isaacs 2012). The advantage of a planting is that the land area and wildflower richness and density can be determined; although, with some uncertainty. However, there is a cost to planting and maintaining a pollinator reservoir. We showed that the annualized costs, given the resulting increase in pollination that we documented with a 1:45 pollinator planting to field ratio in areas, takes four years to recover the costs from net farm income. Therefore, while pollinator reservoirs may be a consistently superior approach to enhancing native bee abundance, field edge management for wildflowers is a less expensive approach to native bee enhancement and should be considered by all growers, even those who rely heavily on commercial honeybee or bumble bee importation. In addition, field edge management should be viewed as part of a conservation management plan for native bees that includes pollinator reservoirs and tactics that minimize pesticide exposure to bees.

In conclusion, wild blueberry field edge management has great relevance to enhancing bees in a sustainable economic and ecological manner.

AcknowledgementsÌę

We would like to thank the Maine wild blueberry growers that allowed us to conduct research in their fields. Dr. Sara Bushmann, Dr. Rob Jean, and Dr. Jason Gibbs are thanked for identification of the various taxa of bees collected in 2014. And Dr. Alison Dibble is acknowledged for her verification of several wildflower species determinations. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on this manuscript that led to its improvement. This is Maine Agricultural Experiment Station journal article number 3510. This research was supported by the following grant: U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture – Specialty Crops Research Initiative Contract/Grant/Agreement No. 2011-51181-30673.

Notes

[1]ÌęNative bees are all wild, except for the Impatient bumble bee, Bombus impatiens (Say) which is both wild and commercially reared and sold. In this publication, we use the term “native bees” to refer to all wild native bees.

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