In summer 2017, the Frenchman Bay Partners received the Acadia Birding Festival (ABF) Environmental Stewardship Award, which included $1000 in cash. The executive committee would like to make these funds available to a Partner or Partners who need support for a conservation-related project on Frenchman Bay. The project could include water monitoring, clam surveys, and monitoring rockweed, or something unrelated to our Bay Plan, like a coastal clean-up or attendance at a meeting or conference. We need a brief description and budget and expect a final report of how the funds were used at the end of the project period.

If you are not a Frenchman Bay Partner, but would like to be, we welcome you to join in ensuring a healthy and sustainable future for Frenchman Bay!

Application deadline: November 15, 2017 11:59 PM

Questions: jdisney@mdibl.org

Apply here

EES 598 (Section 0860) Special Seminar in Ecology and Environmental SciencesDesigning Conservation Projects, 2 credits
The University of Maine, Orono
March 6-10, 2017
9am- 5pm

This course is focused on learning how to scope and design a real-world conservation project. It is based on the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, an approach to project management that is widely used by practitioners in leading conservation organizations (e.g., The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation), major funders (e.g., the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation and the Moore Foundation), and key government agencies (e.g., the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Agency for International Development, and various national protected area agencies).  See http://cmp-openstandards.org/ for more background.  The course will be co-taught by staff from World Wildlife Fund and others, who have trained hundreds of practitioners in organizations and institutions, in collaboration with Aram Calhoun and Mac Hunter in the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology. Although the course will focus on natural resource management projects the principles are relevant to many forms of project design and planning.

 We currently have 8 students registered and we need 12 to run the class so please sign up if you are interested or recruit if you are already signed up!  To reserve a spot in the class, please email Julie Eubanks at julie.eubanks@maine.edu ASAP.

ESV Tools, or Ecosystem Services Valuation Tools, help determine the benefits people receive from ecosystems. The Frenchman Bay Partners, in their quest to inform and support policy decisions, have been researching various tools, each possessing different emphases and strengths. Consultant Margaret Snell prepared a summary of 14 tools, highlighting their attributes, strengths, weaknesses, inputs, outputs, and scales. Next steps include determining the scope and needs of specific Frenchman Bay Partners projects and selecting the most appropriate tool.

The Frenchman Bay Partners continue to explore rockweed in Frenchman Bay. A well attended meeting back in April produced a multitude of questions centered on legal issues, rockweed ecology, and rockweed economics. To keep the conversation going, a rockweed group, headed by Hannah Webber, Schoodic Institute, and Chris Petersen, College of the Atlantic, was created. In late July, the group met to discuss the Frenchman Bay Partners Conservation Action Plan, what the concerns about rockweed are, what we know about rockweed in Frenchman Bay already, what we want to know about rockweed in Frenchman Bay, and possible next steps. You can read the minutes here.