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How can we use natural resources to positively impact local communities?
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MFC 6.0 - School Year 2023/2024
This year started off jumping right into Maine Forest Collaborative. Our first cohort day was in late September at the YMCA Camp of Maine in Winthrop. Students participated in presenting about their place, teambuilding activities, axe throwing, rapid prototyping and investigating natural resources challenges facing the state of Maine today.
Students used their experience at the cohort day to set the stage for the year, and to expose them to some of the challenges Maine is facing today related to natural resources. From here, students went back to their own communities to determine natural resource challenges their own communities are facing, and are in the process of selecting one challenge to design a solution for this year.
Field trips and partner school visits began early in the year as students continue to learn about natural resources in the state! Guilford and Greenville went to AMC's Medawisla Lodge in October to learn about forest ecology and water quality as well as to do some rapid prototyping. Buckfield students visited the Education Day at Curtis Homestead and learned about small-scale logging, FERN plots, and got to see some tree felling in action!
Next steps were to meet with community members to learn more about the challenge, work with partner schools to share the selected challenge and do joint brainstorming on possible solutions, and then students began work designing solutions.
Winter field trips in the middle of the state included a visit to a logging site with Weyerhaeuser and Greenville and Piscatqauis students to learn about challenges facing the logging industry and career opportunities within forestry and logging. Western Maine schools Buckfield and Telstar visited Nine Dragons Paper and Irving, and Belfast did some winter macroinvertebrate sampling.
Our mid-year cohort day at UMaine allowed students to hear about each others solutions and give and receive feedback, and visit either the Process Development Center or the Advanced Structures and Composites Center where they learned about ways UMaine is utilizing natural resources to solve current challenges.
Our final cohort day at Snow Pond was a great day! All 6 participating schools presented this year, Buckfield Jr/Sr High School, Greenville Consolidated School, Piscataquis Community Secondary School, Ecology Learning Center, Belfast Area High School and Telstar High School all presented to an audience of 20 community partners and each other.
We thank Dana Doran for delivering an amazing keynote, Marchelle Simms and Jack Shaida as outstanding community partners of the year, and our first student intern from Piscataquis Community Secondary School for being willing to pilot this new iteration within MFC.
In afternoon sessions, students learned about natural resource careers/recreation through participation in either fly fishing, mountain bike repair, wilderness first aid, or wilderness skills.
Telstar High School
After taking a close look at their community, Telstar students felt that there were some challenges regarding various aspects of sustainability in their area. Students learned what the greater Bethel area is doing (or not doing) in terms of reducing, reusing, and recycling. They explored public trash receptacles, a never reopened donation center at the dump, and other ways to increase sustainability in a heavy tourist/consumption area.
Their final solution landed on an awareness campaign to increase a sustainable mindset for locals and tourists. They created fliers and magnets with a QR code linked to a website that highlights all of the local places that goods can be donated to be hung in a variety of businesses throughout town.
Buckfield High School
Buckfield 10th and 11th grade students in Mr. McNaughton's class did an assessment of their area, looked at underutilized assets and realized the school had a large chunk of forest that was poorly maintained.
Traditionally, a section of forest has been put aside for a yearly fundraiser, and once there was a low ropes course there which is now a hazard. The trail is overgrown, not marked or clear, and is full of trash leftover from fundraisers. Students explored ways that this stand can be improved and better utilized for the whole school to enjoy, came up with a plan for managing this fundraiser and then moved on to look at long term goals of the forest. Students met with District Foresters Mike Richard and Shane Dugan to begin to work on a Forest Management Plan for their school.
Greenville Consolidated School
Greenville Consolidated School's 12th grade natural resources science class worked on the challenge of revitalizing their local school trail so that teachers and students will spend more time outdoors. After exploring the area, they noticed the trail had significant obstacles in the way, extremely muddy areas, and largely overgrown sections. Students worked with a number of community partners as well as teachers and students to help make the trail more user friendly and accessible while also helping to make it more well known to teachers and the community.
Ecology Learning Center
We had two sections of freshman and sophomore students in Ecology Learning Center's Earth and Climate Science class. Both sections decided to work on invasive species, one focusing on Japanese Knotweed and another on Browntail Moth Caterpillars. Both classes solutions revolved around an awareness campaign as well as removal of the species. One section removed browntail moth caterpillar nests in March with help of Brittany Schappach, entomologist from the Maine Forest Service, while the other worked with Maeve Cosgrove and Jack Shaida from Coastal Mountains Land Trust to cut and tarp a section of Knotweed at the McClellan Poor Preserve in Northport.
Piscataquis Community Secondary School
Piscataquis students worked on the challenge of recreational trail access and examined the limited trail access between the towns of Guilford and Dexter. Currently, the only access permitted between the two towns is via a trail that is accessible by snowmobiles in winter or via the road. Students explored ways to increase access to the summer months to allow ATVs to travel between the towns by looking at possible trail routes, tax maps, working with the local ATV club, interviewing local businesses, and creating a school/community survey for input. They wrote a letter to a landowner in a potential trail area asking for a meeting and for them to consider an ATV trail through their property.
Belfast Area High School
Belfast Area High School students in the Fish & Wildlife class this year were interested in fish passage, culvert replacement and dam removal. As students started working on their challenge and learning more about it, they realized that fish passage was a much bigger issue than they were able to tackle in a 1/2 semester course. They shifted gears to allow their project to focus on increasing fish species awareness and river health. They started by doing data collection at the Head of Tide Preserve counting smelt eggs to report to a community science program for the Department of Marine Resources through the Gulf of Maine Research Institute's website. They then put up Native Fish Coalition signs to raise awareness about fish species and planted 25 native trees at the Ducktrap River Preserve with help of Coastal Mountain Land Trust's Jack Shaida and volunteer Gary Gulezian. This planting was to help protect Maine's anadromous fish species by maintaining the integrity of river banks for erosion control and providing shade for fish.
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