Maine
Maine's warming lakes incubate damaging invasive plants
Michael Flannery pilots an open top barge into the Bayou, a narrow dead end channel where the Songo River empties into Sebago Lake. As manager of the Lakes Environmental Association’s invasives program, he helped clear variable leaf milfoil from the waterway last summer.
“We left this last year looking pretty good, and now this year it is full of milfoil,” Flannery said.
Beneath and between boats crammed against the shore milfoil spreads in thick mats. It’s the most common, and problematic, aquatic invasive plant in Maine. Even a small fragment stuck on a boat hull or propeller could spread milfoil into another water body.
“We’ve been working already this year, we’ve removed a couple thousand pounds of milfoil already, but it is just starting,” Flannery said.
Left unaddressed, the milfoil will take over shorefronts and crowd out natives species of plants, fish and wildlife. Out of control infestations can ruin a lake for fishing, boating and swimming.
It’s also becoming harder to manage. Climate change driven by burning fossil fuels has warmed Maine lakes 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit on average since the 1980s, far faster than the annual air temperature increase. With warmer water and milder winters, lake ice doesn’t last as long.
That means a much longer growing season for plants than before.
“If the ice is gone in early march, the lake is going to warm up quicker, the stuff is going to start growing,” said Lakes Environmental Association executive director Colin Holme.
“We have milfoil growing earlier and it grows later into the season. There were reports of milfoil growing vibrantly into November last year,” Holme added.
To illustrate his point, Holme points to a patch of milfoil in the Bayou that’s already flowering above the water. That’s an indication of a robust plant with good prospects to reproduce.
“Most years it didn’t flower, and when it did flower it was a big thing, we’d go down, we’d photo document it. And now it is flowering most years, and this year it started flowering in June, which is unheard of. Usually its flowering is late July and August,” Holme said.
Peter McGuire
/
Maine Public
Once invasive plants are established, they’re nearly impossible to fully eradicate and expensive to contain.
John McPhedran, from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said the state is lucky to have an active network of volunteers and nonprofit organizations addressing invasives. Groups survey lakes, set up boat inspections at public launches, and do removal work.
“We’re fortunate to have that interest, that capacity,” McPhedran said. “And while the threats that come with a longer growing season are a real challenge, I think we’re in good stead to try and manage those as best we can.”
Only about 40 lakes and ponds in Maine have recorded invasive plants. That makes it an outlier compared to other states.
“We still have a lot to protect in Maine,” McPhedran said. “Other states have, I think, a much higher percentage of their waterbodies that have an aquatic invasive species.”
But advocates worry the bulwark against the spread of unwanted species is starting to buckle.
Courtesy boat inspectors are the first line of defense against invasive spread, by helping vessel owners check to see they’re not transmitting plants and educating the public about the problem.
But just like the growing season, the boating season is lasting longer too. And those launches are starting to go unattended.
“The boat launches are very, very busy in the fall, that’s when there’s a lot of bass tournaments, and just a lot of a lot of people enjoying leaf peeping season and all those things,” said Sharon Mann, director of the invasives program at Seven Lakes Alliance in Belgrade.
Public funding for courtesy inspectors is miniscule to begin with, Mann said. And after high school and college students hired to monitor the public launches leave around labor day, the group struggles to find replacements.
“We have ads posted year round for courtesy boat inspectors, but there just isn’t anyone to hire outside of Memorial Day to Labor Day,” Mann said. “And it really scares me how many boats are going uninspected in and out of these launches.”
Peter McGuire
/
Maine Public
Back on the Songo, Colin Holmes from the Lakes Environmental Association shows off a long section of river that has been mostly cleared of milfoil after years of effort.
The Songo is the busiest inland waterway in the state, increasing its infestation risk, he said.
The association used divers to hand-harvest milfoil and underwater barriers to keep it from growing. Even though the river is in better shape than it was, it takes annual suppression efforts to keep invasives at bay. In early July, two dive teams from Lakes Environmental Association were still searching the Songo for milfoil and pulling it where they could.
“It’s a success story in my mind and we are so lucky we started when we did,” Holme said. “I think if we started now, the water is so warm I don’t think we could get a handle on it.”
Success doesn’t come cheap. His group budgets about two hundred thousand dollars a year for invasive work. A state grant pays for a quarter, fundraising has to cover the rest.
“It’s expensive work, there’s a lot of liability, there’s a lot of training. It’s just not easy and people don’t understand how much it costs,” Holme said.
Lawmakers recently increased the price of “milfoil stickers” that owners get when they register boats with the state. That’s expected to raise funding for the invasive program to $3 million next year, a 60 percent boost.
The money should help, Holme said. But he also hopes people start paying attention and doing more to prevent further infestations, before it is too late.
FALMOUTH, Maine (WABI) – The now former commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has a new role.
Judy Camuso has been selected as the new president of Maine Audubon.
She will take over Andy Beahm’s position.
Beahm will be retiring next month.
Camuso will become the first woman to lead the environmental organization.
She became the first woman to become commissioner of the MDIFW back in 2019, a position she held for seven years.
Copyright 2026 WABI. All rights reserved.
TOPSFIELD, Maine — Jenna Stoddard is not sure where her son will spend his days when he starts preschool next fall.
Sending him to East Range II School would be convenient and continue a legacy. Stoddard lives just down the street and her husband graduated eighth grade there in 2007, one in a class of three. Topsfield’s population has dropped since then. The school now has five students, two teachers, few extracurricular activities and nobody trained to teach music, art, gym or health.
Stoddard’s son is too young for her to worry about that now. But the school may not be open by the time he is ready to go. Topsfield, a town of just 175 residents, will vote on whether to close the school on April 30. If it closes, the boy would likely be sent to preschool up to 30 minutes away in Princeton or Baileyville.
“That’s a pretty fair distance for a kid, a 4-year-old, who is now on a bus all by himself,” she said. “[If] school starts at [7:45 a.m.], what time is the bus picking 4-year-olds up here? And what time is he going to get home at?”
Topsfield is an extreme example of how an aging, shrinking population and rising property taxes are forcing Maine towns to make difficult choices about their community institutions. Just over a dozen people came to a Wednesday hearing on the idea of closing the school. The crowd was mostly in favor of it.
“It is emotional to close the school in a town,” Superintendent Amanda Belanger of the sprawling Eastern Maine Area School System said then. “But we do feel it’s in the best interest of the students in the town.”
Teacher Paula Johnson walked a reporter through the building, which is small by Maine standards but cavernous for its five students. It has four classrooms, a small library, and a gymnasium. There is also a cook and a custodian for the tiny school.
A hallway trophy case serves as a reminder of when the school was big enough to field basketball teams. Topsfield’s student population has never been large, but the school’s population has dropped dramatically over the past few years. It had 25 students in 2023, with many coming from nearby Vanceboro, which closed its own school in 2015.
As the student population dwindled, the cost of sending students to Topsfield climbed. With fewer students to defray the costs, Vanceboro officials realized they would be paying $23,000 per student by the last school year. So they opted to direct students to nearby Danforth, where tuition was only $11,000 per student.
East Range lost seven students from Vanceboro, bringing its enrollment below 10. Under Maine law, that means the district may offer students the option to go elsewhere. Parents of the remaining students in grades 5 through 8 took the option and sent their kids to Baileyville. This school began the year with eight students; three have since pulled out.
In Topsfield, Johnson teaches four of the remaining five, holding lessons for pre-K through second grade in one classroom. Another one down the short hallway is home base for the other teacher. She focuses on the school’s lone fourth grader and occasionally teaches one of Johnson’s first graders, who is learning at an advanced level.
The other teacher, who holds a special education certificate despite having no students with those needs, plans to leave at the end of the school year. If the school stays open, that will leave Johnson responsible for educating Topsfield’s youngest students, though the school will need to budget for a part-time special education teacher just in case.
After 11 years at the school, Johnson is not sure what she will do if voters shut it down.
“We’ll see what happens here,” she said.
Topsfield’s school board, which operates as a part of the Eastern Maine Area School System, is offering its residents a choice: continue funding the school only for students between preschool and second grade at an estimated cost of $434,000 next year or send all students elsewhere, which would cost less than $200,000.
At Wednesday’s hearing, the attendees leaned heavily toward the latter option. Deborah Mello said she moved from Rhode Island to Topsfield years ago to escape high taxes.
“It’s not feasible for the town of Topsfield,” she said. “We cannot afford it and it’s not like the children don’t have a school to go to.”
Others bemoaned the burden of legal requirements for the small district, including the need to provide special education teachers even if they don’t need one. Board members also mentioned that in 2028, the district will become responsible for educating 3-year-olds under a new state law. That adds another layer of uncertainty to future budgeting.
“It sounds like we’ve been burdened something severely by this program and that program by the Department of Education, to the point where a small school can’t even exist,” resident Alan Harriman said.
“And that’s been happening for a long time,” East Range board chair Peggy White responded.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – Good morning and Happy Sunday everyone. Skies are cloudy with fog across much of Maine this morning. Rain has entered locations along the interstate and to the northwest. Temperatures vary from the upper 30s to mid 40s. Winds are out of the SE between about 5-15 mph.
Today will be a wet and impactful day with rain and even snow anticipated as a large cold front passes through Maine. Skies will be cloudy with plenty of fog lasting through the morning. Rain will expand across the interstate by the late morning hours, reaching Downeast locations by midday/the early afternoon.
By the early to midafternoon, temperatures will start to drop across northwestern locations as the cold front passes through Maine. This will result in rain turning over to mixed precipitation and eventually snow across the Western Mountains, Moosehead region, and Northern Maine. Rain will continue steadily and at times heavily across the foothills, Interstate, Coast, and Downeast. A few thunderstorms are even possible closer to the coast.
Snow will expand across areas to the northwest of the interstate this evening, reaching all the way down to Interior Midcoast communities, the Bangor region, and Interior Downeast areas by sunset and into the start of the night. Precipitation will taper off across Western Maine shortly after sunset, before exiting the entire state around midnight tonight. High temps today will vary from the low 40s to low 50s with SSE to NW gusts reaching 20-25 mph.
Snowfall totals will vary under 2 inches across Western, Northern, and Interior Downeast locations. However, a few pockets of 2-4 inches are possible, mostly in higher elevations across the mountains. Rainfall totals will accumulate around a half inch to three quarters of an inch when all is said and done.
Precipitation will be out of Maine by midnight tonight, with cloudy conditions giving way to mostly clear skies by sunrise. Lows overnight will dip back below freezing across much of the state, from the low 20s to mid 30s tonight, so cover up any plants or flowers outside. WNW gusts will reach 20-25 mph. A Small Craft Advisory is expected offshore.
Skies will be partly to mostly sunny across the interstate and coast on Monday morning. However, by the late morning to midday hours, clouds will build with a few scattered rain and snow showers in spots. Conditions will remain on the cloudier side in the afternoon before clearing up around sunset into the start of Monday night. Highs will be chilly on Monday, from the low 30s to upper 40s. WNW to SW gusts will be a bit breezy, reaching 20-25 mph, which will add to the wind chill factor.
High pressure will build on Monday night, remaining overhead on Tuesday. Skies will be sunny in the morning, becoming partly to mostly sunny in the afternoon. Highs will remain cool, in the 40s across the board with North to SW gusts only reaching 15-20 mph.
A weaker low-pressure system could bring showers across Maine on Wednesday and Thursday. There is a bit of model uncertainty on exactly when it will impact Maine. The GFS has impacts on Wednesday, while the EURO, GRAF, and GDPS models have most of the impacts on Thursday. We will continue to monitor this system and potential impacts. All it looks to provide as of now are cloudier skies and rain showers, with some snow shower chances farther to the North.
By Friday and Saturday, conditions are trending on the drier side with sunshine and average temperatures returning to the forecast.
SUNDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Cloudy with AM fog. Rain becoming widespread throughout the day, turning over to snow to the north & west during PM. SSE to NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
MONDAY: Highs from low 30s to upper 40s. Partly to mostly sunny early. Developing clouds with scattered rain/snow showers by midday/afternoon. WNW to SW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
TUESDAY: Highs throughout the 40s. Sunnier AM. Partly to mostly sunny PM. North to SW gusts reach 15-20 mph.
WEDNESDAY: Highs from low 40s to low 50s. Mostly cloudy with a few rain showers. Few AM snow showers possible North. SSE to SSW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
THURSDAY: Highs from mid 40s to mid 50s. Cloudier skies with rain showers possible. Some AM snow showers possible North. NW gusts reach 20-25 mph.
FRIDAY: Highs from upper 40s to mid 50s. Partly cloudy. NNW gusts reach 20 mph.
Copyright 2026 WABI. All rights reserved.
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