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Our favorite photos from across Maine in 2025

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Our favorite photos from across Maine in 2025


Over the past year, Bangor Daily News photographers and reporters took hundreds of photos that captured the myriad of people and places that defined Maine.  

These highlights are just a small slice of the many lives and experiences the BDN documented in 2025.

Jody and Cherie Mackin, who were homeless for three years, got an apartment in January. After moving into their home, the Mackins started volunteering at the warming shelter at the Mansion Church to give back to the community that helped them find their way out of homelessness. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

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Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, speaks on the floor of the Maine House of Representatives at the State House in Augusta on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. Libby was a significant figure as Maine battled Trump administration directives to restrict transgender girls from participating on the school team that aligns with their gender, among other policies recognizing transgender people under state law. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

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Caribou captain Madelynn Deprey celebrates toward the crowd after an emotional overtime win in the Class B state basketball championship game on March 1, 2025, at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland. Credit: Emilyn Smith / BDN 

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U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Diane Dunn, the adjutant general of the Maine National Guard, answers a reporter’s questions in her office at the Maine National Guard headquarters at Camp Chamberlain in Augusta on March 31, 2025. She was one source that the BDN talked to in an investigation into the culture that allowed sexual assault and harassment in the organization to go unchecked. Credit: Sawyer Loftus / BDN

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Rebecca Nicolino Parsons and her service dog Otis are photographed on the footbridge in Bangor in April. The Maine Human Rights Commission ruled that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that unlawful discrimination occurred” at Hellas Condominiums by Old Town, Maine, against Rebecca Parsons. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

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More than 300 cattle moved through Jeff Tilton’s auction barn in Corinth on May 10 for the annual spring sale, one of the only places Maine farmers can consistently buy and sell livestock. It takes roughly two weeks to line up trucking, buyers, sellers, vaccinations, ear tags and pens, plus sorting, separating and weighing the animals when they arrive. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN

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A Sargent truck was the first to travel the new I-395/Route 9 connector following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the grand opening. The new connector was a point of controversy, especially for residents of Brewer, Holden and Eddington who had their land affected by the construction of the new highway. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN 

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The entrance to the Mic Mac Cove Family Campground in Union is sandwiched between a variety store and the public elementary school Sunshine Stewart attended as a child. Stewart’s killing in early July rocked the small town of Tenants Harbor. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN 

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University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy poses for a portrait on the University of Maine’s Mall in Orono, July 21, 2025. The university system faced a number of challenges over the past year due to funding cuts implemented by the Trump administration. Credit: Sawyer Loftus / BDN 

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Kristina Ryberg, 62, and Donald Jewett, 71, can’t afford their Bucksport property taxes this year after a hike that local officials have mostly attributed to using up the stored funds that offset the closure of the town’s paper mill a decade ago. “We’re about to lose what we worked so hard for just because we lost the mill and haven’t adjusted to that,” Jewett told town councilors in August. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN 

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On March 16, 2024, a Maine state trooper repeatedly punched Justin Savage in the face while he lay restrained in the driveway of his Limerick home, leaving him almost unrecognizable. The beating, captured on video, depicts a use of force that policing experts say is rarely justified. The Maine State Police thought differently. Credit: Courtesy Garrick Hoffman 

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Cooper Flagg signs sports cards for kids before the 2025 Maine Sports Hall of Fame at the Gracie Theater on Sunday. Flagg’s mother Kelly Bowman Flagg was one of the inductees for her time as a player and coach at Nokomis High School, where NBA rookie Cooper Flagg would start his soaring basketball career. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN 

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Dorie Henning, a nurse practitioner at the Islesboro Health Center, has seen an increase in tick-borne diseases — and fears about them — in her 11 years working on the island. Islesboro had a higher rate of these illnesses than any other Maine town between 2018 and 2022, according to state data. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN

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Bangor’s new councilors from left Susan Faloon, Daniel Carson and Angela Walker are sworn in to the City Council on Nov. 10 at City Hall. Walker, who has a criminal record, drew criticism from right-wing media after she won a seat in the crowded 2025 Bangor City Council election. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN 

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Alex Emery moves his belongings out of the encampment near Penobscot Plaza in Bangor where he was living when a cleanup crew from the railroad company CSX  arrived early on the morning of Dec. 22 with construction machinery to clean up tents, trash and other remnants of the encampment. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

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This Classic New England-Style Cottage in Maine Has 200 Feet of Atlantic Ocean Frontage

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This Classic New England-Style Cottage in Maine Has 200 Feet of Atlantic Ocean Frontage


A waterfront home with open ocean views on the coast of Maine came to market Tuesday asking $4 million. 

Built in 1978, the three-bedroom cottage is at the southern point of Cape Elizabeth, less than 10 miles from downtown Portland. The 1.1-acre property on Sunny Bank Road features 200 feet of south-facing water frontage on the wide open Atlantic. 

It is bordered by a rocky sea wall that’s about 28 feet high, according to listing agent Sam Michaud Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty

“The views are like a Monet painting,” he said via email. “The water sparkles and the waves are endless.”

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MORE: Laid-Back Costa Rica Is Getting a $7 Million Mega-Penthouse

The 3,364-square-foot home was built in classic New England style, with shingle siding, a single sloped roofline and large windows—complemented by white-washed walls, exposed-beam ceilings and wide-plank flooring on the interiors. 

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The main common area features cathedral ceilings with a step-down between the living and dining room, and a partial wall divides the dining room from the kitchen. There is also a wood-paneled family room off the kitchen, a gym and a covered porch. 

The sellers purchased the property in 2010 for $1.562 million, according to property records accessed through PropertyShark. They could not immediately be reached for comment. 

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“I have received quite a few inquiries since hitting the market two days ago,” Michaud said. “Buyers understand that this is a golden opportunity to own over an acre with 200 feet of bold oceanfront in Cape Elizabeth.”

MORE: Iranian Strikes on Dubai Put the City’s Roaring Real Estate Market to the Test

There are currently just seven three-bedroom homes available for sale in Cape Elizabeth and fewer than five waterfront properties, according to Sotheby’s and Zillow data. It is also the most expensive listing in the town, with another waterfront property on a tiny lot just south of Portland coming in a close second, according to Zillow. 

Michaud sold the former Cape Elizabeth home of Bette Davis this past summer for $13.4 million, the priciest sale on the cape in at least a decade—and even those views can’t compare. They’re “just magical,” he said. 



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NECEC conservation plan will not protect Maine’s mature forests | Opinion

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NECEC conservation plan will not protect Maine’s mature forests | Opinion


Robert Bryan is a licensed forester from Harpswell and author or co-author of numerous publications on managing forests for wildlife. Paul Larrivee is a licensed forester from New Gloucester who manages both private and public lands, and a former Maine Forest Service forester.

In November 2025, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved a conservation plan and forest management plan as mitigation for impacts from the NECEC transmission corridor that runs from the Quebec border 53 miles to central Maine.

As professional foresters, we were astonished by the lack of scientific credibility in the definition of “mature forest habitat” that was approved by DEP, and the business-as-usual commercial forestry proposed for over 80% of the conservation area.

The DEP’s approval requires NECEC to establish and protect 50,000 acres to be managed for mature-forest wildlife species and wildlife travel corridors along riparian areas and between mature forest habitats. The conservation plan will establish an area adjacent to the new transmission corridor to be protected under a conservation easement held by the state. Under this plan, 50% of the area will be managed as mature forest habitat.

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Under the forest management plan, a typical even-aged stand will qualify as “mature forest habitat” once 50 feet tall, which is only about 50 years old. These stands will lack large trees that provide wildlife denning and nesting sites, multiple vegetation layers that mature-forest birds use for nesting and feeding habitats and large decaying trees and downed logs that provide habitat for insects, fungi and small mammals, which in turn benefit larger predators.

Another major concern is that contrary to the earlier DEP order, the final approval allows standard sustainable forestry operations on the 84% of the forest located outside the stream buffers and special habitats. These stands may be harvested as soon as they achieve the “mature forest habitat” definition, as long as 50% of the conserved land is maintained as “mature.”

After the mature forest goal is reached, clearcutting or other heavy harvesting could occur on thousands of acres every 10 years. Because the landowner — Weyerhaeuser — owns several hundred thousand acres in the vicinity, any reductions in harvesting within the conservation area can simply be offset by cutting more heavily nearby. As a result, the net
mature-forest benefit of the conservation area will be close to zero.

Third, because some mature stands will be cut before the 50% mature forest goal is reached, it will take 40 years — longer than necessary — to reach the goal.

In the near future the Board of Environmental Protection (BEP) will consider an appeal from environmental organizations of the plan approval. To ensure that ecologically mature forest develops in a manner that meets the intent of the DEP/BEP orders, several things need to change.

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First and most important, to ensure that characteristics of mature forest habitat have time to develop it is critical that the definition include clear requirements for the minimum number of large-diameter (hence more mature) trees, adjusted by forest type. At least half the stocking of an area of mature forest habitat should be in trees at least 10 inches in diameter, and at least 20% of stands beyond the riparian buffers should have half the stocking in trees greater than or equal to 16 inches in diameter.

Current research as well as guidelines for defining ecologically mature forests, such as those in Maine Audubon’s Forestry for Maine Birds, should be followed.

Second, limits should be placed on the size and distribution of clearcut or “shelterwood” harvest patches so that even-aged harvests are similar in size to those created by typical natural forest disturbance patterns. These changes will help ensure that the mature-forest block and connectivity requirements of the orders are met.

Third, because the forest impacts have already occurred, no cutting should be allowed in the few stands that meet or exceed the DEP-approved definition — which needs to be revised as described above — until the 50% or greater mature-forest goal is reached.

If allowed to stand, the definitions and management described in the forest management plan would set a terrible precedent for conserving mature forests in Maine. The BEP should uphold the appeal and establish standards for truly mature forest habitat.

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Rage Room in Portland, Maine, Developing ‘Scream Room’ Addition

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Rage Room in Portland, Maine, Developing ‘Scream Room’ Addition


For a lot of people throughout Maine, there’s some built up frustration that they’ve just been keeping inside.

That frustration can come in a lot of different forms. From finances to relationships to the world around you.

So it makes plenty of sense that a rage room opened in Portland, Maine, where people can let some of that frustration out.

It’s called Mayhem and people have been piling in to smash, crush and do dastardly things to inanimate objects that had no idea what was coming.

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But Mayhem has realized not everyone is down with swinging a sledgehammer. So they’ve decided to cook up something new.

Mayhem Creating ‘Scream Room’ at Their Space in Portland, Maine

Perhaps the thought of swinging a baseball bat and destroying a glass vase brings you joy. The thought of how sore your body will be after that moment makes you less excited.

Mayhem Portland has heard you loud and clear and is developing a new way to get the rage out. By just screaming.

Mayhem is working on opening their very first scream room. It’s exactly what you think it is, a safe place to spend some time just screaming all of the frustration out.

There isn’t an official opening date set yet but it’s coming soon along with pricing.

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Mayhem in Portland, Maine, Will Still Offer Rage Rooms and Paint Splatter

While a scream room is on the way, you can still experience a good time at Mayhem with one of their rage rooms or a paint splatter room.

Both can be experienced in either 20-minute or 30-minute sessions.

All the details including some age and attire requirements can be found here.

TripAdvisor’s Top 10 Things to do in Portland, Maine

Looking for fun things to do in Portland, ME? Here is what the reviewers on TripAdvisor say are the 10 best attractions.

This list was updated in March of 2026

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Gallery Credit: Chris Sedenka

Top 15 of The Most Powerful People in Maine

Ever wonder who the most powerful players are in Maine? I’ve got a list!

Gallery Credit: Getty Images





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