Foresters with the Maine Forest Service and the University of Maine have measured what is believed to be the tallest American chestnut (Castanea dentata) tree in North America, exceeding the next tallest known tree by 20 feet in height.  The 115-foot-tall tree is growing on land in Lovell, Me. that was bequeathed to the University of Maine Foundation. Prior to donating it to the University Foundation, the Volk family owned the property for more than 100 years. Douglas Volk (23 February 1856 – 1935) was a famous American portrait and landscape painter with works found in most American collections. Now, the property is home to an artist colony which houses many artists during the summer months.

It is estimated that there are only a few dozen large surviving trees such as this one left in the Maine woods. The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF)  is racing to discover what few remaining native American chestnut trees still exist in an effort to conserve American chestnut tree genetics, and to learn about the soils and forest conditions in which they are growing. The Maine Chapter of The American Chestnut Foundation has partnered with the Barbara Wheatland Geospatial Analysis Laboratory at the University of Maine to use remote sensing from airplanes to help locate unknown trees such as this one.

An official measurement of the tree took place on Dec. 2, 2015. TACF President and CEO Lisa Thomson, TACF Geneticist Dr. Jared Westbrook, University of Maine Forest Scientist Dr. Brian Roth, along with representatives from the Maine Forest Service and Dan Willett from the University of Maine Foundation were present for interviews and to answer questions.

Once the mighty giants of the eastern forest, American chestnut trees stood up to 100 feet tall, and numbered in the billions from Maine to Georgia. In the beginning of the 20th century the fungal pathogen responsible for chestnut blight was accidentally imported into the U.S. from Asia and spread rapidly. By 1950 the fungus had eliminated the American chestnut as a mature forest tree. In 1983, a group of scientists and laymen decided to do something about this ecological disaster while the species could still be saved. They formed The American Chestnut Foundation and initiated a complex breeding program to transfer genes containing disease resistance from Asian chestnut species to American chestnut.

CONTACTS:

Ruth Gregory Goodridge, Director of Communications, The American Chestnut Foundation, 50 North Merrimon Avenue, Suite 115, Asheville, NC  28804. 828-281-0047, ext. 305. ruth@acf.org

Brian Roth, University of Maine, School of Forest Resources
(207) 944-1392. brian.roth@maine.edu

A Republican and Democrat agree: Strong UMaine strengthens state’s future

By Richard A. Bennett and Mary Cathcart

This year we celebrate the University of Maine’s 150th birthday. At the end of the Civil War, our state, like many others, received support from the federal government to establish a public university dedicated to the ideal that all qualified young people should have affordable access to a high-quality college education.

This development was remarkable in two ways. This marked the first time here or in Europe that higher education was opened to smart young people with limited means. Previously, most university students came from privileged families. Second, President Abraham Lincoln and Congress passed the enabling legislation during the Civil War, when even they could not be sure that the Union would endure. The Maine Legislature then passed the bill creating the University of Maine on Feb. 24, 1865, and Gov. Samuel Cony signed the bill the following day.

We are pleased that Gov. Paul LePage, in his new budget, has included increased support for the University of Maine System, and in particular for the Maine Economic Improvement Fund, which was formed to increase the ability of University of Maine researchers to compete for external grants and contracts. Strong regional economies across the country almost always have powerful research universities as the driver for innovation and job creation. Many other states have long invested in their universities so that their researchers are able to compete for nearly $30 billion in federal funds that are distributed annually, mostly through a tough, competitive, national process. Most states made those key investments in the years just after World War II. Maine was one of the last states to invest in its research infrastructure, beginning less than 20 years ago.

The two of us are proud to have worked together back in the late 1990s as the Maine Legislature undertook a strongly bipartisan initiative to change that. We had the honor of being appointed by Senate President Mark Lawrence as the bipartisan co-chairs of a Select Committee on research and development. Our committee reported back to the Legislature in early 1998 with recommendations for legislation designed to help the University of Maine become a legitimate competitor for the research funds. Among other things, that legislation established the Maine Economic Improvement Fund, which has been crucial in allowing University of Maine researchers to compete. (Maine Economic Improvement Fund funds are not used directly for research. Instead, they ensure the institutional infrastructure and sometimes matching funds needed to compete successfully in the national grants programs.)

This Maine Economic Improvement Fund is the same fund to which LePage has proposed additional funding for each of the next two years.

Have the investments made since about 2000 been helpful in making the University of Maine more competitive? The answer is a resounding yes. It would be an understatement to say that our select committee would have been thrilled to know that such large changes could take place so rapidly.

In the past 15 years, annual research activity at the University of Maine, as measured by the National Science Foundation, has increased by a factor of five, from about $25 million to nearly $120 million, putting the University of Maine in the top 100 of public research universities. Within the next year or two, researchers in Orono will have earned a total of $1 billion in outside grants and contracts since 2002. That is 10 times what the state has put toward that effort. Innovative ideas from University of Maine researchers have led to nearly 150 patents; those normally take about a decade to lead to results in the marketplace, but the process is finally underway. University of Maine faculty and students have worked with hundreds of Maine businesses to help develop new manufacturing processes and products. University of Maine researchers have succeeded in earning federal grants most years at rate of five to eight times the Maine Economic Improvement Fund funds leveraged, so the state investments have paid handsomely.

And, just as important, students in classes at Orono are being taught by professors who are national leaders in their disciplines, and who are bringing the very latest advances to the classroom. Furthermore, many of those students are involved in research with world-class faculty members. As a result, graduates of the University of Maine are highly competitive for professional careers of their choice in the various high-tech industries — from advanced manufacturing and advanced composites, to the life sciences and marine biology, and many others.

A recent study in Massachusetts concluded that our neighboring state would have a shortage of 60,000 highly educated tech workers by 2025, and that even today, the state is short at least 5,000 workers in computer science and information technology. Obviously, Maine cannot depend on other states to supply our needs in science and technology.

But we can compete. Let’s not let the other states have all of the research funds distributed to our nation’s university researchers. In fact, University of Maine researchers have a success rate of about 35 percent for proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation. The national average is less than 10 percent, so we can be very proud of the Maine successes. As the governor’s proposal recognizes, we need to keep increasing our capacity to compete if we are to deliver on the promise of prosperity and opportunity that is knocking at Maine’s door.

Hon. Mary Cathcart, a Democrat from Orono, served in the Maine Senate from 1996-2004 and in the Maine House from 1988-94. In 2013, she was inducted into the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame. Hon. Richard A. Bennett, a Republican from Oxford, served in the Maine Senate from 1996-2004, including a term as Senate president, and in the Maine House from 1990-94. He is chairman of the Maine Republican Party.

Originally published in the Bangor Daily News

Bucksport Poet Laureate Pat Ranzoni has been awarded a $1,000 grant from the SpiritWords Fund of the University of Maine Foundation to support her proposal for an anthology titled STILL MILL, Poems, Stories & Songs of Making Paper in Bucksport, Maine, 1930–2014. The grant will help fund the cost of the book’s publication and distribution. Ranzoni will compile and edit the collection without compensation as a gift to her hometown. Proceeds from the book beyond the costs of production and marketing will be donated to the Bucksport Historical Society for locating, protecting and exhibiting material documenting the Bucksport mill, further addressing the fund’s mission.

“This generous grant, for which we are exceedingly grateful, makes a huge and hopeful difference to our vision,” says Ranzoni. “To have our voices believed in and respected in this way, not just locally but statewide, shows us that the work of our lives is valued beyond the scrap heap we’ve heard it might become.”

The SpiritWords Fund was established in 1996 to discover, support, honor and preserve the full breadth of poetic expression that grows out of a long and intimate relationship with the state of Maine and its rich and various cultural traditions. It seeks to recognize and honor those voices whose memories, dreams and imagination inhabit this homeland and whose work remembers and renews the significance of place and community.

The call for submissions, announced after the mill’s closing, has brought about a dozen poems, two songs, a half dozen stories, even cartoons. The collection includes a “treasure-trove” of verses and drawings of mill and regional life by “The Papermill Poet” Owen K. Soper (pen name, Fuller Clay), whose work appeared in the Seaboard Bulletin, a publication about the mill’s early identity in Bucksport. “Many of us old mill families have wealth such as this in our records,” says Ranzoni, “and we have promises from third- and fourth-generation mill workers for more.”

March 1, the collection will be reviewed to determine if additional resources are needed for the project. Rather than a totally romanticized account, the project seeks recollections, including the pride and the problems, along with the details and reality of industrial papermaking in Bucksport that only those affected by it can know.

Authentic submissions from all are welcomed regardless of age or schooling, including traditional and experimental treatments. All subjects and perspectives, from all time frames will be considered. Previously published work with standard rights and permissions may be submitted. All submissions will be copyright protected and all contributors will receive a copy of the book.

Send typed or handwritten submissions, with a few lines about your relationship to the Bucksport mill, its people and/or place, to pranzoni@aol.com or c/o Pat Ranzoni 289 Bucksmills Rd., Bucksport, ME 04416; enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply.

 

PHOTO: The sun sets on the last papermaking shift at the Verso paper mill in Bucksport. December 4, 2014. Photo by Ernie Smith

 

 

 

The second annual David M. Cheney Memorial Golf Tournament was held on Oct. 4, 2014 in Boxford, MA. Organizers for the event report that it was a sell-out. Proceeds from the event will benefit the David M. Cheney Scholarship Fund held at the University of Maine Foundation.

Cheney was a senior at the University of Maine when he tragically lost his life on November 16, 2012 as a result of a small plane crash in Owls Head.

The scholarship was created to honor David’s memory and his admiration for life. Cheney’s family chose to help other students attain a college education at UMaine through this scholarship.

The 2013 tournament raised over $16,000 in Cheney’s memory, it is expected that the final tally from the 2014 will exceed that total.

For more information about supporting this scholarship or establishing a new one, please contact the University of Maine Foundation.