Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions

Ecologists and conservationists have long recognized that keystone species have major ecological importance disproportionate to their abundance or size. Think beavers, sea stars and prairie dogs — species that keep a ecosystem balanced. Read more about Mitchell Center Fellow Malcom Hunter’s work published recently in a Special Issue of “Biological Conservation.”

Clams are an iconic species to the state of Maine. But do you know what it takes to get them from the mud to the market and finally to your plate? Since early 2015, Mitchell Center researchers have been working with clam harvesters to develop engaged media production techniques that can enhance the visibility of their […]

ORONO, ME – A database of over 6,000 community-based renewable energy projects nationwide developed by University of Maine researchers is now publicly available via the Internet. The website will aid those interested in pursuing group, shared, municipal, or non-profit energy projects to connect, learn from each other, and help projects develop from the bottom up. […]

Doctoral student Courtney King puts a positive spin on climate change “anxiety” After UMaine doctoral candidate Courtney King graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in geology, she dove into an eclectic mix of opportunities. For an internship through the Geological Society of America, she worked in Death Valley for three months as assistant […]

Fourth-year UMaine Food Science and Human Nutrition major Olivia Conrad took the first place award in the 2017 Sustainability & Water Conference Undergraduate Poster Competition. Her poster, titled “Objective analysis of the physical and microbial quality changes that occur in packaged baby spinach when stored past the best-by date,” was the result of a research […]

Future of Dams researcher Karen Wilson of the University of Southern Maine was awarded funds to support an undergraduate student for the “Working with the Alewife Harvesters of Maine to Assess Harvest Strategies for Sustainable and Expanding River Herring Harvests in Maine” project. The project is relevant to Maine’s economy particularly as a potential lobster bait […]

Both the Bangor Daily News and the Rockland-based Free Press ran extensive news stories on aspects of the 2017 Maine Sustainability & Water Conference held at the Augusta Civic Center on March 30. The Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions is the lead organizer of the annual conference. Founded in 1994, it is the largest conference in Maine […]

The Maine Legislature’s Joint Environment and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on a handful of bills aimed at how to best regulate potential largescale metal mines in the state on March 20, 2017 and data from a Mitchell Center-funded project will be submitted to aid the legislative committee’s deliberations on the matter. Currently, there […]

Three years of investigation by the New England Sustainability Consortium’s Safe Beaches & Shellfish project has resulted in recommendations that will help improve the state’s shellfish co-management system. Assistant professor Bridie McGreavy and Mitchell Center research associate Sara Randall recently presented their findings to an audience of industry members and managers at the Maine Fishermen’s […]

For the week of March 6-10, faculty, instructors, and students met at the Mitchell Center for a Conservation Planning course coordinated by Mitchell Center Faculty Fellows Aram Calhoun and Malcolm Hunter. The spring break intensive course—Ecology and Environmental Sciences (EES 598) “Designing and managing conservation projects”— focused on “sustainability planning with interdisciplinary groups and was […]