Fuller speaks with BDN about importance of sustainability for fiddleheads

UMaine Alert

Posted: April 19, 2024 - 1:32 PM

At approximately 9:24 a.m. on Friday, April 19, a University of Maine graduate student was struck by a university vehicle on Long Road at the University of Maine campus in Orono. The student reports that they are at a local hospital with minor injuries.

Emergency services, including the Orono Fire Department, University Volunteer Ambulance Corps, University of Maine Police Department, Orono Police Department and Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene.

The university vehicle involved in the incident was a Chevrolet Express van. It was being operated by a university employee.

Counseling services and support are available for students, faculty or staff who may have been affected. The Counseling Center can be reached at 207-581-1392 and the Dean of Students Office can be reached at 207-581-1406.

The scene has been cleared and Long Road is now accessible. An investigation is being conducted by the University of Maine Police Department with assistance from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office Crash Reconstruction Unit. Any witnesses to the incident are encouraged to contact Lt. Noel Santiago at noel.santiago@maine.edu.

May 6, 2016 Cooperative Extension, Outreach, UMaine in the News

David Fuller, an agriculture and nontimber forest products professional and fiddlehead expert with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, spoke with the Bangor Daily News for an article about northern Maine entrepreneurs who are in the fiddlehead business. Fuller, who has spent years studying fiddleheads, spoke about the importance of sustainability when harvesting a wild plant. Savvy pickers know where the best spots are, he said, and return every year, which can be a problem. Between 2005 and 2008, Fuller compared harvesting methods among three fiddlehead plots. In the plots where no or half the fiddleheads were harvested, Fuller said the same number of plants came up the following season. “But where I picked everything, after three years, 90 percent of those plants were dead,” he said. “If we have people going back to the same spots every year and taking everything, over time there will be less and less fiddleheads.”