The Maine Journal of Conservation and Sustainability

By Chantelle Flores   “Emerald and Ash” tackles a more serious facet of our changing relationship with nature, inspired by the emerald ash borer and art theories about the romanticization of environmental catastrophe. One can argue that art reflects new and impactful perspectives on nature, but we must also take into account the immense power […]

By Ben Vanderstouw   The human demands and uses along the Maine coast are complex and interconnected. How do we continue and honor the traditions of many who call the Maine Coast home, while protecting the natural landscape? Photo taken with Galaxy S23 phone.     

By Nate Davis   These four works are from my Flora II series, which currently consists of 514 images. For almost two decades, I have created electronic music and visual art by simulating biological and evolutionary processes using software of my own design. In these simulations, organisms grow, reproduce, compete for resources, and die, and […]

By Tom Lagasse   In memory of Edwin and Nellie Way Teale Edwin Way Teale was an American naturalist, photographer, and writer. Teale’s works serve as primary source material documenting environmental conditions across North America from 1930–1980.   I The pond is like a countryas are the woods, the meadows, And bogs.  All with leaky […]

By Rihannon McCutcheon   Seasons Quartet is a collection about appreciation that focuses on the human experience of climate change. Often, we fail to show conservation as a thing people should care about, so these poems seek to correct that. They’re to show the things we appreciate so that we’re motivated to protect them. Be […]

By Mara Scallon   Medium: film photography Description: The deciduous trees’ rich, autumnal colors beloved across Maine peer out from behind their evergreen neighbors. Orono’s Caribou Bog Conservation Area is vitally important to local animal and avian communities but it is also a place critically important for human communities, as runners, birders, cyclists, hikers, photographers, […]

By Mara Scallon   Medium: cut paper and film photography Description: The images are of the Bubbles, seated behind Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park. I used the film photograph as a model to cut the same image into/out of paper. This was a fun experiment in simplifying an image in order to cut it, […]

By Mara Scallon   Medium: linoblock print Description: I have always loved the many stories that the barks of birches and aspens seem to tell, and here, this print seeks to capture some of these stories. If we could read the stories written in the bark, what would it tell us? How would it change […]

By Mara Scallon   Medium: linoblock print Description: Black bears love eating ripe wild blueberries as much as humans do! Arriving at blueberry fields to work and finding black bears hard at work eating lots of berries provided a fun, tangible reminder that other creatures are influenced by human actions and infrastructures.  

By Clea Harrelson   This piece was created using only materials gathered from the 29th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP29), held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2024. I attended this event in person with the University of Maine observer delegation, and each day that we entered the […]