Every year my Jeep gets a lot of miles on Maine’s woods roads

It’s a testament to the consistency of the conservation organizations in Maine that I have yet to go a year since 2000 without multiple assignments covering new conservation projects in the Maine woods. It’s not surprising considering that 30 years ago, there were about 20 million acres of undeveloped and unprotected forests in Maine. A lot of amazing places have been conserved since then and the work continues – to protect working forests, wildlife habitat, and recreation access to some of the best wilderness in the U.S.

On Assignment for the Forest Society of Maine

The Forest Society of Maine is an amazing land trust that seems to be involved in most big conservation projects in Maine’s Northern Forest, and I’m fortunate to get to explore some of these places on their behalf to help tell their story to funders and the local community. In 2023, I photographed two of their projects, one centered around Eagle Lake near Hancock and one near Sugarloaf ski resort in Kingfield. Both projects involved thousands of acres of land.

On assignment for The Conservation Fund

The Conservation Fund works on land projects across the U.S., and often partners with organizations like the Forest Society of Maine in the Maine Woods. I’ve shot for them in several mid-Atlantic and New England states in the past, and I was psyched to shoot for them on a project in Maine last summer with one of my other regular clients, The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). In September, I explored the 28000+ Barnard tract of forest with Steve Tatko, the AMC’s VP of Conservation Research and Land Management, and a Mainer through and through. I last worked with Steve on a video about the AMC’s Maine Woods Initiative (see the video here.) The Barnard Tract will be added to more than 100,000 acres the AMC already owns and manages in the 100-Mile Wilderness area of Maine.

Smoky skies

You can see in these photos that even with a forecast of clear skies, we encountered morning fog and hazy skies due to Canadian wildfire smoke, which seem to be part of most of my photo shoots from NY across New England throughout the summer of 2023. At least it made for some interesting light!

On Assignment for the Natural Resources Council of Maine

In September 2023, Ryan Smith and I made a trip up to the Katahdin region to produce some videos for the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) to use in their efforts to stop a zinc metal mine from beginning operation. (You can see the videos we produced over on the Reel Quest Films website.) This was a quick two-day shoot, using primarily drones to shoot video, but I managed to capture a few stills as well. They really show the expanse of the undeveloped landscape there. Here are a few shots:

You can see additional photos from the area that I shot for NRCM back in 2020 in this previous blog post: https://ecophotography.com/what-its-really-like-to-make-conservation-photos-in-the-maine-woods/

I am looking forward to visiting more amazing places in the Maine Woods in 2024. Let me know if you have any questions about any of these projects.

Cheers!
-Jerry