From the National Audubon Society

A Model for Conservation Education Since 1936

Double rainbow by Steve Kress

One of the nation’s greatest environmental education success stories will be celebrated August 20 as Audubon’s Hog Island Camp marks 75 years of connecting people with nature. Since 1936, some of the world’s most respected naturalists have inspired campers of all ages to learn about and protect birds and the environment.

Roger Tory Peterson, was among the first teachers at the 335 acre island in Maine’s Muscongus Bay. His experiences helped spark interest in bird watching in the U.S. It is now the nation’s second fastest growing hobby, after gardening.

Kenn Kaufman, only nine years old when he read Peterson’s account of Hog Island, is now an international authority on birds and one of the Hog Island instructors. Rachel Carson, a pivotal force behind the modern environmental movement and creation of the EPA, described her visit to Hog Island in her landmark book Silent Spring. It was also here that Audubon’s Dr. Stephen Kress pioneered Project Puffin, a seabird restoration program that is now being replicated to help different species of seabirds around the globe.

“There’s only one Hog Island and it represents something special for so many people,” said Audubon president David Yarnold. “Hog Island is a breeding ground for optimism. People’s lives are changed when they see how birds lead us to ecosystems and they hold a special place in their hearts and souls for nature – and for Hog Island. Most important, Hog Island fuels our passion for teaching others about the world we’ve been entrusted to protect.”

Millicent Todd Bingham inherited Hog Island in 1932. She partnered with John Hopkinson Baker, then Audubon’s executive director, who had been searching for a site where Audubon could launch the organization’s first educational camp. The goal, unconventional at the time, was to help campers develop a sustained interest in the natural world.

“By focusing Hog Island’s programming on educators — who are often our most passionate conservation ambassadors — we have been able to multiply our impact exponentially,” said Audubon’s Vice President of Education, Judy Braus. “Educators are immersed in the wonder and beauty of the island – and we know that the experiences they share as well as the teaching skills the program imparts will foster environmental stewardship among thousands of young people and adults in communities across the country.”

The August 20 event includes a tour of the historical buildings, plus an afternoon clambake, with remarks by Audubon president David Yarnold.

More voices of Hog Island

“Hog Island takes hold of you. There are many beautiful places, but this one will change your life.” — Scott Weidensaul, author

“If your life is steeped in birds, you owe it to yourself to return to the Source.” — Pete Dunne, Director of the Cape May Bird Observatory, V.P. of New Jersey Audubon Society Natural History Information, and founder of the World Series of Birding.

“I’ve run out of superlatives to describe it. The knowledge this island has to share will change the way you look at the natural world.” — Kenn Kaufmann

Quotes from teachers who attended classes on Hog Island

I have been teaching for 25 years and have never experience a more well rounded and useful program than that offered to educators on Hog Island.

When I came to Hog Island I didn’t know what to expect. Five days later I had been rewarded with the most transformative professional development experiences I have had as a teacher.

I really felt that I was in the presence of some of the best birding people in the country, if not the world.

The beauty of the island, the inspiration imparted by the staff and guest speakers, and the knowledge shared by the instructors is a life-changing event!

Your program, staff, environs and heritage are an absolute treasure. Thank you for caring about our wonderful world and its future.

The staff was amazing. You have set the bar very, very high for all future camps.

It was one of the best weeks of my life.

• Read more about the legacy of Hog Island: http://projectpuffin.org/OrnithCampsLegacyHistory.html
• Video: Hog Island http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_CjB4F_Ks
• Video: Olivia & Jackson Bouler Visit Project Puffin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o1LilBA-fY
• Video of puffins http://www.projectpuffin.org/PuffinCamBest.html

Landing on Egg Rock for Clean Up

Egg Rock is off limits during the nesting season. However, during the fall session of Maine Seabird Biology and Conservation on September 11-16, you can land on Egg Rock and help restore the habitat for puffins, Atlantic Terns and Roseate Terns. This session coincides with the peak of the fall landbird and hawk migration.

Learn about seabird restoration from the experts. Join Greg Butcher, Director of Bird Conservation with National Audubon, Steve Kress, Director of Seabird Restoration Program, and Scott Weidensaul, nature writer of numerous books and short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize, for a rare opportunity to actually set foot on it and see some of the birds still there.

An autumn sign on Hog Island

A few places remain for the session — let’s keep up our record of 100% participation for 2011 — so sign up today with Roads Scholar for Maine Seabird Conservation and Biology. You’ll have the added bonus of seeing the rainbow colors of Maine’s fall foliage begin.

From Steve Kress — 3/5/2011

I am very pleased to share the news that the programs on Hog Island for the coming summer are more than 90% filled with several already with wait lists.  This is certainly great news as we welcome this year’s campers for the 75th anniversary of the Camp.

If you would like to follow the success of the registration process, please download this report (PDF); it is updated every few weeks by Camp Registrar, Erica VanEtten.

While the Camp has filled rapidly, there are still some opportunities to spend time on Hog Island this summer as a FOHI volunteer. If you have not already signed up, I hope you will join us.

Installing carpet mat at Eastern Egg Rock. By Stephen Kress.

We have several work weeks planned that will open the island in May and June and close down for the winter in late September.

Sue Schubel is the FOHI volunteer coordinator and the point person for sending your application to assist the program. I greatly appreciate your continued help for the Camp

In addition to the work weeks, there are also several openings remaining in all of the teaching sessions to help in the kitchen and maintenance around the grounds and buildings.  In these sessions, FOHI volunteers will be able to take part in some of the classes and field trips as space permits.

Please consider join us by completing and returning this form (PDF) to Sue Schubel.

I hope you will join us for this 75th anniversary summer for the Audubon Camp.

From the National Audubon Society

The Golden Egret Award is for a staff member who by his or her continuous and consistent effort over the years displays leadership qualities and is an example to other employees of helpful, supportive, caring, and dependable service.  The candidate must have a minimum of ten years service at Audubon.

Steve Kress

The 2010 Golden Egret Award has been awarded to Steve Kress, Vice President, Bird Conservation, Seabird Restoration, ME

Steve is known by some as “the puffin guy,” others as Audubon’s rock star scientist, and others as that humble but passionate protector of seabirds and a great believer in the power of education.

Steve has had a long and distinguished career with Audubon.  He is internationally known and celebrated and has produced conservation results that are legendary not only in Audubon, but far beyond our borders.  Steve doesn’t just save birds — he’s a passionate educator who inspires and empowers others. Steve, with his 30-plus years of directing the Seabird Restoration Program, continues to demonstrate a record of leadership, team building, and financial ingenuity that is remarkable to all those who work with him.

After starting a small field program on one island, he has now grown the program to include seven Audubon-managed islands, where more than 8,000 pairs of mixed Terns and 1,000 pairs of Puffins nest each summer. Steve is a master of innovation, inventing ways to solve problems that may not have been used before, while building leadership among others who work with him.  For example, since he started his work with puffins and seabirds he has trained more than 500 college students who have served as “seabird island stewards.”  Many of these interns have gone on to successful careers in conservation, cherishing their unique experiences with the “puffin project” and Steve Kress.

Steve is not only a role model for so many of us at Audubon, but is truly an inspiration to anyone who cares about conservation and building the next generation of leaders.

Steve is known to his colleagues as having a wonderful sense of humor, and is thoughtful, wise, and an entrepreneurial leader who continues to create new opportunities that grow and promote the Audubon mission.  Since the late 1980′s more than 75,000 people have participated in this Audubon-sponsored venture.  With every trip, Steve and his team of interpreters inform, inspire, and entertain future conservation constituents who often go on to be Audubon members and supporters.

Steve has written books about birds, bird watching, and gardening for birds and wildlife.  And he’s organized a cadre of highly-motivated volunteers and staff who are currently helping to restore Hog Island programming and operations for new generations.  And the list could go on and on.

Steve is not only a role model for so many of us at Audubon, but is truly an inspiration to anyone who cares about conservation and building the next generation of leaders.

Famed videographer Lang Elliott has produced a new 6-minute video about the ornithology and teen birding session at the Audubon Camp in Maine on Hog Island.

Elliott and co-videographer Martyn Stewart capture the spirit of the legendary camp which will celebrate its 75th anniversary next summer.

The video features well-known birders Kenn Kaufman, Scott Weidensaul, Greg Budney, Sara Morris and Steve Kress. Lang will join the field ornithology instructors for the 2011 Hog Island program.

Osprey with fish by Don Marsh

From Steve Kress

The legendary Audubon Camp in Maine on Hog Island offered its first session in 1936. Now, 75 years later, Project Puffin announces the beginning of registration for the Camp’s anniversary year.

The 2011 Hog Island season will begin with a service learning program in which participants will help census a Maine seabird colony and end with another service program in which participants will create habitat for terns on Eastern Egg Rock.

Hog Island service programs are co-sponsored by Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel). Participants in these programs learn about seabirds while helping Project Puffin to manage these Maine Important Bird Areas.

In addition to the service sessions, the 2011 Hog Island program will include the very popular birding programs ‘Joy of Birding’, ‘Field Ornithology’ and ‘Coastal Maine Birding for Teens.’ Two of Hog Islands most popular programs will also return this year with special sessions designed for teachers and Audubon Chapter leaders. Visiting the puffins at Eastern Egg Rock is a highlight of all sessions.

Accommodations at Hog Island are in authentic early-20th-century buildings at the edge of the sea. Our renowned chef, Janii Laberge, will again serve extraordinary meals in our historic farmhouse looking out onto Muscongus Bay.

“If your life is steeped in birds, then you owe it to yourself to visit the Source. If you have just discovered birds, there is an island where you can get a crash course in field birding that will link you to birding’s past and vault your skills into the future.”

Hog Island’s first instructors were birding greats Roger Tory Peterson and Allan Cruickshank. The 2011 instructors continue this tradition by including some of the country’s best known birders, such as Pete Dunne, Kenn Kaufman and Scott Wiedensaul.

A week on Hog Island is famous for top instruction, great food and an inspiring setting where people have fun learning together. Program Director Steve Kress predicts that like 2010, most of the sessions will quickly sell out with wait lists.

As instructor Pete Dunne wrote recently in Birder’s World, “If your life is steeped in birds, then you owe it to yourself to visit the Source. If you have just discovered birds, there is an island where you can get a crash course in field birding that will link you to birding’s past and vault your skills into the future.”

‘Word of mouth’ has always been the best way to engage new Audubon Campers,  so please forward this e-mail to any lists you have — including Facebook friends — to help spread the word that registrations are now open for our big anniversary year.

Reserve a place for yourself now for this milestone summer of 2011. Visit the Hog Island Ornithology site for more details:

• Registration/Pricing, Cancellation, and Contact Information
• Selected Field Trips (field trip descriptions)
• Daily Schedule Sample
• Hog Island Bird Checklist (PDF)
• Lodging and Buildings
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Hog Island Legacy and History

Rachel Carson first visited Maine’s mid-coast almost 60 years ago, and the influence of the region’s sea and shore had profound and lasting impact on her writings, which launched the modern American environmental movement.

Now, in their first appearance in Maine, the original artwork that accompanied Rachel Carson’s first book, Under the Sea-Wind, comes to Damariscotta on Tuesday September 27, 2005, in a presentation about the famed author’s love for the Maine coast by Carson scholar Dr. John Juriga.  The evening event will be held between 7 and 9 p.m. in the Skidompha Public Library auditorium, 184 Main Street in Damariscotta.

This month’s presentation is a public “thank you” to Lincoln County and the communities of the Damariscotta-Newcastle area by the “Friends of Hog Island” and the Maine Audubon Society’s Hog Island Audubon Camp, in appreciation for their support for the venerable Hog Island institution, now in its 69th year as America’s oldest continually-operating environmental summer camp for adults, families, and youth.

“I checked out my first book at the Skidompha Public Library in the summer 1972, when I worked in the kitchen of the Hog Island Audubon Camp,” says David Klinger, president of the “Friends of Hog Island.”  “Since then, I’ve returned many summers, and this marvelous library has grown, as has the Audubon Camp.  We’ve had great support from the Damariscotta community through many years, and this event is just one small way we wish to express our collective thanks to our local neighbors for their continued goodwill.”

“Rachel Carson, Howard Frech, and Under the Sea-Wind” will offer a glimpse into Carson’s long and abiding relationship with the Maine coast, to which she journeyed in 1946 and returned, after building her cottage on Southport Island, every summer until her death in 1964.  The lecture will feature the original pencil drawings that famed Baltimore artist Howard Frech contributed to Carson’s first work of literature — art that has seldom been displayed since Under the Sea-Wind was first published in 1941.

Dr. Juriga, a Salisbury, Maryland, pediatrician who is associated with the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art in that state, will offer a compelling and insightful look into the influence of the Maine seacoast on Carson, her writings, and her outlook on the natural world.  Dr. Juriga has served as guest curator for two major exhibits at the Salisbury art museum — “Witness for Nature:  The World of Rachel Carson” in 1999 and “Bob Hines:  National Wildlife Artist” in 2003.

The September 27 presentation will be held from 7-9 p.m. at the Skidompha Public Library in Damariscotta.  Admission is free, and a public reception and Rachel Carson book sale by Damariscotta’s Maine Coast Book Shop will follow the talk.

The “Friends of Hog Island” is a national support group for the Hog Island Audubon Camp, made up of former staff, alumni, and friends of the camp, which is located off Keene Neck Road in Bremen.  Members contribute their volunteer labor to the maintenance of the camp every June, raise funds to support its educational programs and growth, help preserve the Hog Island camp’s history, and maintain a Web site at www.fohi.org.  FOHI’s president, David Klinger, and Hog Island Audubon Camp director Seth Benz will welcome the audience during the September 27 evening talk.

From David Klinger

Friends, I must report to you that we have temporarily slipped our main mooring.

Our dear colleague, mentor, and guiding light, Bart Cadbury, died of cancer April 6 at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Those of you who have been associated with the Audubon Camp in Maine know of his lasting influence on Hog Island and the Audubon program since the 1950s, when he served as marine life instructor and camp director for 10 years, and through the ensuing decades thereafter. For nearly three-quarters of this camp’s long history, Bart Cadbury occupied center stage in the evolution of this island and its mission, and he did so with steadfastness and loyalty, great humor and wit, and profound wisdom and experience.

Indeed, the “Friends of Hog Island” would not exist today without the foresight and devotion of Bart and Virginia Cadbury, and the entire Cadbury family, to the life of this place. When it seemed that there might no longer be a place for the Audubon Camp in Maine within the Audubon cause, it was Bart and Ginny Cadbury who spoke eloquently of the continuing need for a Hog Island in American conservation.

They continue to point the way, with great clarity of vision, for the rest of us to follow.

There will be many opportunities in the future to remark on the legacy of Bart Cadbury. The Cadbury family plans its own services in Philadelphia and in Maine, both in June; Bart’s passing was also marked in Hanover earlier this month with a gathering of family and close friends. We will pass along details, as appropriate.

But I can think of no greater testimonial to the impact of Bart Cadbury’s life on Hog Island than our own FOHI gathering this June, as we embark on yet another week of annual devotion to the Audubon Camp in Maine, through our commitment of time and talents to this island he so loved.

While, with Bart’s passing, we may have temporily slipped our mooring, in no sense are we adrift.

Please send us your memories of Bart Cadbury so we can post an online memorial.

“The Maine Audubon camp on Hog Island, Bremen, was busy last week.  For one thing, the Friends of Hog Island (FOHI) were there for the week, tending to their annual chores of post-winter cleanup; clearing trails, repairing and readying cabins for occupancy, and whatever else needed to be done. …”

• Read the complete story

Complement your Hog Island experience in 2004 by attending the Third Writers’ Conference and Workshop in honor of Rachel Carson, June 15-18 in nearby Boothbay Harbor, Maine, sponsored by NEW-CUE, a non-profit organization of writers and college educators keeping the legacy of Rachel Carson alive.

About the Conference

Nature and Environmental Writers/College and University Educators (NEW-CUE), a non-profit, environmental education organization based in Washington, D.C., will offer its Third Writers’ Conference and Workshop in honor of Rachel Carson at The Spruce Point Inn in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, from June 15-18, 2004. Writers, educators and the interested public are invited to attend.

The theme of the 2004 Conference/Workshop will be “Living Waters,” and the event will be held at one of New England’s finest waterfront resorts in an area that is well-known for tidal pools, coves and salt marshes. The Keynote Address will be delivered by ocean conservationist, Carl Safina, author of Song for the Blue Ocean, Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival, and the Seafood Lover’s Almanac. Safina’s work has been profiled in The New York Times and on the Bill Moyers television special, “Earth on Edge.” He is currently president of the Blue Ocean Institute.

Other featured speakers and presenters will include Cape Cod essayist Robert Finch; Newbery Medal-winning author Jean Craighead George who will be joined by her daughter, author Twig George, a former Director of Education for the Center for Marine Conservation in Washington, D.C.; and poet Andrea Cohen who is the director of the Blacksmith House Reading Series in Cambridge, MA. In addition, there will be a performance of a one-woman play, A Sense of Wonder, based on the life and work of Rachel Carson with author/actress Kaiulani Lee. The program of events will also include a marine-life workshop offered by The Chewonki Foundation, presentations and guided activities including hikes led by guides from the Boothbay Region Land Trust, tide pool explorations with a marine biologist from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, and a trip to the Burnt Island Lighthouse.

For further details, information and photos from the 2002 Conference/Workshop, please visit our website at http://www.new-cue.org, or send an e-mail message to info@new-cue.org, or telephone (845) 398-4147.