As a fisheries manager, our inventory is fish and knowing how many fish are in a body of water would be ideal, but we rarely have the ability to measure this. Fish won’t hold still long enough for us to count them!

Is our coyote, which started showing up in the 1940s, evolving into a new canid, one that is worthy of the new, catchy name, Coywolf?

This weekend the annual Dover-Foxcroft Shiretown Homecoming and Foxcroft Academy’s 2017 Alumni Weekend together will feature a number of events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

August calendar of events

Friends of Community Fitness held its 12th annual Fitness 5K, as part of the Piscataquis River Festival, on the morning of July 29.

It is not fair, but voting down our school budget is not the right response. We can’t punish our students and staff for a state formula. We need to actively contact our state legislators, and let the governor know that if the state is finally funding schools at the mandated 55 percent, then even SAD 4 students should receive that level of support.

Now that the legislative session is over, it is time for all of us to turn our attention to the latest attempt by special interest groups to go around the legislative process to pass a major law with far-reaching implications by placing a vaguely worded question on the ballot, supported by millions of dollars in special-interest money with little organized opposition. I'm speaking, of course, of the upcoming referendum on Medicaid expansion.

Siesta Sanctuary will host an open house from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday, Aug 12 and Sunday, Aug. 13. Over 80 parrots are looking forward to talking, playing, and admiring visitors, too. The event has free admission, parrot feathers, games, a treasure hunt, and a donation table.

A little more than a month after the first version of the 2017-18 SAD 41 budget was voted down -- by a combined total of 270 to 68 across the district communities of Atkinson, Brownville, Milo, and LaGrange -- a revised spending plan will be brought to voters at a district budget meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 2 at the Penquis Valley School.

After years of fixing Maine’s balance sheet, now is the time to make investments in our economy. During this past session, I supported three initiatives that focused on using bonds to invest in Maine families and our future: transportation; commercialization; and education.