Section: ENV

Proposed fee would tackle plastic bag litter

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00

Environmentalists and lawmakers are targeting one of the Chesapeake Bay’s messiest and most visible problems: litter from plastic bags. They’re trying to enact a 5-cent fee on plastic and paper bags that stores give out. The idea is to reduce the use of disposable bags, while raising money to give out reusable bags and to clean up streams and rivers.

The effort has failed several times already in the General Assembly, but bot...

Our Bay: DNR Digest

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00

Ask An Expert

What is a natural play space?

A natural play space is a contained outside space built to encourage children to learn and have fun in a natural setting.

Natural play spaces resemble conventional playgrounds, but instead of simply being nature-themed, they are built with real rocks and logs for climbing, dirt for digging and trees for exploring. Such spaces also include paths and climbing chall...

Our Bay: The moment in time

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is developing a strategy to ensure that the Bay restoration goals are fully met by the 2025 deadline. It’s being called “A Moment in Time.” During discussions among CBF trustees, I made the point that we are not just facing a moment in time, but what I believe to be the moment in time, because I don’t think we will get another chance if we fail. I have spent nearly 30 years as a scientis...

Our Bay Digest

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00

Bounty of the Bay dinner planned

ANNAPOLIS - Seafood will be on the menu at the Bounty of the Bay Dinner at the Boatyard Bar & Grill in Eastport later this month.

The Boatyard is teaming up with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to promote local seafood at the dinner, scheduled for 6p.m. on Feb. 28.

The menu includes a raw bar and a five-course meal featuring Maryland seafood such as oysters, c...

Winter dredge survey checks crab population

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00

WINGATE - Blue crabs are sleepy at this time of year.

Moments ago, they were in a comfortable state of near-hibernation, bedded down for the winter in the soft mud at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.

But a metal dredge with sharp teeth has rousted them from their slumber, and Bobby Patterson and Joe Williams have shaken them out onto the rear deck of the Mydra Ann.

Some as tiny as a fingernail, some nearly legal si...

Hydraulic fracturing may come to state

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00

Extracting natural gas by hydraulic fracturing is an expensive and dirty business that can produce a bounty of relative clean energy and make some Marylanders wealthy, experts said this week at an American Petroleum Institute seminar in Annapolis.

State Sen. George Edwards, a Republican from Western Maryland, where shale gas deposits are likely, said it is well past time for the state to allow the extracting of natural gas.

Edward...

Stink bug numbers down, wet fall eyed as reason

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00

BALTIMORE (AP) — Stink bug numbers are down, and researchers say they suspect the wet fall weather across the mid-Atlantic may be the reason. Jerry Burst, a pest management and vegetable specialist at the University of Maryland's Central Maryland Research and Education Center in Upper Marlboro, told The Baltimore Sun the wet weather probably knocked many of the bugs off trees and crops and drowned them. However, researchers say predator...

Bay's sturgeon now an endangered species

unknown@hometownannapolis.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00

The Atlantic sturgeon, an imperiled bottom-dwelling fish in the Chesapeake Bay, has been declared an endangered species.

The designation means the rarely seen sturgeon will be afforded greater protection in hopes of preventing them from becoming extinct.

"The federal government is giving this remarkable fish a fighting chance to live on into the 21st century," said Brad Sewell, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defen...