A Bobolink perches on a fence. The Sebasticook Regional Land Trust announced this week that a grant will allow farmland that’s been contamined with PFAS, and can no longer be used as productive farmland, to be transformed into a preserve in Unity to help protect Bobolinks and other grassland birds. Courtesy photo
UNITY — Farmland that can no longer be tilled because it has been contaminated by PFAS will be repurposed as a nature preserve as part of a broader effort to better protect grassland birds, a conservation group announced Tuesday.
The Unity-based Sebasticook Regional Land Trust said it received a grant from Cornell University to help restore grassland bird habitats contaminated with PFAS and other so-called forever chemicals.
The trust said the $5,000 grant will help turn the Unity farmland into habitat for grassland bird species that are seeing large population declines.
“Grassland birds are among the fastest declining bird groups in the Northeast,” Tom Aversa, chairman of the trust’s board of directors, said in a statement. “Bobolink have declined by as much as 75%, and more than 95% of meadowlarks have disappeared from our meadows.”
“This grant from Cornell Lab of Ornithology allows us to advance management to benefit grassland birds while advancing efforts to understand how we can best utilize fields impacted by historic use of PFAS-contaminated fertilizer,” he said.
Money for the grant will be put to use at the Richardson Memorial Preserve, which the trust has overseen since 2013. Alongside hiking trails and mixed woods, the preserve features acres of farmland that were found to have been contaminated with PFAS years before. Farms across Maine have become tainted by the chemicals, with farmers unknowingly using PFAS-containing fertilizers for decades.
In addition to restoring the land itself, the grant will be used for things like monitoring grassland bird populations in the area and researching the effects of PFAS on natural environments.
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