Getting to Know Rachel Carson:
Best-Selling Author, Scientist,
Conservationist & Advocate

With Barbara Vickery,
Retired Director of Conservation, The Nature Conservancy, Maine

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 at 7:00 pm
Register for Zoom Presentation

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Barbara Vickery

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Friends of Merrymeeting Bay’s (FOMB) fourth presentation of their 28th annual Winter Speaker Series, Getting to Know Rachel Carson: Best-Selling Author, Conservationist & Advocate features Barbara Vickery, Retired Director of Conservation, The Nature Conservancy, Maine. Winter Speaker Series presentations are again being held via Zoom and are accessible via hyperlink at the top of the FOMB web page: www.fomb.org. This event takes place Wednesday, January 8th at 7 pm.

Rachel Carson was famously one of the essential sparks in the environmental movement and, although lacking the usual scientific credentials (only a MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins) she became a scientist and later Editor-in Chief for all US Fish & Wildlife publications and a major force in national scientific debates. Yet she was a shy, retiring and humble person.  How did she come to have such an important influence? What roles did her writing (Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, The Edge of the Sea and Silent Spring) and her ties to midcoast Maine play? And what can we learn from her that would inform our current debates on climate, conservation, and pesticide use? 

Barbara St. John Vickery-After serving as rare plant botanist with the Maine Critical Areas Program. Barbara joined the staff of The Nature Conservancy Maine in 1983 as Director of Science and Stewardship and later served as Director of Conservation Programs until retirement in 2017. After his death, she worked with a team to edit her husband Peter Vickery’s life work, Birds of Maine, published in 2020. She now serves on the Maine Board of Environmental Protection and Forest Society of Maine board, is an active member of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby Midcoast Maine chapter, and is a member of six local organizations (including Friends of Merrymeeting Bay), who have helped conserve trails she uses regularly. 

FOMB hosts their Winter Speaker Series October-May, on the second Wednesday of each month. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic and ability for participants to attend from out of the area, the series continues via Zoom. The FOMB February 12th presentation: Adapting to Green Crabs in Coastal Maine features Marissa McMahan, Senior Director of Fisheries, Manomet. This event takes place at 7:00 pm with the Zoom registration link available at www.fomb.org a week or so prior to the presentation.

Speaker Series presentations are free, open to the public. Visit www.fomb.org to see speaker biographies, full event schedules, video recordings of past presentations, become a member, and learn more about how you can help protect beautiful Merrymeeting Bay and the Gulf of Maine.

For more information contact FOMB at 207-666-3372 or edfomb@comcast.net.