Environment

Preliminary numbers for New Hampshire’s deer hunt are in, and it was a good year for hunters. A mild winter meant big deer populations, and a 4% increase on the hunting season from last year.

According to Fish and Game before the hunting season started there were about 85,000 deer in the Granite state. This year, hunters took about 14 percent of those animals, just fewer than 11,600 deer.

Sullivan, Strafford and Rockingham counties had the highest number of kills, and Belknap, Carroll and Cheshire had the least. It was the biggest dear season since 2007.

The Governor’s Water Sustainability Commission released its report Monday. The report finds numerous challenges, the biggest of which might be a lack of political will.

The commission's list of threats to NH’s water quality is lengthy: too much pavement, aging dams and public water infrastructure, increased rainfall from climate change, and so on. The report estimates over the next ten years the state will need to invest $2.9 billion to confront just the infrastructure side of these issues.

State and federal scientists in New Hampshire and Maine are planning to release a dye into the Piscataqua River to help determine if the area is suitable for recreational shellfish harvesting.

Opponents of proposed wind farms in the Newfound Lake region are getting organized. They hope that they’re forming the foundation of a state-wide anti-wind effort. Newfound Lake Wind Watch has changed its name to New Hampshire Wind Watch: it has a new website, work committees, petitions and letter writing campaigns.

A new report out Friday finds that the Great Bay Estuary is still struggling. Every 3 years the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership, or PREP releases its State Of Our Estuaries report. The report’s data plays into an ongoing battle over the cost of new wastewater treatment plants on the seacoast.

If you’ve been following the efforts of conservation groups on the Seacoast, PREP’s data from the last three years are no big surprise.