Friends of Acadia’s Stewardship Crew, Recreation Technicians, Summit Stewards, Wild Gardens of Acadia intern, and Communications seasonals are wrapping up their tenures in Acadia. While the October government shutdown prompted some late-season pivoting, they switched gears and helped maintain community trails, share messaging about closures in the park, and continue data-driven social science.  And wow, did they accomplish a lot this year.

Our seasonal staff does a range of work in the field, from helping build and maintain the park’s trails and carriage roads to employing social science to monitor how visitors move about the park. They engage with park visitors and capture the work—and the lively season—through images and video. They also happen to be a hard-working and enthusiastic crew of early career professionals who bring great talent and care to their work.

That work has an immediate positive impact on Acadia, and it has far-reaching ripple effects, too. Visitors who learn about Leave No Trace from a Summit Steward will be wiser and more thoughtful users of public lands.

Bogwalk and fences built by the Stewardship Crew and program volunteers will guide visitors and protect fragile vegetation for decades to come. Data gathered by Recreation Technicians helps resource managers make future decisions in Acadia. And images and video help tell the stories of the incredible work happening in the park and encourage members to join us.

Here are highlights of this year’s accomplishments:

Friends of Acadia’s Summit Stewards spend thousands of hours each summer and fall on Acadia’s summits and trails, answering visitor questions, conducting basic trail maintenance, repairing cairns, removing visitor-built rock stacks and rock art, and responding to emergencies. Led by Summit Steward Manager Stephanie Ley, this year’s crew was Teagan Lapuk, Matthew Egelberg, Lillian Abbott, Eli Shahan, Kelby Youngberg, Teghan Oswald, and Molly Bogner.

Over the season, this crew had 34,195 visitor contacts. Those conversations have wide-ranging impact, from helping park visitors be more thoughtful stewards of the park to helping point them in the right direction to a trailhead. Leave No Trace principles are a big part of many of those conversations, accounting for 10,500 of those interactions with visitors. They also rebuilt 822 cairns and spent 656 hours “postering” – talking with visitors at specific locations about pertinent topics (for example, talking about the vegetation restoration work taking place on Cadillac Mountain, where Summit Stewards have a strong presence throughout the season).

The also assisted with 35 hours of search-and-rescue (SAR) and 84 visitor assists (which includes things like providing extra water to a hiker, helping with basic first aid, or assisting a visitors who’s lost).

This season, they brought solutions to the Beehive and Bowl Trails, where extensive social trails were causing confusion for visitors. To deter visitors from unwittingly following those errant paths, the crew added ropes and used branches to hide the paths.

Some trends they noticed in 2025:

• Visitors using hiking sticks on the Beehive Trail, then discarding those sticks on the side of the trail, creating a large stack of sticks.
• Bates cairns continue to be knocked over, unfortunately; this year, there were multiple occurrences of every cairn along major trails being dismantled between visits (specifically Gorham Mountain, Cadillac North Ridge, Pemetic North Ridge and Champlain Mountain).
• Visitors are increasingly turning to AI to create their itineraries for visiting the park, which sometimes offers inaccurate information.

Stephanie Ley, summit steward manager, Teagan Lapuk, seasonal summit steward, Matthew Egelberg, seasonal summit steward, Lillian Abbott, seasonal summit steward, Eli Shahan, seasonal summit steward, Kelby Youngberg, seasonal summit steward, Molly Bogner, seasonal summit steward. (Rhiannon Johnston/Friends of Acadia)

Recreation Technicians work in the park gathering data about how visitors move about the park (where they go, when they go, and what they do when they get there). This valuable data informs future decisions made by resource managers.

Led by Recreation Technician Manager Becca Stanley, this year’s seasonal recreation technicians were Luke Fiermonti and Jess Elliott.

As social scientists who gather data on visitor use, their work includes monitoring, research, and case studies. The information they gather, through trail counters, in-the-field monitoring, and surveying, helps inform management decisions within the park. They work under Adam Gibson, social scientist at Acadia National Park. (Read more about work of a Recreation Technician: Gathering Data to Understand Park Visitors )

Recreation Technicians use technology to support their work, including 10 traffic counters on Acadia’s roads, 11 trail counters, 7 carriage road counters, and a few cameras (these are used sparingly at places like the Precipice Trail when it’s closed for peregrine falcon nesting and the data is scrubbed to protect visitor privacy). They also regularly validate that data in the field, counting visitors on a trail, road, or carriage road to confirm the counters’ numbers.

They conduct a good deal of research at targeted areas, too. This year, that included the newly opened Acadia Gateway Center, Beehive Trail, Eagle Lake boat launch, Fabbri Picnic Area, peregrine closure areas, and Day Mountain. They capture visitor numbers, how long people stay at a given area, multi-use tracking on the carriage roads, and so much more.

They also collaborate with visiting researchers, like the Department of Transportation and Worcester Polytechnic Institute to study a range of things, like parking issues at Jordan Pond and E-bike use on the carriage roads.

Becca Stanley, recreation technician manager, Luke Fiermonti, seasonal recreation technician, Jess Elliott, seasonal recreation technician.(Rhiannon Johnston/Friends of Acadia)

Our Stewardship Crew does important hands-on work on Acadia’s trails and carriage roads, like cutting back vegetation, clearing drainage features, building bogwalk, tread work, weeding carriage roads, and other tasks. And they welcome loads of volunteers to help out each season, too.

This year’s Stewardship Crew was once again led by Stewardship Manager Nikki Burtis with Stewardship Assistants Nora Marasco and Gemma Lurie.

The season culminated in 4,338 volunteer hours. Of those, the Drop-In Volunteer Stewardship program completed 2,471 hours of work, which included fence building, trail and carriage road drainage clearing, brushing in trails to deter the use of social trails, and brushing out (i.e., trimming back vegetation to keep the path easy to see and navigate).

New this year was helping park staff clear Acadia’s carriage road vistas – trimming branches and cutting back foliage to keep those stunning park views we all swoon over.  (Read more about vista management in Acadia from this summer’s Acadia magazine.)

It’s all important work done in tandem with park staff that most visitors wouldn’t even know was done because it looks so natural. One project from this summer that is more clearly human-made is the new building new bogwalk at Hadlock Ponds. The area was routinely flooding and very rocky, but the new bogwalk came together and looks super sharp.

Helping these projects run smoothly were the Volunteer Crew Leaders (VCLs). Four new VCLs came on board this year, for a total of 18! (Read more about our VCLs here).

The Stewardship Crew also welcomed 26 service groups – some coming for a day, others coming for a week.

Collectively they accomplished 1,867 hours of work. Among this season’s groups were 4H groups from Texas and Maine, University students, the Sierra Club, Groundwork Bridgeport, summer camps, and local groups.

Nikki Burtis, stewardship manager, Nora Marasco, seasonal steward, Gemma Lurie, seasonal steward. (Rhiannon Johnston/Friends of Acadia)

Our communications team works hard to tell the stories of Acadia, from the behind-the-scenes work of park staff, the impactful efforts of volunteers, the diverse ecology and wildlife, and the role Friends of Acadia’s members play in supporting all of it. This year’s communications seasonals, Claire Keeley and Rhiannon Johnston, brought their storytelling talents to Acadia to capture all the goings on in video and photos (and some story writing, too)!

Claire Keeley was in the field capturing a good deal of vertical video for social media and creating engaging posts and reels. The reach of those efforts was big: more than 1.3 million unique engagements between Facebook and Instagram. That’s 1.3 million opportunities for people to learn more about who we are, how essential the work of park staff is, and how they can get involved. (Check out some of those reels on Facebook.)

Rhiannon Johnston captured stunning images in the park this season. From breathtaking sunsets to Acadia’s hardworking trail crew rebuilding trails on The Bubbles, her work captures all we love about Acadia (and highlights so much of the work that people don’t even realize takes place). She also shot and edited videos for several of our campaigns, including our Paddle Raise for Carroll Homestead. (Watch that video here.)

While their seasons are coming to a close, their work will continue on – Claire wrote an insightful story about small mammal tracking on Acadia’s summits that’ll appear in the fall Acadia magazine, alongside photos captured by Rhiannon. In fact, that issue will be chock full of Rhiannon’s images. And we’ll continue to share their videos and images for years to come, too!

Eliza Worrick, digital marketing manager; Claire Keeley, seasonal digital content creator; Rhiannon Johnston, seasonal photo/video intern; Julia Walker Thomas, visual storytelling & visual assets manager. (Nora Marasco/Friends of Acadia)

Created in 1961 and maintained by dedicated volunteers, the Wild Gardens of Acadia is a microcosm of Acadia’s uniquely varied plant communities. The gardens feature more than 400 plant species, all indigenous, in 13 sections that are designed to represent natural plant communities found within Acadia National Park (such as mountain, heath, seaside, or coniferous forest).

The Wild Gardens of Acadia intern works with the supervisory gardener and a cadre of volunteers to tend to the array of plants, welcome visitors, and help communicate the importance of native plants in Acadia.

This year’s intern, Mattie Vandiver, accomplished a good deal of plant tasks this season: weeding, watering, transplanting, pruning, raking paths, and turning compost. She greeted visitors to the Wild Gardens, answered their questions, and shared with them the importance of native plants. She was also instrumental in the clean-up and prep work involved to get the bog habitat open for the first time since 2019. (Read more about the bog here) and helped to reset stones and edgings along the paths. With Wild Gardens of Acadia Co-Director Helen Koch, Mattie field-checked and updated the Wild Gardens plant species list and helped to identify several mosses in the Gardens.

She also looked at 15 years worth of weekly data tracking when plants flower in the gardens each year to see how flowering times have been changing over the last decade a half.

Stephanie Clement, vice president of conservation, and Mattie Vandiver, Wild Gardens of Acadia intern. (Rhiannon Johnston/Friends of Acadia)

Lauren Knierim is the 2025 Community Volunteer Ambassador in Acadia. While her role is funded through a partnership between the National Park Service, Conservation Legacy, and AmeriCorps, she played an important role with Friends of Acadia this summer. Lauren’s work to engage with the community helps amplify Wild Acadia projects in the park.

Wild Acadia projects are focused on climate adaptation restoration in Acadia. That work is tackled by a strong collaboration between Acadia National Park, Schoodic Institute, and Friends of Acadia. As Community Volunteer Ambassador, Lauren helped pilot the Backyard Stewards and Backyard Scientists programs. The programs encourage Mount Desert Islanders to look at the plants in their own backyards to identify and remove invasive species. (Invasive plants don’t respect park boundaries, so removing them from nearby property helps keep them from proliferating in Acadia.)

Lauren also led our Save Our Summit hikes this year, which took place on Wednesdays and Saturdays from June to mid-September. During Save Our Summit (SOS) hikes, volunteers helped carry soil to the summits of Penobscot and Sargent Mountains. This soil is integral to the ongoing summit restoration efforts in Acadia National Park.

This season, 292 volunteers carried a whopping 5,049 pounds up to the summits!

Lauren Knierim, Community Volunteer Ambassador at Acadia National Park. (Rhiannon Johnston/Friends of Acadia)

Huge thanks to our incredible seasonal staff for their hard work and good humor this year. And to every Friends of Acadia volunteer, donor, and supporter who helps make this work possible.