Walking the Berkshires

Interview with a Blogger

I am flattered to be profiled with an interview today at a blog and environmental forum called My Greenpeace Buddies.  I was approached to share my thoughts as a blogger who writes about ecological matters, among other things, and was happy to oblige. 

Given my strong preference to focus on areas of common interest rather than positions - except in those cases where reason is clearly out of the question, such as where a certain southern African dictator is concerned - the interview goes strongly down the path of being "occasionally nettlesome" but "fairly non-partisan".  I talked about how individuals and institutions change their behavior and some of what is and is not helpful in that regard. 

I suspect this may be the only time that my right-of-center cousin Tigerhawk gets an acknowledgment in this or indeed any environmental forum.  Anything for bilateral relations, dear readers. And yes, I do know the difference between "affect" and "effect"...just not when I wrote out my responses.  Plus, I found an opportunity to quote from The Last of the Mohicans and it wasn't anything about noble savages.  Fellow English Majors can rest easy that my undergraduate degree is in no immediate danger of revocation.  Mugabe's, however, is another question.

Drop in if you like and check it out.

1780 British Sloop of War Found Intact (Except for the Zebra Mussels)

This is a great story.  HMS Ontario, a revolutionary war era ship, has has been found intact at the bottom of its namesake lake.  She went down with all hands in a fearsome gale on October 31, 1780.

The 80ft sloop of war sank with more than 120 men, women, children and prisoners on board during the American revolutionary war in October 1780. Bad weather rather than cannon fire put paid to her. As she was crossing the lake from Fort Niagara a gale swamped her decks and sent her to the bottom.

The following day some of her boats and hatch covers drifted ashore, along with a few hats. A few days later her sails were found adrift. It was a further nine months before six bodies were washed up 20 miles away.

The ship is in deep water, in such an extraordinary state of preservation that two of its windows are still in place and its masts still stand 70 feet above the deck.  It would be in even better shape were it not for the invasive zebra mussels that infest the great lakes, Lake Champlain and ever more US waterways and encrust the wreck.  Canadian author and historian Arthur Britton Smith said;

“If it wasn’t for the zebra mussels, she looks like she only sunk last week.”

And Jim Kennard, who with his partner Dan Scoville found the wreck, said;

"Eight of the 22 guns were on the deck. Some are still in place. You can't see the others because the gun ports are closed. It's hard even to see the ports because the hull has a lot of mussels on it. The most prominent parts of the ship are the quarter galleries, a sort of windowed balcony, one at each side of the stern. That was the captain's quarters."

Nasty things, those mussels.

HMS Ontario, a 22 gun brig sloop, is the oldest confirmed shipwreck ever found in the lakes, and its discovery is an incredible achievement.  It is considered a war grave and though it lies in US territorial waters somewhere between Rochester New York and Niagara, it is still British property.  And the mussels.

Plan B

Our family's conservation efforts for saving "Windrock" screeched to a halt on Tuesday night, with the Wareham Massachusetts Board of Selectmen voting 5-0 not to accept our conservation restriction (easement) and to put it back before Town Voters in the Fall.  To say that this is a disappointment would be gross understatement.  The Town voters have already voted to release Wareham's designated Community Preservation Act funds to purchase this conservation restriction, and now the Town will almost certainly forgo a Massachusetts Self Help Grant that would have reimbursed 56% of the purchase price. 

The Selectmen were upset about the process by which the project was brought forward by the Town Community Preservation Committee and the Wareham Land Trust, rather than the merits of the project itself (though they still had unanswered questions about some of the fine print).  In Massachusetts, unlike every other state, Mayors or Selectmen must sign off on a conservation restriction or it cannot go forward.  There is no way to override them, even if the merits of a project are beyond dispute and the Commonwealth reviewer is prepared to certify that it meets the test for being in the public interest.  For that reason, it is absolutely critical to understand local politics and not to anagonize Selectmen or back them into a corner with external deadlines or incomplete understanding.  Tragically, that situation has occurred with our project in Wareham.

Yet we are not, as one email I received yesterday claimed, "dead and buried."  You would think, from the amount of post-event email and phone communication we have been engaged with in the last 48 hours, that we were very much still in the race even if we lost the primaries.  And unlike the subject of my allusion, you would be right.  There are several options, including conservation outcomes, that could develop even with this setback.  The obvious one is to work to satisfy the Selectmen's outstanding concerns about the project between now and October's Town Meeting and seek what assurance we can from them that at least a majority of the BoS will support the project if the voters do. Or we could try and restructure the deal with different partners and funding sources.  Or we could start carving out and selling house lots (there are 4 Approval Not Required lots possible at the far end of the property).  Other possibilities may present themselves.  We do not have a great deal of time to sail an altered course, but we do have options.   

Conservation transactions are intensely complicated: far more so than straight real estate sales.  There are lessons to be learned here, but please forgive me if I decline to air them at this time.  The Fat Lady has laryngitis, after all.

Getting Close

For more than 2 years, our family has been working to negotiate the sale of a conservation easement (called Conservation Restrictions or CRs in MA and CT) on +/- 19.55 acres of our beloved "Windrock"  in Wareham, MA.   This is what I do professionally, but this time it is on behalf of my children, parents, sister, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Saving land takes time, and getting agreement on the terms of a CR on behalf of so many when there are two co-holders and a host of reviewers is a tall order.  There are many ups and downs and you learn to hold a steady course and respond in a timely fashion to whatever challenge arises.

I don't want to jinx it.  But we are now within three weeks of a tentative closing data and we are feverishly working through the conservation transaction punch list. Our family has come together in an extraordinary way to do what is right for the property and honor the love and conservation vision of my grandparents Robert and Athalia Barker, who bought the place more than 61 years ago and wanted it to remain in the family and as intact and unspoilt as possible.   Selling this CR allows us to retain title to the entire property and helps ensure that we can maintain it as we have loved it for future generations to enjoy.

We can see the runway and are preparing to land.  When it is over and we all can exhale, I'll share the details. 

Bad Clams

Red Tide seems poised to hammer the shellfish beds from New Hampshire to the Cape and perhaps beyond as it did three years ago. 

"The state Division of Marine Fisheries closed Cape Cod Bay shellfishing in Sandwich and Bourne yesterday afternoon. The rest of the Cape and Islands remain open to shellfishing. As a result of yesterday's closures, the coast of Massachusetts from the New Hampshire border to Cape Cod Canal is now off-limits to shellfishing.

Experts are concerned this spring's algae bloom will be a repeat of the devastating toxic algae outbreak of 2005, when shellfish bed closures stretched from Maine to Martha's Vineyard and Massachusetts sustained estimated losses of $3 million a week to fishermen and related businesses."

If it is in Bourne at the East End of the Canal, it will probably be in Buzzard's Bay at the West End in no time. All in all I'm unlikely to go Quahogging this weekend.

Morgan Bulkeley's Berkshires

Morgan Bulkeley, Sr. is one of the Berkshires' greatest treasures.  During the 1960s and 1970s, his "My Berkshires" column in the Berkshire Eagle animated the land, people, history and ecology of this special place with the keen eye of the naturalist and the sensitivity of a writer who studied with Robert Frost.  In 2004, the cream of more than 750 of these articles was lovingly edited by another great local writer Jon Swan and illustrated by local artist Morgan Bulkeley, Jr.   Published as Berkshire Stories, it abounds in exquisite story-telling and fascinating details about the history, nature, people and conservation of our region. 

"Have you ever held a spark of life in your palm?  One ten-year old boy will never forget it.  He was plying a butterfly net about the honey-suckled lattice of the summer cottage when all at once he had 'the tiny, pulsing, burnished green-gold gem' that is a ruby-throated hummingbird.  He rushed to show it to the one who had given him his own spark.  Little fingers opened gingerly, and the mystery, held for a moment, vanished into summer air, gone but not forgotten..."

I highly recommend you purchase a copy.  This blog can only aspire to write as evocatively about the topics that Bulkeley so masterfully reveals.

2008 Farm Bill Conservation Provisions

The $307 billion 2008 Federal Farm Bill is heading for the President's desk with veto proof majorities in the House (318-106) and Senate (85-15).  More than 2/3 of this amount ($209 billion) is for food stamps and other nutrition programs, compared with $35 billion for agricultural commodities.   Others will parse the wisdom or folly of this pile of pork and priorities, but here is what it holds for conservationists:

Conservation program spending increased by $6.6 billion;

Extends for 2 years the tax incentive for conservation easement donations retroactive to Jan 1, 2008 (which generally means a 50% reduction in AGI tax liability with up to 15 years to carry over the balance of the gift or bargain sale of a conservation easement).

Doubles funding for Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (more than $1 billion over 5 years, an increase of $560 million over the previous Farm Bill) to protect agricultural lands from urban and suburban development pressure;

Increases funding for Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Stewardship Program to enhance and protect our natural resources;

Continues funding for Grassland Reserve and Wetlands Reserve programs, increasing by 1.22 million acres the authorization for enrollment in the Grassland program with increased rolls for non-profits;

Creates an Open Fields Program to encourage public access to private land for hunting and fishing as well as a Chesapeake Bay program to help restore and protect the Bay watershed;

Creates a Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program that will provide federal 50/50 matching grants to local governments and qualified non-profit organizations across the country to acquire forests and open spaces for local ownership and management.

A new qualified forest bond provision that would protect large forest ownerships near national forests.

None of the three senators running for president voted.  Nor did Ted Kennedy. If Congress votes to override the President's expected veto, it would be just the second time in his presidency that it has chosen to do so.

Don't Got Milk

Here's a swell idea. Tax dairy farmers for the methane produced by flatulent cows.  Now it is true that cows produce more greenhouse gas than any other source, including vehicle emissions.  Yes, livestock are major resource consumers and yes, overgrazing, deforestation and a host of other ills can be pinned on unsustainable farming practices.  But taxing the farmer for cow farts is a bit like punishing the prostitute and not the Johns.  Estonians must not like milk.  The Kiwis made a stink about a similar measure in 2003.

Don't Try This At Home

A Chester VA man was killed by a Civil War cannonball more than 140 years after the war ended.   Sam White, an avid collector of wartime relics, attempted to disarm a 9 inch, 75 pound naval cannonball in his driveway when it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel more than a 1/4 mile from the blast and killing him instantly.

"Black powder provided the destructive force for cannonballs and artillery shells. The combination of sulfur, potassium nitrate and finely ground charcoal requires a high temperature — 572 degrees Fahrenheit — and friction to ignite.

White estimated he had worked on about 1,600 shells for collectors and museums. On the day he died, he had 18 cannonballs lined up in his driveway to restore.

White's efforts seldom raised safety concerns. His wife and son Travis sometimes stood in the driveway as he worked.

"Sam knew his stuff, no doubt about it," said Jimmy Blankenship, historian-curator at the Petersburg battleground. 'He did know Civil War ordnance.'"

Climate Change and Game Theory

Perhaps you have encountered "The Prisoner's Dilemma."  This mainstay of Game Theory offers individuals the opportunity to maximize the chances of personal reward through cooperation in a non-zero-sum outcome.  Two prisoners, the scenario goes, are picked up and charged with the same offense.  Each is offered the opportunity to cooperate and plead to a lessor sentence, or betray the other and possibly get off Scott free or possibly be accused of conspiracy and get the maximum sentence.  It you look at it rationally, players have a 25% chance of getting off, a 25% chance of getting the book thrown at them, and a 50% chance of a minor sentence. 

In the long term, the rational choice is to cooperate.  In the short term, the rational choice is to take care of oneself.   If offered this chance a single time, individuals tend to bet the house on getting off and screwing the other guy.  This is not unlike Garret Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, which posits that communal land invariably gets exploited by individuals for personal gain at the expense of the rest.  This leads to degradation of the shared resource on which everyone depends.  In The Prisoner's Dilemma,  the odds of getting doubly screwed are actually greater than 25% in the short term. If offered this option multiple times, at some point players should realize that it is to their mutual advantage to cooperate.  Choices are made in isolation, though, and so the degree to which one party trusts the other to do the logical thing becomes a factor.  If you have multiple opportunities to choose, with the last choice including a possible massive payout but also a possible massive penalty, players tend to forget the odds and the advantages of cooperation and go for it all, and with it, ensure their mutual destruction.

I have seen this played out where there were four teams and each had a representative who met with the others to decide which course of action to take.  The logical choice was to go for the minor benefit over the big payout with its potential big loss.  The problem was that one team that consistently and rationally chose to cooperate was blown away when the other three did not choose to follow suit. In the end, all lost, but the lone cooperator lost sooner.

Let's try this in a hypothetical Global Climate Change scenario.  Suppose we as individuals and governments are given these options.  We can choose to maintain our own consumption and pollution patterns or we can make adjustments to the way we live.  If you choose to maintain the status quo and I decide to make adjustments then you benefit, I don't, and our children may be worse off.  If you choose to make lifestyle changes and I don't, the same thing happens in reverse.  If we both choose to make adjustments, we experience minor impacts and our children may not experience a worse situation.  If we both decide to do nothing, it gets worse for all of us and for the next generation.

If you buy this premise, then what outcome would you expect?  Those who believe that human nature is  inherently selfish rather than collective will likely point out that there is little reason to trust others to do the right thing, and indeed there is a 25% chance that we will be worse off for making the choice to make changes while others do not (but if everyone thinks this way, we all lose).  Those of you who believe that climate change is a bunch of hooey can go along with the first group. Those of you who believe that we can be rational actors may point out that the logical choice is for everyone to make adjustment to mitigate the impacts of climate change and make the changes.  Anyone want to guess how this would play out?

Of course, this is overly simplistic.  People are unlikely to accept these as the only choices.  Some don't believe anthropogenic climate change is real.  Some live in areas which are unlikely to experience dramatic changes under current climate projections.  Some want more proof that the option offered will truly bring about the predicted outcomes.  The thing is, if we risk cooperation, do we necessarily wreck our economy, ruin our standard of living, and end up being screwed by those who choose not to do so?  Or is the wiser course to make the changes now, in the belief that the consequence of being wrong about climate change is not as great as the consequence of being right and doing nothing?

Have at it in the comments.