Walking the Berkshires

Seeing Yellow

I am really glad my job isn't to manage this public relations disaster for the Borough Of Litchfield, Connecticut and its Board of Warden and Burgesses.  Fair use excerpt from Rinker Buck's column in the Hartford Courant:

"For the past six years several military mothers here and their supporters have decorated the trees on the town green with yellow ribbons to express their support for local residents who serve in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But on Tuesday the Borough of Litchfield's governing body, the board of warden and burgesses, voted to prohibit expression that involves ribbons on trees, and that has thrown this attractive tourist mecca in Litchfield County into an uproar...

...Borough Warden Lee Losee did not return phone calls Friday requesting comment on the board's decision. Two board of warden and burgesses members, however, while declining to be quoted on the decision, agreed to describe their reasons for banning ribbons on the green.

First, the board members said, Norfolk forester Starling Childs had inspected the trees on the green and concluded that the ribbons were hurting their health, encouraging the growth of fungus under the ribbons. Second, the presence of yellow ribbons on the green might encourage other groups to apply for permission to hang ribbons there.

Childs, who maintains the 6,000-acre Great Mountain Forest in Norfolk, is one of Connecticut's best-known tree experts. Reached on Friday, Childs said that he was asked by the Borough of Litchfield in October to conduct an inventory of its trees on the green as part of a plan for preserving the space. But Childs says that he was not asked to examine the question of the yellow ribbons and in fact did not even mention them in his report.

"They must be confusing me with some other botanist, because I don't remember even noticing the ribbons at all and I certainly didn't comment on them," says Childs. "The borough should know that if they wanted a professional opinion on the ribbons, they would have to ask for a written report, and they never requested that."

Childs said that he saw the yellow ribbons on the trees on Thursday night, while driving through Litchfield, and he doubted they were causing serious damage to the trees."

Moms and apple pies are probably darting for cover in Litchfield, even as we speak.

Reflections on Ken Burns' : The National Parks

I've been watching the DVDs of Ken Burn's latest documentary: The National Parks; America's Best Idea.  Burns and collaborator Dayton Duncan have brought their cinematic eye and art to the American wilderness,  illuminating places such as the Grand Canyon - about which Teddy Roosevelt observed; "The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it." -  and ideas about conservation and public benefit that the filmmakers present as emblematic of American democracy. 

It is a powerful story, carried forward by stunning visuals and Burn's signature treatment of historic images and personalities.  Like many viewers I find it inspiring and it makes me want to visit and revisit many of these places (which will likely be welcomed by the Park Service in the face of a marked trend of decreasing visitation and connection between Americans and our Great Outdoors. 

It is also a story that embodies great complexity, with larger than life figures like John Muir who somehow outshines even Teddy Roosevelt in the first part of the series.  Some of the "talking heads" help to weave together what for the sake of the story is tempting to cast as opposing conservation viewpoints rather than two sides of the same coin. The nation's first Forest Service Director, Gifford Pinchot, still gets less than his due, in my opinion, particularly after having just read Timothy Egan's brilliant new history of The Big Burn; Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America.  Pinchot was certainly more significant as a conservationist than just as the pragmatic proponent of sustainable use of forestland that he becomes when juxtaposed to the wilderness prophet Muir.

Those talking heads without whom a modern documentary would be unthinkable are a narrative device pioneered and perfected by Burns.  I am always intrigued to see which emerges as the charismatic authoritative voice in the film, as Shelby Foote did in Burn's treatment of The Civil War.  Two episodes into the series, there are two voices that stand out for me, but for very different reasons. 

One belongs to William Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of the excellent Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England.  His is the voice of gentle intelligence and sensitivity, seeing the study of history and ecology as mutually sustaining (a perspective with which I am fully in accord). 

The other is Shelton Johnston, a charismatic veteran park ranger, a marvelous story teller whose love of the parks is palpable.  Johnston is an African American with considerable Native American ancestry who was raised in Detroit.  More than this, his background makes him a distinct minority both as a Park Ranger and among visitors to our national parks.  Not even 1% of those who visit Yosemite, for example, are African American.  As Johnston said in a recent interview:

"It's bigger than just African Americans not visiting national parks. It's a disassociation from the natural world," said Johnson, who has worked in Yosemite for the past 15 of his 22 years in the Park Service. "I think it is, in part, a memory of the horrible things that were done to us in rural America."

The rejection of the natural world by the black community, he said, is a scar left over from slavery.

"All Snoop Dogg has to do is go camping in Yosemite and it would change the world," said Johnson, 51. "If Oprah Winfrey went on a road trip to the national parks, it would do more than I have done in my whole career."

The conservation movement in America has a long way to go before this disconnect is resolved.

Burns' film emphasizes that the creation of National Parks was a reaction to the wholesale exploitation of natural resources during the final decades of the 19th century.  Yet the very idea of setting aside land for non consumptive public benefit would not even have been considered for the American wilderness if we had not already chosen to do so within our own developed habitat.  The rural cemetery movement, the development of public parks within the urban landscape by Frederick Law Olmstead and those he inspired, and even the setting aside of some of the great killing fields of our nation's Civil War as monuments to its memory, all preceded the establishment of the first National Park.

This was not the case in the 18th century, when the Common was a place for the community's livestock and there were better uses for old battlefields than places of quiet reflection.   We do not set aside land until we believe what it contains is both essential and irreplaceable.  Nor do we invest in the survival of what we do not see as having value.  Whether that value is intrinsic, as Muir would have it, or essential to our own health and well being, or both of these things, has long been part of the national conservation debate, and especially so regarding the conservation purposes, use and management of public lands. 

One thing, at least, has changed since Roosevelt's Day.  Nature does not take its course, at least during the span of human lives, completely free of our influence.  Our hands may mar without our even being aware, but they can only mend if we are deliberately conscious in our choices and pay close attention to the results of our interventions.  Having a national conversation along these lines would be a wonderful outcome of Burn's storytelling.

  

Unknown: A Local History Civil War Mystery

I came upon this grave marker recently in Cornwall Hollow Cemetery.  It caught my eye as a government issued headstone of the "Civil War" type, authorized in the 1870s for the graves of Union soldiers (and also was used for unmarked graves of veterans of earlier wars).  Given its low status position over at the very edge of the graveyard, I wondered whether it would prove to belong to a black soldier, for there were social and racial hierarchies even in New England graveyards and I often find veterans of the 29th Connecticut colored infantry in such places.  What I found instead has left me searching for explanations.

This weathered marble stone has no name or associated company and regiment.  It is inscribed simply  "Unknown U.S. Soldier".  If this private cemetery were near some battleground or a place that had seen the passage of armies, I would not have given it another thought.  But this is northwest Connecticut, hundreds of miles from the battlefields of the Civil War, and in a part of the state which has never seen a military engagement since its settlement. 

The presence of this artifact at this location raises many questions.  How did it come to be here?  Are there remains associated with the grave marker, and how were they associated with Cornwall, Connecticut?  The marker was provided at no cost for veterans by the government, but someone covered the expense of the plot, and if the soldier died far from Cornwall, also paid to transport the remains here.  

Graduate school taught me the value of testing the assumptions of every explanatory hypothesis.  The available evidence at the outset consists of the stone itself and the site where I found it, which is a matter both for the archeologist and the historian.  My initial inquiry in Cornwall has determined that neither the historical society nor the town clerk, nor the sexton have any knowledge of a written record beyond what is recorded on the stone, nor of how it came to be here.  So let us begin with the stone.

As the photograph at the top of the page illustrates, this marble headstone is discolored and weathered, consistent with other military grave markers of its time period.  It is of a "Civil War" type used for Union veteran's graves beginning in 1873, and authorized for use in private cemeteries in 1879.  This establishes the earliest date in which this artifact would have appeared at this site.  Such markers were in use until a significant design change after WWI.  This one has straight rather than curved sides coming to a point at the bottom of the sunken shield, which is the earliest variation on this design.  Although unmarked graves of U.S. veterans of from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Indian Campaigns and Spanish American War were furnished with this type of headstone, (Confederates got their own from the U.S. government in the early 20th century), this stone - because of its apparent age and the sheer number of soldiers involved - is most likely for an unknown Civil War soldier.

This is not the first design for grave markers of unknown U.S. soldiers, however.  According to this site"

"In 1873 Secretary of War William W. Belknap adopted the first design for stones to be erected in national cemeteries. For the unknown dead, the stone was a block of marble or durable stone six inches square, and 30 inches long. The top and four inches of the sides of the upper part were finished and the number of the grave cut on the top...The use of stone blocks for marking graves in national cemeteries was discontinued on October 21, 1903, and the graves were marked with the same design as those furnished for the known dead."

It is possible that this practice had already been followed in private cemeteries long before 1903, but I do not know how regular it was.  Two of the federal contractors for Union grave markers were located in the southern Berkshires in Stockbridge and Lenox, Massachusetts.  Quite possibly the stone was manufactured there.

Coincidentally, there is another Civil War connection between the little cemetery in Cornwall Hollow, Connecticut and Stockbridge,  Massachusetts.   Major General John Sedgwick came from here and is buried beneath a prominent monument in the Cornwall Hollow Cemetery, with another monument to his memory located across the road.  A branch of the Sedgwick family moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts from Cornwall, where his cousin Catherine Maria Sedgwick was prominent fiction writer.

That is about all that I can surmise about the stone itself.  There is also its position in the cemetery to consider, in a low status plot at the very edge of the graveyard.  This is not a public memorial, though it is a dutiful acknowledgment of the military service of an unknown soldier with a government headstone in a private cemetery.  I believe that while the stone itself may have been moved within the cemetery and probably replaced an earlier marker of some kind, there were indeed once unknown remains with which is is associated. 

How did an unknown U.S. soldier of this time period come to Cornwall?  It is hard to imagine a scenario where remains of an unknown soldier from the Civil War were at least partially identified such that they could be positively to assigned to a soldier from this particular rural community in Connecticut.  Cornwall Hollow is in the northeast corner of the town, but even if we consider Goshen, and Canaan/Falls Village as well it still seems implausible.  Remains that preserved evidence of a Corps badge colored by division, a regiment number and company letter would stand a good chance of being positively identified unless there were several candidates from the same company who came from the same place and died in the same place.

Blaikie Hines "Civil War Volunteer Sons of Connecticut" has a wealth of detail about the service and casualty figures for every Connecticut regiment and community.  The majority of the enlistments in this communities was in the :county regiment": the 2nd CT Heavy Artillery (40% of those credited to Cornwall, 34% of Canaan's soldiers, 53% from Goshen).  Yet even on their worst days of the war, such as Cold Harbor where the Heavy's took heavy casualties and remained under fire for days thereafter, the number of dead in these communities was very low.  Cornwall suffered 11 casualties on June 1st at Cold Harbor but only 1 battlefield death (another was wounded mortally).  Canaan lost just 2 at Cold Harbor and 2 at Antietam and the remainder were single fatalities.  Goshen lost 2 at Winchester.  At no time did these communities suffer multiple battlefield deaths from the same unit (or any combination of units) except at Cold Harbor where Goshen and Cornwall together lost three from the 2nd C.T.H.A.  This strongly suggests that there was not a situation where a group of men from the same communities died and became unknowns at the same place.

I also discount the likelihood that some private individual cared enough about unknowns (perhaps having lost but not recovered a loved one in the war) to pay for the transportation of the remains of an unknown to stand for them all and then bury at the edge of a private cemetery, procuring a government issue headstone somewhere along the way.

The only other explanation I can think of involves considerable conjecture.  It might have been that a Union veteran was passing through the area, alone, unknown in the community, and died here before he could leave.  This might have happened after mustering out - probably not as a deserter because he would have avoided drawing attention to himself identifiable as a soldier - or as an invalid separated from his friends.  He might have been buried "in a pauper's grave", and his original wooden marker replaced with government issue sometime thereafter.  It would have been a lonely end, and in that case someone did the decent thing and buried him with recognition of his service, if not his name.

I honestly do not know the answer.  But I find the possibilities fascinating.  Any readers willing to test my assumptions or offer other insights would be most welcome.

Postscript (November 6th, 2009): Remarkable what data may be lurking in Google books.  In a February, 1876 record of Congressional testimony regarding contracts to furnish soldier's headstones, I find that the contract for the original headstone blocks for unknown soldiers of the Civil War was awarded to one D.C. Sage, of Cornwall, Connecticut.  The unknown soldier grave marker in Cornwall Hollow was not one of Sage's blocks, but could have been a later replacement.

NN in the LJ

Last week's Lakeville Journal carried my Nature Notes column on our National Bird, readable here with free registration .  Fair use excerpt:

Bald eagles, wild turkeys, beaver, bear and moose, once driven from Connecticut,  have made promising and even dramatic returns.  Today we live alongside each other — not always easily — but whether encountered in midstream or in our very backyards, these species are evidence of extraordinary resilience and adaptation.  

Not every plant or animal is able to make such adjustments, and habitat destruction remains the single greatest cause of biodiversity loss worldwide. Still, the landscape of northwest Connecticut retains a wild and scenic character, where coyotes howl and eagles soar despite centuries of settlement.  

It is not difficult to imagine a time when even western mountain lions will venture a furtive paw in the Litchfield Hills as they gradually track eastward. Whether we would accommodate the presence of a top predator of their caliber in our neighborhood is an open question, but it is certainly something to ponder. And it certainly makes my heart glad to see eagles here.

Nature Notes: Stacking Wood

Apparently the biweekly "Nature Notes" column that I write for the Lakeville Journal is only available in the print edition today.  [More: now readable here with free registration] The LJ switched last week to standard rather than large sized newsprint, slicing two inches off the margin, but that did not affect my article, which those of you who are able to pick up a copy will find in its regular place at the bottom of Page 1.   As a service to those who subscribe to the Journal on-line in order to read what usually follows after my "fair use excerpt" of Nature Notes at this blog, here is the piece that ran today in its entirety.

Stacking Wood
by Tim Abbott

Stacking cordwood is the sort of task that for me becomes almost a meditation. It has just the right mix of physical exertion and mental focus, translating irregular armloads into satisfying walls, neat and square.  Like putting food by for the winter, it provides a sense of security and accomplishment, even if the wood  was delivered to the house rather than personally felled and split.  However inefficient my fireplace or how much it increases my carbon footprint, burning wood is not a habit I would gladly relinquish.  It is too deeply ingrained in childhood memory and sense of place.

My father loved splitting wood, and as children my sister and I thrilled to accompany him on expeditions into the woods, perched in the trailer behind the antique tractor.  The chainsaw was too much for our tender ears, so we stayed at a safe distance, making fairy houses in the duff, while he selected the right trees to fell, limb and buck.  The we would ride back to the house, where Dad would unload the trailer and spend the afternoon splitting logs.  We watched him swing his maul and listened for the tell-tale ping when the wedge bit through.   Then we would help him move the pile to where he would carefully stack it in cords, fitting each piece of the puzzle with a careful eye.  Whole weekends might pass this way, and we never tired of it.  My own children have the same attraction to my woodpile and take pride and delight in helping to stack it in the cellar. 

Today the woods of Northwest Connecticut are managed less and less frequently for forest products.  If it were not for a renewed interest in heating with firewood, there would hardly be a market left for our hardwood.  Certainly the real estate value of our woodlands is far greater than the value of timber.  Across southern New England, the number of forest landowners is rising while the overall forest cover declines: the result of subdivision and development.  As working lands become less significant to our rural economy, a whole rural knowledge base recedes as well.  While not only foresters and farmers have keen eyes for the patterns and processes of the natural world and keep the old skills alive, they and the lands that they manage are at the core of our rural character.

I watch the living trees as I stack my firewood.  I note the ravages of a wet summer in the blotched and browning leaves.  I see the moss-grown bark of maples and the naked limbs emerging from their summer drapery. There are fewer insects now as the first frost approaches, and the smell of woodsmoke instead of cut grass drifts on the air.  I fit each wedge of wood in the growing stack, shifting to a different face here, placing a horizontal course there, to keep it level as it rises.  Even the odd bits find their place, and all will serve, until nothing remains but bark on the floor and white ash in the hearth as Winter turns once more to Spring.

Forests on the Skids

The Hartford Courant ran this front page story today about the beleaguered state of the forestry sector of Connecticut's economy.  The fact that Connecticut still has a forestry sector to its economy was probably news to most of the paper's readership, let alone one that is valued at $500 million annually. 

The article is quite good, as far as it goes, but despite its prominent column inches it really only scratches the surface of what is going on in our woodlands and with the market for forest products in southern New England.  The part that really got me howling was the idea of our depressed oak market as a fashion victim:

"[I]n 2006, just as inventories peaked, global preferences for wood suddenly changed.  Designers, furniture makers and home builders started shifting from the rich, dark grains of New England oak toward lighter, more subtle grains such as birch and maple. At the same time, world markets were flooded with inexpensive exports, such as Russian birch and bamboo and cork laminates from Latin America and China."

Actually, these are not isolated factors that just happened to coincide.  All that cheap wood is - surprise - "lighter and more subtle grained", a market-based cause and effect.  Although if there really is an Oscar de la Renta of the forest products industry, I want to meet that person.  This could also explain why plaid is hot again this season.

Southern New England has been shipping whole logs out of the region for decades rather than milling them locally.  In the last couple of years, the renewed market for firewood has been the one bright spot in an otherwise depressed hardwood market.  There are sawmills in our area that are idle because firewood sells better than lumber.  There are fewer and fewer people making a living in the state from forestry every year - much less than from farming, even with 58% of the surface area of Connecticut covered in trees.  Needless to say, there is not a strong constituency to save family forests and small forestry operations the way there is for local agriculture.

The development value of the land far outweighs its timber value.  The economic incentive for growing old, high quality trees is gone if there is no market for veneer quality wood, and so what forestry does occur will be on shorter rotations.  The biological value of such woodlands will also be diminished, which is why the state of forestry should matter to conservationists in the state of Connecticut.

When the Terms of Victory Ensure a Lost Cause

I left the following in the comments of Kevin Levin's blog Civil War Memory, in response to a discussion about the Wal-Mart / Wilderness controversy:

Historic landscapes are increasingly rare in the intensively developed Eastern corridor of the United States. Just as habitat fragmentation reduces biodiversity, battlefield fragmentation eliminates some of its potential to inform and affect visitors and community identity. Rarely can land protection efforts realize the full conservation potential of a significant landscape, either as habitat or for its historic value. Where such opportunities still exist, it may well be a top conservation priority to invest all the time, treasure and creativity at society’s disposal to ensure that these landscapes maintain their full integrity.

How many American battlefields still have this potential? Antietam? Gettysburg? Saratoga? Not many more. And sadly, not the Wilderness.

Many, many other battle sites have not been isolated in time, where historic viewsheds can be maintained and the surrounding community becomes identified, for better or worse, by a signature event that occurred there long before living memory. If you want to interpret the site of Bunker Hill, you must contend with a obelisk in the midst of the Charlestown that rose from the ashes and a community whose residents have other sources of self and community identity. For some of us today, this is a regrettable loss,but for the generations who came after the Revolution, the monument was a fitting memorial and the idea that valuable real estate would be locked up in the interest of preservation would have made little sense.

There are many different values at play in situations like this. One thing I have learned in my years in the land protection business is that community support is vital if you want to conserve significant amounts of land, and there is no better way to derail a well-intentioned preservation effort then to let it become characterized as an imposition by outsiders – or worse, by Government – that values a rare species over the needs of local people, public land over private property, or the memory of something that happened long ago over the perceived needs of those who live there today. It may be a false dichotomy, but it can be lethal for conservation.

Places like the Wilderness are without a doubt under intense development pressure. It goes against our instincts to accept the loss of another irreplaceable acre of land with historic significance. Yet those terms of victory will ensure a lost cause.

On the other hand, there are many examples across this country, even in places typically thought of as intensely conservative and staunchly in favor of private property rights, where it is a condition of development permitting that lost wetlands and habitat be mitigated by the restoration or conservation of an equivalent amount at another location. What if Wal-Mart, as a condition of the permitting it received, had purchased for preservation another area of the Battlefield, perhaps with even greater significance? This would not have addressed all the impacts of development – traffic, for instance – but it could have been a creative solution and provided an outcome other than the zero sum game.

It would only be possible if those granting the permits, those working for preservation, those concerned about economic development, and the developers themselves were willing to work toward such an outcome. Sometimes, giving an inch is an unacceptable concession. Far more frequently, it can result in a negotiated compromise that provides benefits for more than just one side. This is a hard lesson, but one we need to grapple with before the next crisis that threatens the special places we value.

Bog Turtle Disease Alert

The federally Threatened bog turtle faces a new threat in the northern portion of its contiguous range.  On August 5th, the USFWS issued an advisory bulletin that an unusually high number of dead and apparently diseased bog turtles have been reported from four states, including New York and Massachusetts.  I received the alert by email from a colleague and the full bulletin is reposted here. 

"...The number of bog turtles found dead in their wetland habitat (2 to 4 dead turtles in each of four wetlands in NY and MA) exceeds that which is typically reported.

In some cases, dead bog turtles have been found entirely intact, with no obvious cause of death.
On several live bog turtles, a grayish or whitish substance and/or discoloration has been
documented on the skin of the head, neck and limbs, as well as on the claws. In some cases,
these appear as skin lesions. Scute sloughing and loss of claws and toes has also been observed.
Based on data collected at a Massachusetts site, the symptoms appear to worsen over time.
At this time, the causative agent(s) of the observed symptoms has not been identified..."

This is extremely troubling news.  When I was with The Nature Conservancy, bog turtle conservation in Massachusetts, Connecticut and part of Eastern New York was a major focus of my work.  The bog turtle is at the extreme northern extrent of its contiguous range in Massachusett.  The USFWS Recovery Plan for the bog turtle's northern population identies just three bog turtle sites in the Commonwealth, but two of them are considered good sites and are under conservation management.  I am intimately familiar with both of these, and know that if one has lost 2-4 adults to a new threat the viability of what would otherwise be considered a strong and vital population is in grave peril.   Past research indicates that the loss of just one breeding adult a year at these sites would be enough to tip the balance toward extirpation.

The 2001 rare species recovery plan records what was known at that time about the threat posted to wild bog turtle populations by disease (my emphasis added):

    "...At present, there are no substantiated reports of disease affecting a wild population of bog turtles, although at one site in Columbia County, New York (J. L. Behler, pers. comm) the number of dead turtles is cause for concern; eight dead bog turtles were collected during three visits to the site in 1988 and 1989 ( A. breisch, in Mt. 2000).  A sick turtle removed from that population and held for several years in captivity tested positive for upper respiratory distress syndrome (URDS) upon necropy (J. L. Behler, pers. comm.).  Although this could indicate a health problem within that communication, it is also possible that the turtle contracted this disease while in captivity.  Disease issues have the potential to become a much larger threat to wild bog turtle populations as they are subjected to more handling by researchers or if manipulation of turtle populations is undertaken through the deliberate release into the wild of bog turtles from other areas, zoological collections, or those seized by law enforcement activities.  It should be noted that thorough health screening of wild-caught bog turtles has not been a standard practice of researchers, although it may be warranted (Smith in iitt. 2001)..."

I do not know for certain whether all four sites where increased mortality and apparent disease have been observed coincide with those where there has been more handling by researchers, but it is highly likely at least at the first site where such observations were made, because very few people besides researchers even know where the turtles are or would know to report what they had observed to the proper authorities.  In the Massachusetts case, only researchers have legal access to the sites.

There is additional publically available data concerning the possibly diseased bog turtle site in new York mentioned in 2001 rare species recovery plan.  Beacham's Guide to the Endangered Species of North America (2000) identifies the respiratory disease at that site as Mycoplasma:

"...Of additional concern is the recent (1997) discovery of Mycoplasma (the bacterium that adversely affects the desert tortoise) at a bog turtle site in New York. This disease has the potential to cause significant declines in bog turtle populations. The site where Mycoplasma has been discovered has been identified as one of the best remaining New York sites and lies in a valley with additional, extant sites leading to the possibility of spread of the disease through a significant portion of the remaining bog turtle range in New York State..."

The USFWS disease alert makes no mention of Mycoplasma and instead describes different symptoms.  That is what is most alarming about this new threat.  An unknown and highly lethal pathogen will take time to analyze, let alone isolate causes and develop a meaningful response. Bog turtles do not have any time.  their populations are too small.

Consider that in 2006, a new disease affecting little brown bats in New York was first described for science. Three years later,  white nose syndrome is causing up to 90-100% mortality in bat caves from the White Mountains of New Hampsive to sw Virginia.  It has affected between 500,000 and 1,000,000 bats of several different species.  There is still no absolute cause for this disease, nor a cure.  One theory is that human activity may have been an initial vector for the spread of the fungus.

I suspect that the reason this new turtle disease has not yet been reported in Connecticut is that no researcher has been to our few remaining (and much poorer quality) bog turtle sites to check. There has not been a live turtle reported from a couple of these places in years.  I am aware that several years ago, one Connecticut turtle was found by a passerby and taken to a public beach where it was spotted by a knowledgable person and ultimately returned to the site where it belonged.  My understanding is that this turtle was later found dead.

This leaves open a difficult question.  Should researchers visit other bog turtle sites to determine whether they, too, have evidence of increased mortality and apparant disease?  Or should they refrain from doing so, given the potential that their activity could be contaminating clean sites?   The felt soles of waders are known sources of introducing the microscopic alga  Didymosphenia geminata or "Rock Snot" to trout streams.  Unless soaked for at least 40 minutes in hot water at least 113° F (45° C) - or for 30 minutes with a 5% solution of dishwashing detergent - what keeps a researcher dry may be killing the very things they care for.

Last Week's Piece in the LJ

My most recent "Nature Notes" piece in the Lakeville Journal can be read here with free registration.

"...Proximity to major metropolitan centers in New York, and to a lesser degree Hartford, has made our land valuable as residential real estate. A renewed interest in locally produced food and concern about the loss of our remaining farmland to nonagricultural uses runs up against the hard fact that the land is worth more in a developed state than as farmland, and is too expensive for new farmers to obtain.  

Meanwhile, Berkshire County is losing population. Connecticut is losing young people at one of the highest rates in the nation.

We have saved many significant lands from development but are unable to maintain them in a condition that will ensure that the very qualities that made them special will persist over time.  Without the resources to care for and steward our fields and forests, they are vulnerable to fresh degradation from invasive species and to loss of ecological productivity..."

In other news, I wrote a magazine story for the latest issue of Massachusetts Main Streets and Back Roads, a free publication and not yet readable on-line, about The Mammoth Cheese of Cheshire.  Big as a millstone and a month in transit from the Berkshires to Thomas Jefferson's innaugeral.  I'll link to it once it makes it to the electronic media stream. 

Governor, Don't Adulterate the AT

Is anyone else besides me disappointed that the staff of the faithless Governor of South Carolina lied ?  He did not, as his aides incorrectly reported, take off on his own for a few days on the Appalachian Trail.  When Governor Mark Sanford ditched his responsibilites, his family and all means of communication, the idea that he had strapped on his pack and headed for the wilderness had a certain appeal.  Who wouldn't want to shed the weight of executive power for a few days in the mountains without cell phones, without Twitter, without minders and the sleaze of politics and exchange all of this for the rejuvenation that this national treasure affords? 

To find out that instead he was betraying his marriage vows in Argentina along with the public trust is a far more believable, if pathetic, explaination.  This is hardly the "exotic" experience the Governor claims to have been seeking, but commonplace, tawdy, and utterly lacking in originality.  And for his staff to lie about his unexplained absense by claiming the Governor was behaving just like the 4 million people who enjoy the glories of the Appalachian Trail every year is an insult to them and to this great American natural resource. 

Never mind that infidelity is also commonplace in America, or that those politicians like Sandford with his feet of clay espousing family values are particularly craven.  There was no need to sully the AT along with his family, his reputation, and the public trust.  His professed love of the AT has nothing at all to do with his love of a woman in Buenos Aires.  It is also telling that the trail, over 2,300 miles long, does not include a single section within South Carolina. 

If Governor Sandford had walked out the door last Thursday, stopped in to the local sporting goods store for a rucksack, some beef jerky and a pup tent and disappeared up the spine of the eastern highlands instead of down to his Andean mistress, he might have been a sympathetic, if troubled figure.  If he had packed his rags and gone down the hill, to paraphrase a great breakup song by Richard Thompson, he might have been a failure and a disappointment but he would have been an honest one.  If he had shacked up in an AT lean to on some windswept mountainside, I would not be grinding this ax, but he didn't and his staff knew it and they lied, so now he's just another dishonest pol with his hand in the honey pot and they all need to take a hike.