Walking the Berkshires

"I (don't) want to see the bright lights tonight."

What price for a dark sky?  For a winter night when the air crackles with brittle stars, or sailing a dog watch beneath the Perseids?  For the constellations' wheeling pageant playing out against the vault of heaven?  When the only glow on the horizon is the red seam of dawn?  What's that worth?

Plenty, it turns out, to a nocturnal migrator disoriented by flashing strobes, or a sea turtle looking in vain for a dark beach to lay her eggs, or her hatchlings distracted by the glare of artificial light on their desperate race to the sea.  The ecological impacts of light pollution are still being cataloged but the indications of effects on both plant and animal species are very disturbing.  Alex Wilson has a comprehensive article in the September, 1998 issue of Environmental Building News on light pollution that lays out some of the environmental consequences of light pollution, including the following startling observation:

"In addition to death and injury from flying into illuminated structures, the daily cycles of some birds are being altered by light pollution. According to the book Night Has a Thousand Eyes by Arthur Upgren, birds that sing at dawn are sometimes tricked by streetlights: 'The British Trust for Ornithology estimates that at any given hour on any given night, 10,000 English robins are serenading a false dawn.' ”

This composite satellite image of the United States after dark provided by the International Dark-Sky Association shows most of the land east of the Mississippi flooded with artificial light.  I live in one of the few "dark" places, yet the lights on my street are unshielded and I have to get out of the village to really take in the night sky. 

The skies in Africa were like nothing I ever dreamed the night could be.  Stars of minor magnitude stood out against the firmament as only a telescope could reveal at home.  Gazing at the spiral of our galaxy edge on, the Milky Way and the Magellanic clouds spilled out like finest sand against polished obsidian.  Ghostly nebula and stars revealing a broad spectrum of color held my nightly attention at our evening fire. 

There is a price for this beauty, and in rural Namibia it is a hard life in a sparsely populated desert without amenities or food security.  One can only hope that livelihood diversification and rural development, when it comes to Namibia, does not discard this birthright in exchange for the benefits of modernity.

If sprawl is really the same as "bad planning", light pollution is even more so.  Communities can and are taking practical steps in their municipal regulations and building codes to limit wasted light and shield the sky from its glare. The community of Norfolk in northwest Connecticut is including an assessment of its dark skies in its comprehensive natural resources inventory and will use the information it gathers to inform its Town Plan.

While the windows of every other house in my neighborhood betray television's blue corpse-light, I still try to walk in awe under the stars.  When we stop turning our faces to the glorious and shivering vastness of the night sky, we mistake the flickering shadows on the walls of our caves for the universe.  Our ancestors knew the night sky in all its terrible and comforting glory.  Our children deserve stars of their own dark skies to steer by.   

Traveling the Braided Track: Namibia in My Life

Living in the desert, one learns how to drive in sand.  The shortest distance between two points rarely proves the straightest line.  Vehicle tracks that braid through the bush broaden and twine back on themselves, working around obstacles and flowing back to the center of the trail.  When the ruts get deep you relax, loosen your grip on the wheel, and apply steady pressure to the accelerator.

These have been life lessons for me, learned in the deserts of Namibia.  Fifteen years ago, I was the grateful beneficiary of a $2,500 grant from the Alliance of International Monasticism (AIM) in its annual Lenten Appeal.  AIM made it possible for me to extend my stay as a volunteer English teacher in the newly independent, southern African nation of Namibia.  This simple act of faith and generosity set me on a path profoundly shaping my life's direction and career, while maintaining a connection to Namibia and its people that continues to this day.

I was a newly-coined English major, one of the first batch of WorldTeach volunteers assigned to Catholic and Anglican mission schools during the first year of English as the primary medium of instruction in Namibian primary schools.  My volunteer year was approaching its end but I was far from finished with Africa. I was eager to find a way to continue my stay and contribute to the remarkable process of nation-building in which every Namibian was then engaged.  I was also in love with a Peace Corps volunteer with a year left to go on her contract in Namibia and whom I subsequently married.

Those were heady days during the great release that followed a century of colonialism, the brutal imposition of apartheid under South African rule and more than two decades of resistance and guerrilla war.  Namibians were discovering for themselves whether liberty meant license to do as they pleased or responsibility to build a more just and sustainable society.  Namibia's policy of national reconciliation had broad public support, even though it lacked a public process such as South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided that country for revealing and accepting responsibility for atrocities committed on both sides during the liberation struggle.

A Namibian order of Catholic nuns, the Benedictine Sisters of Oshikuku, offered me food and shelter for a second year if I would be an English resource for one of the remote communities served by their order in the far north of the country.  All I needed was money for my additional expenses and I started casting around for funding. AIM met more than half of my needs, sight unseen, without hesitation.

In all we spent nearly four years in Namibia, the last of which in 1997 on a Fulbright research fellowship supporting emerging, communal-area wildlife conservancies.  My subsequent career as a conservationist draws heavily on lessons learned in Namibia and a deep belief in the value of community-based conservation.  First with The Nature Conservancy and now with the Trust for Public Land, I travel the braided path through complex partnerships, competing conservation interests and rapidly vanishing open space in confidence born of my Namibian experiences.

There are many parallels between conservation in Namibia and what I encounter as Director of the Litchfield Hills Greenprint in northwest Connecticut.  People in both places care deeply about their connection to "place" and are renegotiating relations among themselves and with their environments.

I learned that a Tragedy of the Commons is not a forgone conclusion.  When people are seen as a part of their environment and that association is given value and meaning, they can become stewards of shared resources and advocates for conservation.  Conversely, when conservation issues are framed as a choice between people and natural resources, the environment always loses.

My wife and I were married in 1995 and we have two children. Our youngest son is the namesake of Elias Xoagub, the our dear Namibian friend and chairperson of the Uibasen-Twyfelfontein Conservancy and owner of Aba-Huab camp and safaris.  We are also host family for Burton Gaiseb, a remarkable young man from Namibia, now a college student at Simon's Rock College of Bard.  We are so grateful to those many people who assisted us when we were in Africa, and it is deeply gratifying to pass on some of that generosity to Burton, and feel the braided track of our journey crossing back to the center.

This post will appear in shorter form in an upcoming issue of the AIM newsletter.

Power Chords and Human Hearts

On President's day, I took my young offspring and our Namibian exchange student, Burton, to Old Sturbridge Village.  I hadn't been back to this living embodiment of rural Massachusetts as it was in the 1830's since a grade school field trip three decades ago, but I have carried fond memories of that place with me ever since.  The plunge of freezing water at the Grist mill, the green shutters of the congregational church on the village common, and the posts and beams of the covered bridge over the Quinebaug materialized before me from the mists of memory.  My children delighted in discovering this New World Brigadoon for themselves, imprinting fresh associations alongside those of my remembered past. 

Burton's experience was profound in a very different way.  He has been with us for more than a year, a stranger in a strange land, and his roots and connections to home are unraveling the longer he stays.  It is unclear what family he has left and what his prospects might be when one day he returns to Namibia, but even in our household -among people who spent many years in his own country and have a basis for comprehending what he is going through- his isolation is often acute.

Burton walked through the historic idyll of Sturbridge and grasped something familiar in the patterns of rural life lived close to the land.  The trigger for him was that most primal and transporting of memory's portals: sense of smell.  On the threshold of the Freeman farm, he breathed an infusion of air laced with the aroma of woodsmoke and cast iron farm-fare simmering on the embers and visibly brightened. "I know that smell", he said. 

Our subconscious senses can be like power chords reverberating through time and space that awaken long dormant memories.  Poetry and music are famous for their ability to conjure memory.  Sometimes the words and sounds of a particular time take us back to that place where we first encountered them.  Although I have been a passionate fan of Richard Thompson's music for my entire adult life, I can never listen to Shoot Out the Lights without re-inhabiting my younger self.  I am nineteen again, in the summer of my great college romance, already betraying fatal tears in the fabric.  We had discovered Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, and above all RT's music in the used record bins and the underground airwaves.  It's hard not to hear universal echos in his lyricism and the root chords and the virtuosity of his playing.   It's hard not to turn over the stones that memory kicks and see what's buried beneath.

Linguists and literary critics speak of tropes, signs and signifiers.  All of these devices are gateways to the soul, and madness and salvation lie at either hand.  There are some sensations that are so fundamental to the constructs of our core beliefs and lives that a skilled orator or propagandist can play them like guitar strings.  Inflame the passions and sway the masses.  Shell games and smoke and mirrors, boys, misdirection, mystify.  Perpetual power needs perpetual enemies.  The bible cautions this is the way of Satan the deceiver.  George Orwell had something similar to say that is as equally applicable to 2006 as to 1984.

These same power chords of being can also be great uniters.  Watch how an entire community turns out to find a lost child, or a grassroots movement stands up to the powers that be and overcomes by force of heart and hope.  Hear them in the fall of Newton's apple, in the searing light of Paul's epiphany.  e e cummings said it simply and well: "now the ears of my ears awake and the eyes of my eyes are opened." 

Power chords and human hearts.  To me they sound like Fairport before a festival crowd, arms swaying, defiant and hopeful, while Thompson plays:

"Meet on the ledge
We're gonna meet on the ledge
When my time is up I'm gonna see all my friends
Meet on the ledge
We're gonna meet on the ledge
If you really mean it, it all comes round again"

'Gaining Traction' Losing Ground

How our corporate culture loves a tired metaphor!  Try this at your next interminable staff meeting.  Make up some blank bingo cards and populate those empty matrices with all the hollow phrases and vapid jargon you will inevitably endure before day's end.  Write down "outside the box", "win-win" and the odious "24/7."   Make "re-invent the wheel" the free space on every card, and keep score with your disaffected co-workers as these underwhelming terms and analogies surface during the course of the meeting.  If you are feeling really secure in your marketability, by all means shout "BINGO!" after your boss says "brain dump" or "let's take this off-line." 

Taking pot shots at corporate speech is like shooting quail with the Vice President: with so many targets, how can you miss?   So instead of merely stating the obvious fact that lazy corporate speech is disingenuous, lacks originality and fails to inspire, permit me instead to deconstruct one of my least favorite metaphors - "gaining traction" -and explore alternatives to the business model it implies.

Here are just a few recent uses of this phrase "ripped from the headlines."

• "1st Strike on Iran 'gaining traction'  Report urges US., Israel to consider pre-emptive attack against Tehran." - WorldNetDaily 5/4/2005
• "Statehouse primaries gain traction.  44 races scheduled for May are an increase over past 2 election years"  - Indystar.com 2/18/2006
• "Minimally invasive hip replacement gaining traction"  -Mecompare
• "Goodyear's (GT: 14.61, -0.26, -1.8%) stock had been performing like a sturdy tire on rocky terrain — gaining solid traction."

O.K., that last one may be legitimate, but let the exception prove the rule.  I want to know how a word denoting adhesive friction and pulling power makes the leap from the world of snow tires and heavy machinery to the conference rooms of environmental non-profits where I often encounter it.

Is there a chapter on gaining traction in "Middle Management for Dummies?" Did I "miss the memo?"                                                                                                                                          

One hears "gaining traction" used to describe speculation that something is catching on, or has a growing base of support.  In the corporate world it often describes the process of moving a stalled effort forward or building momentum.   Used in this way, "to gain traction" is akin to the equally hackneyed "to have legs."                                                                                                                

It is curious that traction is the corporate metaphor of choice for overcoming obstacles, although "leverage" has its applications here as well, especially in getting more for less.   Drawing a load over a resistant surface by traction is an act of brute force, with connotations of tires gripping asphalt and horsepower driving engines.  It is, needless to say, a hopelessly masculine image, and suggests a masculine business model of conquest, dominance, and projections of power.  Not much place there for partnership, for synergies, for more than us vs. them.   

                                                                                       

The other physical -and metaphoric- alternative to traction for overcoming resistance is to apply some lubrication.  A bit of grease on the skids and the log moves almost effortlessly across the surface.   Lubricated moving parts expend their energies in support of each other without losing integrity.  The term has probably not gained...momentum...because of its common association with greased palms and greased mob victims, but it may also threaten the coiners of "corporate speak" with its distinctly feminine overtones.  Still, I challenge you afictionados of fat tires and big engines to gain traction without a well-oiled machine.                                                                                                          

Imagine these headlines:                                                                                                      

• "Middle East Peace Talks Greased by UN Mediation"
• "Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions Gets Lubricated in President's Budget"
• Study Shows Safe Sex Increasing Lubricity"

Now that's imaginative use of the language.

Forever, or Just For Now? Holding the Line on Conservation Easements

Tad Ames, the President of the Berkshire Natural Resources Council and himself a former reporter, had an Op-Ed in the Boston Globe on February 13th, 2006 on a subject that should alarm conservationists and conservation entities alike.  A recent case in Lenox, Massachusetts highlights an increasing and disturbing trend: landowners purchasing property subject to a conservation easement and subsequently seeking to amend or weaken its terms to their purposes, rather than accepting those under which it was initially protected.  The problem is that conservation easements are not mere temporary injunctions:  they are legal agreements between a landowner and a conservation entity intended to be enforceable in perpetuity, applying both to the grantor of the easement and to successor owners of the property. 

Conservation easements (called conservation restrictions in Massachusetts and Connecticut), have been a legal vehicle recognized in the IRS tax Code Section 170(h) for three decades, now.  They are a very powerful conservation tool, providing real protection for lands that remain in private ownership and preventing some of the worst development impacts these properties could otherwise experience.  They are voluntary agreements between willing landowners and qualified entities such as land trusts, state or federal agencies, or municipalities and require these organizations to monitor and enforce the terms of the easements in perpetuity. 

One of the great advantages of conservation easements is their flexibility.  A well-crafted easement can be tailored to the specific conservation values of a property, the goals of the landowner who grants it, and the objectives of the conservation entity that accepts it.  Some easements restrict certain development rights but provide for exceptions under specifically retained rights.  Some have as their primary purpose the conservation of working landscapes and favor agricultural or forestry activities.  Others allow public access, although this may not be a requirement of the easement holding entity.  There are well over 1,000 land trusts nationwide, and here in the Northeast there are a plethora of qualified conservation entities with similar orientations but different mandates.  A savvy landowner should be able to find the right organization to work with to craft an easement with real conservation value that meets his or her particular goals for the property.

Steven Small, the attorney who helped write the IRS code that established conservation easements in our tax law, has raised concerns that not all easements are as well crafted or well enforced as they should be.  Recent scrutiny of The Nature Conservancy and other easement holding entities by the Senate Finance Committee noted serious concerns about tax deductions based on inflated easement values, laxity in easement enforcement, and deals with related parties.  In an effort to put self-regulation out ahead of legislative action, The Land Trust Alliance is now leading the way in establishing better standards and practices and a Board of Accreditation for eligible Land Trusts.

In this climate of enhanced scrutiny, it is vital that this important conservation tool remain an effective and permanent  means of land protection.  It is highly troubling, then, to find the very terms and conditions of specific easements challenged by successor landowners and efforts made to weaken or overturn them to suit their interests. 

The Lenox example is Springlawn Mansion, a gilded age cottage subject to a conservation restriction that limits the use of the Premises for recreational and theatrical uses, keeps the historic facade in place, and requires public walking trails.  These were the terms of the original grantor, and while one could make the argument that the proposed uses of the successor would not materially impair the conservation values of the restriction, easements lose their potency and their permanence if they can be amended at will.  Furthermore, barring the public from the property is a clear violation of the conservation purpose of the easement.  Both Shakespeare & Company, the non-profit theater company which sold the restricted property, and the high-end resort developer who purchased it, knew that it was subject to terms that would not permit the uses proposed by its new owner.  Rather than abide by the restriction, the developer is making an aggressive campaign to amend it. 

The terms of conservation easements are meant to be enforceable in perpetuity.  In Massachusetts under "Article 97" of the State Constitution, it takes a 2/3 vote of both houses of the State Legislature to permit development on publicly protected land, and therefore to overturn or weaken a conservation restriction.  Perpetuity, then, lasts until a condemnation similar to a taking by eminent domain but requiring  super majority votes in an act of legislature.  According to a Mass-PIRG study quoted in Tad Ames Op-Ed piece; "40 parcels of public land have been turned over to private developers in the last 3 years."  Even if we allow for one or two swaps of interest between the Commonwealth and private entities that bring new land into conservation in exchange for allowing development where it was previously restricted, this a disturbing trend.

It is hard to remain resolute under pressure to alter an easement, but it can and must be done.  I speak here from experience.  I know just how it feels to stand ones ground in the face of relentless pressure from a high powered attorney and super wealthy landowners over a request to weaken an easement.  In my case, the concern was over less than 2/3 acre on property the landowners were planning to acquire, and in exchange for overturning the easement or amending some of its terms, they offered an easement over 17 acres of high quality wetland adjacent to one of our Preserves.  The landowners were exceptionally generous contributors to conservation organizations and seemed to have the makings of good neighbors.  Clearly they had the potential to make a huge gift to my organization's capital campaign. 

Although the amendments they requested were minor, we felt compelled to defend the language and intent of the original easement, which prohibited "temporary or permanent structures" without defining precisely what constituted either.  I and my conservation organization were willing to walk away from the deal and all the benefits it represented to uphold the principle of perpetuity, and when it finally became evident that we would not relent, the sale went forward without having to amend the easement.  Nothing less than the same, resolute stand is required with the Springlawn Mansion Conservation Restriction, and similar cases that will inevitably come after it.

Great Expectations

The Litchfield Hills Greenprint Program and yours truly are both coming off a high profile week.  We had some nice publicity in the Litchfield County Times, The Kent Tribune and The Corner Report, and there were strong turnouts for two, end-of-week events surrounding the Greenprint and my hire as its Director.  One reporter told me that saving open space is the biggest and most important story in this region.

The enthusiasm for the Greenprint and the expectations that so many people and organizations have for it are very high indeed.  It cannot be simply another planning and mapping exercise without also ramping up the pace and effectiveness of conservation and land protection in the Litchfield Hills.  Nor can it squander the good will and resources it has already engendered by acting either too quickly or too slow.  An old friend and former marine is fond of quoting the 30 management principles of the Corps, and the one that seems most applicable to this situation is to "make sound and timely decisions and aim for the 70% solution."  Take any longer any you'll be overtaken by events.  Act on too little information and you are likely to go badly astray.

Ulysses Grant, he who was so willing to expend lives and materiel at an alarming rate to wear down the Confederacy, said that it was better to act and then make timely corrections than not to act at all.  Compared to his predecessors in command in the eastern Theater of the Civil War, this was an important leadership distinction.  But Grant could afford to be profligate with the military resources at his disposal though it came at great cost, and most of the rest of us cannot.  We could blow all our fund-raised capital on a single, 8 figure land deal in the Litchfield Hills and not make a dent in the threat posed by rural sprawl. 

It will take finesse and creativity, but also nimbleness and vision, to save what is most significant about this landscape and ensure that the rural character of our communities persists over time.  It cannot be done without strong partnerships, and these need to be able to work in shared endeavor without fracturing along the lines of self interest.  It is a tall order, but it is the best hope we have, and the time and circumstances are ripe for such and effort.

"Back off, man, I'm a scientist!"

That's one of my favorite lines from Ghostbusters, along with "Whoa, whoa whoa, nice shootin', Tex!" It's also a trap for some of us in conservation, so enamored of our clever ways of quantifying nature that we cannot make ourselves understood without jargon, and so fail to make our message relevant to those who live on the land and are making choices about its future.  We have lots of information at our disposal, often remotely sensed, but our data layers are merely smears of pixels to the uninitiated.

Stand around any group of specialists for long enough and their conversation starts to sound like speaking in tongues.  I was on a bus from Santa Fe to Albuquerque recently and the IBM marketing executives I was riding with could have been gabbering in Pascal for all the sense they made to me.  Mind you, I could just as easily been overheard by those computer shillers expounding to a colleague on the symbiotic relationship some of our native orchids have with mycorrhizal fungi in xeric woodlands, but that would merely reinforce my point.  When we communicate among ourselves, experts speak in code.  When we try to communicate with others that way, we risk alienating our audience and becoming irrelevant.  Conservationists, sadly, are often better at talking with ourselves than with others.

There is another, greater pitfall associated with expert knowledge, particularly in conservation science.  We start to get sloppy.  We repeat our mantras and we forget to question our assumptions.  We see grand connections but, in our eagerness to implement our strategies, we fail to test our hypotheses.  So, invasive species lists from one part of the country become the basis for new lists in places where they may not be invasive.  Actions taken that address a symptom of a problem fail to affect its root causes.  We pass on as fact that which we ourselves have not tested and from sources we no longer remember.  All this tends to erode our credibility and makes it easy to dismiss as junk science what may be true in other respects.

Take one example from an effort to conserve a population of Eastern Timber Rattlesnake.  The head scientist on this project was concerned that the den was becoming too shady to provide the basking habitat rattlesnakes prefer.  He therefore started to girdle trees to open the canopy.   He was confident he had the solution and no one initially challenged his plan of action. Later on, however, he learned from another researcher that girdling trees above some den sites had been shown to affect the hydrology of the cliff area and the relative humidity within dens, a factor that is thought to make snakes susceptible to disease. The problem here was that ecological management was not informed and guided by the scientific method.  This was not a case of good adaptive management; it was simply "muddling through".

I once had an English professor who felt that only those who were highly trained  in literary criticism could understand the poetry of William Blake.  I caused considerable consternation in my Junior Seminar class when I said that his was typical, ivory-towered thinking and that Blake was not writing for critics but for people to hear and respond to his words.  James Joyce, perhaps, was up to something more incomprehensible in his prose, but the author of The Tyger was communicating to a broader audience.

I enjoyed playing the iconoclast in those days -still do, on occasion- and the idols I wish to topple today are the sacred cattle of our untested hypotheses.  Act, by all means, on the best available information, and do not hesitate to do so in a timely fashion.  But to narrowly pursue the path to a solution is often to miss the road entirely, and to repeat untested assumptions as gospel is not science, but dogma, and carries no weight outside the faithful.

Andrew Roraback: My Kind of Republican

I am a lifelong Democrat and an ardent conservationist.  Every two years, I walk into my Town hall to vote for my state Senator and without hesitation pull the lever for Andrew Roraback.  My community has nearly twice as many registered Republicans as Democrats and Andrew happens to be a Republican.  The fact remains that party affiliation in this case is easily trumped by personal integrity, legislative effectiveness, and visionary commitment to conservation and protecting open space.  There has been no better candidate for State Senator representing the 30th District of Connecticut on the ballot in the time he has run for office than Andrew Roraback and I anticipate none better, from either party, in the next election cycle.

I am not a single issue voter, but it helps that Senator Roraback is concerned about issues that should transcend party politics, including conservation of our rapidly diminishing open space, but often do not.  Last night, I attended a meeting in Litchfield along with over 100 concerned citizens to discuss new and more effective ways to combat rural sprawl and maintain the rural character of the Litchfield Hills.  Senator Roraback told the gathering that he believes so strongly that the citizens of his district want to preserve open space that he has introduced Senate Bill 647 that would raise the state sales tax by 1/4 of 1%, from 6% to 6.25%, to finance more of it.  This bold move would create $120,000,000 for open space preservation.  In contrast, the State of Connecticut has about $10,000,000 set aside in this budget cycle for all of its state land protection efforts.

One of the audience members suggested a straw poll then and there to test whether there was public support for such a bold move.  The audience was predisposed toward conserving open space but included members of Town finance committees and others with concerns about the fiscal impact of protecting open space on local budgets.  There was unanimous support in the room for this bill. 

Conventional wisdom says a Republican who raises taxes is committing political suicide.  In a blue state with a Republican governor but a Senate controlled by Democrats, Senator Roraback's conscience and recognition that conservation is not a 2nd tier issue but a statewide priority makes him one of the most effective and admirable people in State government.  He has never missed a senate vote, nor did he miss one by the legislature when he was a representative, in his 11 years of service.  This record is without parallel in Connecticut politics. 

He is a staunch supporter of invasive species prevention and control, an advocate for working farms and forests, and makes himself available to his constituents.  He cares about people and the environment that sustains our communities.  Andrew is a pro-choice Republican. His aunt and my neighbor in Canaan, Catherine Roraback, was one of the key lawyers who successfully argued the landmark Griswold vs. Connecticut case before the US supreme court in 1965 that made contraception widely available and reenforced the right to privacy under the Constitution. Andrew also has tremendous support from sportsman's organizations and the NRA.  Both business and labor groups rate him favorably on a majority of the issues most important to their consituents.

In a climate where the abuse of eminent domain threatens property rights advocates on both sides of the aisle, Senator Roraback opined last night that in his belief, the condemnation of land to preserve open space- paid for at full, fair market value- is an appropriate use of municipal authority.  It is a brave and highly commendable thing for any legislator to say, let alone a Republican.  Senator Roraback deserves bipartisan support for his efforts and I commend his example to politicians of both parties.  True leadership inspires confidence regardless of political persuasion, and Andrew Roraback has my personal, unqualified and unsolicited support.

Tapped Out

This winter has been exceptionally mild in New England.  There are daffodil shoots already pushing up through the soil in my yard.  There have been many warm days and cool nights, more typical of March than midwinter, and in late January the maple sap started to run.  The Concord Monitor has the story:

    "(Barry) Rock is a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire. Rock said  New England warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the 20th century and average winter temperatures rose 4 degrees. A 2001 report assessing the effect of potential climate change in New England, of which Rock was a co-author and editor, showed that between 1920 and 1960 the United States produced 80 percent of the world's maple syrup, most of which came from New York and New England. Canada produced the other 20 percent. Now, those percentages have reversed. About a third of that change can be attributed to climate change, Rock said. Demographic changes are also factors.

An unpredictable tapping season makes it difficult for farmers to get optimum collection, particularly of the lighter syrup, he said. Plus, trees need prolonged periods of cold to convert their starches to sugar and produce sweet sap, he said. Rock said the warming trend will continue because of human-induced global warming. In 100 years, he said, average New England temperatures will be between 6 and 10 degrees warmer. With 6 degrees of change, New England would feel the way Richmond, Va. does now, Rock said. With 10 degrees, this climate would be like Atlanta's.

"You know that they don't do a lot of tapping of maple trees in Richmond or Atlanta," Rock said. "

Many climate change models predict that sugar maple will no longer be viable in New England forests by the end of this century, with a species range that constricts northward into Canada.  Aside from the substancial economic and cultural impact of the loss of this emblematic tree, there would be dramatic ecological consequences from a maple retreat due to climate change.

Rural Sprawl: Spotfires on the Homeland

If Chrissie Hynde had lived in Delaware instead of Akron, Ohio, she could have written My City Was Gone about almost anywhere in the formerly rural Diamond State.  The same goes for much of the eastern seaboard within the I-95 Richmond-to-Portland Megalopolis. Urban sprawl  has a way of metastasizing with widespread impacts. It behaves as does wildfire, preheating adjacent fuels until they reach ignition, so that the flaming front of urban sprawl draws an ever expanding ring of exurban land into the furnace. 

Just as insidious as its urban counterpart, rural sprawl threatens small towns and communities across the American homeland. Here in the Litchfield Hills, localities closer to Fairfield and New Haven Counties are well on their way toward suburbanization as development expands up the Rtes 7 and 8 corridors. Patterns of rural sprawl can take the form of commercial development branching out from town and village centers, but it more commonly occurs as diffuse and widespread patterns of low density residential development scattered across the landscape. 

In nearby Massachusetts during the past decade, the number of forest land owners has doubled.  At the same time, land in forest cover dipped from 70% to around 68%.  The inescapable conclusion is that larger forest parcels have been fragmented into smaller ones.  The same is true for agricultural lands, but these are more likely to convert to uses other than farming when they divide.   

The rural sprawl that we experience in the Litchfield Hills has generally not come in the form of high-density subdivisions.  Instead, parcels of 5-50 acres in size are carved out of larger land holdings a few at a time across the landscape.  With the unprecedented rise in real estate values in this area, properties that were thought to be unattractive for development only a few years ago are now highly marketable.  Some of this land goes to large estates, but some is subdivided into multiple, building lots. With each year, the rural character of the Litchfield Hills is steadily eroded.

Land managers and ecologists are accustomed to predictive modeling, so I shall try to amplify my earlier wildfire analogy to describe the patterns of rural sprawl, and suggest ways to anticipate its manifestations in the future in the Litchfield Hills.  I'm an old prescribed fire hand, used to fuel models, flamelengths, and calculating rates of spread, so at the risk of conjuring the shade of Ross Perot, "let me break it down for you."

Sprawl in the Litchfield Hills behaves like a creeping ground fire. The wind is from the south - always from the urban south - but there are local and variable breezes present as well, influenced by topography.  The flame front is the Interstate 84 corridor in Fairfield County, and head fires are advancing through New Milford toward Kent and on both sides of Rte 8. up the valley of the Naugatuck.  There may be another, smaller conflagration to the East, but whereas Rte 8 is a conduit for southern sprawl, it is more akin to a hard firebreak discouraging the westward expansion of Hartford's bedroom communities.

If that were all that were in play, then the only thing for rural planners and conservationists to do would be to lay down a scratch line in front of the advancing flames and fight a holding action against the sprawl, all the while praying that the wind speed does not increase or fires outflank the line.  A frontal assault on a wildfire is a doubtful proposition in the best of circumstances, but another significant factor makes such a strategy an utterly futile response to rural sprawl.  When conditions are favorable, flaming firebrands carried on the wind ahead of the wildfire will start spot fires on the landscape.  This is precisely the pattern of low density rural development that one typically sees with rural sprawl. 

Spotting happens when atmospheric conditions and the availability of fuels combine to greatly increase the likelihood of ignition from windblown embers.  Rural sprawl happens when economic, legal and social conditions in a locality experiencing growth make it more receptive to this kind of development pattern.   Real estate values, commuting patterns, zoning restrictions or the lack thereof, and the degree of a community's commitment to preserving its rural character are key factors that influence how a town will develop.  It should be possible, just as we model fire behavior under varying conditions, to do the same for rural sprawl and predict those areas that are most vulnerable to this phenomenon. 

The antidote to spot fires on the landscape, as with invasive species, is early detection and rapid response.  Knowing where the fires are likely to ignite is vital for this process.  The Litchfield Hills Greenprint should be able to do something similar to focus attention on those areas ahead of the flames that are most vulnerable to rural sprawl and where it will be most critical to make the conditions less receptive to it.  Some of those areas may not have the most significant ecological resources, but maintaining their rural character will be critical to ensuring the viability of surrounding communities and the landscape that sustains them.