Walking the Berkshires

Sea Changes

I spent Memorial Day at my grandmother's home on Buzzards Bay in Wareham, Massachusetts.  This is the place where my roots are deepest, where childhood memory informs adult understanding of the patterns of wind and tide, and the many changes -subtle and profound - that have taken place here over the last three decades.  Some of these, such as the return of the Osprey for which the bay is named, are glorious reaffirmations of nature's resilience and the power of well-placed regulations to safeguard the environment.  Others, no less dramatic, have profound implications for the future of this property and the bay it overlooks.

The beach is glacial cobble, and as the northwest winds turn to southwest in summer, they sweep away our winter accumulation of sand and a new crop of pink and Grey stones emerges underfoot.  Littoral drift accounts for some of this shift of sediments, but the gradual collapse of a piled stone jetty and the breakwater offshore have allowed the sand to move more freely along the beach.  Better shoreline protection regulations make it difficult to repair or replace these jetties, but although it may be better ecologically our family bemoans the loss of sand.

There used to be a sand bar just offshore, but now it stays submerged at mean low water and there is eel grass once again close to shore.  Back when I was a child, the beach was strewn with drifts of dead eelgrass, the result of a massive die-off of this keystone aquatic plant that sustains a web of diversity from larval blue crabs to the blue-eyed bay scallops that find shelter among the waving grasses.  Eel grass decline was first observed in the 1930s, the result of a slime mold infestation, and in the 1980's thousands of acres of eel-grass died off in Buzzard's Bay and up and down the Northeast coast as a result of an algae bloom known as "brown tide."  Rising water temperatures, nutrient loading, water pollution, coastal dredging and alteration are all contributing factors, but taken together they continue to threaten the recovery of this vital part of the marine environment.  Last year in the highly saline lower Chesapeake Bay, thousands of acres of eel-grass died off, threatening the recovery of the region's blue crabs and many other species.

Today, the drifting seaweed that accumulates at the high water mark is a thick, green species Codium fragile spp. tomentosoides, the most widespread invasive seaweed in the western Atlantic. First reported in Long Island Sound in the late 1950s, it now ranges from the Canadian Maritimes to Virginia.  The impacts of this introduced species on native sea grass communities are being investigated by researchers at Northeastern University and elsewhere, but I would suspect that, as with freshwater aquatic invasions, salt water invaders are altering native habitats and the complex species interactions they sustain. 

One possible effect can be observed alongside the drifts of Codium at the high tide line, where massive accumulations of common Atlantic Slipper Shell (Crepidula fornicata) give a pink tinge to the shoreline.  Codium often anchors to clumps of these slipper shells, bringing them on shore as it drifts.  The biomass represented by the Crepidula shells is staggering, and whether evidence of a massive decline of of superabundance of this species is not altogether clear to me.  They are vulnerable to fuel oil spills, and Buzzard's Bay endured a big one in 2003.  Where it has been unintentionally introduced on the shores of the the Eastern Atlantic, Crepidula fornicata is now an invasive species.

There are quahogs closer inshore than I remember in my youth, but very few bay scallops.  One still finds the green tubes from the old offshore oyster racks that littered the beach when I was a child.  There is less beach glass, a result of better environmental regulation, but the beach still has its accumulation of jetsam.  Fishing line and six pack holders still kill birds and fish.  There are invasive European green crabs all over the intertidal zone, now our most abundant crustacean.  Not all is invasive however.  The largest Rosette tern colony in the Northeast lies on Bird island, 4 miles distant, and there are now Piping Plover nesting on Stony Point Dike alongside the Cape Cod Canal just down the beach.

Up the bluff from the beach, the raw scars from Hurricane Bob are now covered by oriental bittersweet and fast growing Jack Pine.  The woodlands along the shore are growing older, and denser.  When I was a child, the view of the water was largely unimpeded, and neighbors' houses could be seen on either side.  There are still many ceders near the shore, but pitch pine is now but a minor component of the shoreline forest and virtually gone now from the interior where it has been replaced by the more salt-sensitive white pine.  Pitch pine needs periodic fire to germinate and keep competing species at bay, and there has not been a fire on Great Neck in at least a century.  One would not be welcome, now, with all the accumulated duff and available fuel, including hemlocks blighted by woolly adelgid.  Lyme ticks are pervasive throughout the woods and grasslands.  Box turtles, listed as species of special concern in Massachusetts, are still common on our land.

Some things seem frozen in time.  My children and their 2nd cousins run wild through the yard, climbing trees and paddling boats as I did with their parents as a child.  The old house is falling down in places and lovingly restored in others, a patchwork of family labor and half-finished projects that manage to keep it going year after year.  There is nothing so thrilling as a gaff-rigged schooner tacking across the bay, unless it is two of them like we saw over the weekend.  I ascended the flagpole out on the bluff as I used to of old, astonished that I still had the upper body strength for the task, to re-thread the line and run Old Glory up for another Memorial Day.  I stopped by my Grandfather's stone on the way home yesterday, noting his fresh new flag among the hundreds of others in the Cemetery.

The more I learn about the changes in the bay, the more I believe it is incumbent on us to observe with new eyes, to note the shifting patterns and discern their implications.  The sky may be blue, and the whitecaps frisk on the water, but nothing below or ashore remains unaltered.

The Lilac Run of Shad

Spring is the season of returning and renewal.  Neo-tropical migrant songbirds arrive in New England after journey's of thousands of miles, while Monarch butterflies make the long trek north from their winter refuges in California, Mexico and Florida along with human "snowbirds".  Amphibians move to their vernal wetlands and rattlesnakes to their summer hunting grounds.

Along our coasts and riverways, other migrations as vast and significant as those on land or in the air are also underway.  There are in-stream migrations of cool water fish moving between main stem and tributary as temperatures rise. Many anadromous species, those that spend portions of their life cycles in fresh water and salt, make annual migrations upriver from the sea to their freshwater spawning grounds.  Some, like Blue Back and River Herring, may journey just a few miles upstream or hundreds of miles to the place of their birth to spawn, making them keystone species for overall ecosystem health in these aquatic systems.  The herring run in Wareham, MA, is a harbinger of Spring for me, and I marvel at the silvery fish, lined up in tight ranks across the current beneath the spillway, as they prepare to make their leaps.  Sadly, the Coalition for Buzzards Bay gives herring a marginal rating of only 5 out of a possible 100 points in its viability assessment of this species in the Bay.

Among the most extraordinary migrations is that made by the American Shad, a fish of such former abundance that it has earned an importance to the development of early America and its legendary place in American History as The Founding Fish that -apocryphally, it turns out- was claimed to have saved Washington's Troops after the terrible winter at Valley Forge. 

Shad did impact the outcome of one Civil War battle, the confederate rout at Five Forks, when General Thomas Rosser's men netted a run of shad and he, General Fitzhugh Lee, and division commander George Pickett enjoyed a shad bake.  Most inopportunely for the Confederacy, this feast kept them away from the line when Sheridan's Union forces attacked soon after.

Shad have a difficult time with the Housatonic, with its many impoundments and lack of fish ladders.  Historically, the Great Falls of the Housatonic at Falls Village was the natural barrier to upstream passage for anadromous fish.  The Delaware, Hudson and Connecticut rivers, however, have majestic runs, which in good years see fish passages hundreds of miles upstream.  Connecticut River migratory fish counts show an anadromous fishery dominated by shad, followed by sea lamprey, and just handfuls of herring and salmon.

The farther a roe shad can travel upriver before she spawns, the greater her reproductive success rate.  Female shad can produce 30,000 eggs in their much prized roe, but reproductive success is extremely low.  Shad are the primary forage of striped bass, and while among the boniest of fish, their sweet flesh is a regional delicacy.

The Half Moon Press published Christopher Letts; "Reflections of a Shad Fisherman" in 1998 in which he comments on the association between successive runs of shad and the flowering of certain species in Spring:

"As we headed for the beach, I focused on the shadbush blooming on the shore. The old-timers had a litany of flowering times that matched the progress of the fishing season. When forsythia bloomed, shad were in the river and it was time to fish. Successive runs of fish came in cadence with the blooming magnolia, cherries and shadbush. The shadbush marked the high point of the season, the peak of the catch. Then came the dogwood run, and finally, the biggest and best shad of the year signaled the end of the season when the lilacs bloomed. Lilac shad might run to fifteen pounds, more than twice the size of the shad we had in the boat."

The lilac run has passed now, but there are shad bakes up and down the rivers of our region from the Connecticut to the Hudson.  The one I attended last year in Catskill included a novel method for preparing planked shad.  About six giant bags of charcoal were laid end to end on heavy grade aluminum foil and set alight.  Shad fillets were fixed to seasoned oak boards with reversal props to facilitate flipping using strips of bacon and new roofing nails.  These were placed near the coals and turned once during an hour of baking.  The fish was smoky sweet and I look forward to experiencing it again.  Shad roe was a bit more challenging to warm up to, but dredged in flour and lightly fried it sliced fine and was quite good with scrambled eggs.

10 Steps to Better Stewardship

It is amazing how making modest adjustments in our behaviors and standard approaches to the things we do every day can generate significant conservation benefits.  Curbside recycling has been a major incentive to separate trash and dramatically reduces the amount of waste going to incinerators and landfills in many states.   The way we care for and manage land, either for conservation purposes or for other objectives, can either enhance or degrade the environment, and responsible stewardship requires that we consider the consequences of land management and adjust our approach when a better method or opportunity is available.

Here, then, are 10 recommendations for better stewardship, which you might wish to adopt yourself or for your organization, or see included in permit conditions and local ordinances in your communities.

1.  Biodegradable bar and chain oil:  There are now high quality, vegetable-based lubricants available for chain saws that are safe to use in wetlands and do not lose their viscosity in cold temperatures.  Compared to conventional bar and chain oil, these products cost $20.00/gallon instead of $8.00 and may need to be ordered by your local Husqvarna or Stihl distributor, but you will avoid spraying a mist of petroleum-based lubricant in your woodlands if you make the switch.

2.  Artificial Erosion Barriers:  This sounds counter-intuitive, but those mulch bales you see lining wetland margins at work sites are left in place to decay and often provide a rich medium for invasive plant growth.  This is especially true if the mulch bale contains pieces of Phragmites reed or purple loosestrife seeds, and unless you know for certain that the source of the bale is a clean site without invasives, the risk of it becoming a vector for the spread of invasive plants is fairly high.  Although silt fences can fail if not installed properly, when backed with wood straw, a natural product that biodegrades in about 2 years, it can be very effective, especially on cold, north-facing slopes.

3.  Real Men Use Reel Mowers:  For me, the warmth and beauty of a summer day is perpetually marred by the whir and rattle of power mowers.  The American fetish with all things mechanical plays out in our villages and suburbs in our motorized lawn and garden equipment.  Now, I believe there is a role for power tools.  It would be hard to put in much of a garden without a rototiller, and I own both a chainsaw and a power drill, but I don't use these things every day that it doesn't rain, unlike half of my neighborhood.  Unless you have a very extensive lawn (several acres, anyway) or are physically unable to push a mower, owning a riding mower is just lazy.   On the other hand, our Amish friends in Lancaster County, PA have reel mowers, and so do I.  They do 5 acres of lawn, and I do less than 1, but both of us get a good, even cut when we keep our blades sharp and they are quiet enough to use as still talk on the phone, were you so inclined (our Amish friends are free from such inclinations, but there is an answering machine in the chicken coop).  These mowers come in various models, even with bagger attachments, and the top line models will set you back $200.  You'll save that in fuel costs alone in no time. 

4.  Clean Boat, Clean Water:  Zebra Mussels and many aquatic invasive plants get an assist over "spacial gaps" from recreation boat users.  Fouled propellers and boat trailers may be easier to detect than Zebra Mussel larvae in your bilge, but regardless it should be standard practice to thoroughly wash trailers and boats before moving to a new water body.  Some recommend a bleach solution on the hulls, and some lake associations now forbid anyone from putting boats to water without a receipt from the local car wash.

5.  Keep Compost Weed Free:  Unless you are religious about turning over your compost pile every three days, it will never reach a core temperature sufficient to kill invasive plant material.  Some plants can propagate rhizomatously, or from fragments of themselves, and others are so loaded with seeds that your Eco-friendly pile will quickly become contaminated and a vector for their spread if you try and compost them.  You can leave non-woody invasives like Phragmites or garlic mustard out in the sun in black contractor bags and cook them that way, but otherwise the only safe disposal is to burn it or cut the plant before it sets seed if that is how it generally reproduces itself.

6.  Power Wash Construction Equipment Between Jobs:  What is true on the water is also true on land.  Invasive material can be moved in the treads of tires, in manure spreaders, and in the beds of pick up trucks.  A friend of mine with MA DFW noticed ATV users who parked under Norway Maples were the main vector for the spread of its seeds to the tops of mountains where seeds would not naturally land.  Invasives love disturbance, and the very small seeds of garlic mustard, phragmites and stilt grass can be spread deep into forests on logging equipment.  Power washing between jobs may be a hassle, but otherwise it should be part of the contract for a follow up site visit during the next growing season to detect and respond to new invasions.

7.  De-Icing Alternatives to Rock Salt:  Millions of tons of sodium chloride are spread on our roads and sidewalks every year.  Vehicle traffic releases pavement salt into the air, and it just as easily finds its way into soil and water.  I have seen a spring migration of salamanders burned and paralyzed in mid road after coming in contact with rock salt.  Towns and Highway departments use it because it is the least expensive de-icing material, although it is ineffective at temperatures below 20 degrees, and because their liability insurance requires them to protect public safety on winter roads and walkways.  There are less toxic alternatives to rock salt, including potassium chloride which costs a bit more but is safer for plants and pets and works at temperatures as low as -15 degrees.  There are also vegetable-based de-icers on the market, including ones that use brewery mash and corn steep water, but these are not yet widely in use.

8.  Rot-Resistant Alternatives to Pressure Treated Wood:  PT is not as toxic as it used to be (arsenic is no longer an ingredient), but it is still unsafe to burn wood scraps from construction jobs and there is still the risk of its chemical preservatives leeching out into the environment.  I would not use it to line my vegetable beds, not would I recommend it for use in wetlands.  Boardwalks, in particular, can be constructed with both natural and artificial materials without using pressure treated wood.  Trex products make very attractive and long lasting decking products, as well as 4 x 4s that make excellent supports from foot bridges and boardwalks.  Cypress and Black Locust planks can also be used as decking for bog bridges and boardwalks.

9.  Lose The Lighter Fluid:  It seems that propane grills have replaced charcoal as the medium of choice for backyard cooking, yet another example of our love affair with chrome and steel.  Those who fail to clean their gas grills in these parts may find they've created another bear magnet (see below), and frankly if I wanted to cook with gas I would use my kitchen stove.  However, I have no nostalgia for the charcoal briquettes that gas grills are replacing.  These Frankencoals belong in the ash heap of history, along with the lighter fluid that they must be soaked in or impregnated with to light.  Natural lump wood charcoal is available in my local hardware store, and while it costs more than Kingsford it has many advantages over briquettes.  It requires only newspaper to light the fire, it burns hot and imparts a smokey aroma untainted with petro-chemicals to my barbecue.  If you must use charcoal briquettes, then the product you need for ignition is a charcoal chimney starter (available for $12.99 at Sears so there is no excuse) that uses paper and radiant heat to get the coals glowing.

10.  Bird Feeder Dos and Donts:  It is the number 2 outdoor recreational pastime in America after gardening.  In Pennsylvania alone, non-consumptive wildlife-related recreation accounts for $2 billion in economic activity every year, with bird watching taking the lion's share.  Still, bird feeding is not without environmental consequences.  Anyone living in black bear country knows how attractive a bird feeder looks to a recently emerged bruin in the Spring.  In Massachusetts, nearly every nuisance bear complaint lodged by homeowners identifies attraction to sunflower seeds, even the shells, as a contributing factor.  Most bird seed is grown conventionally with agricultural chemicals and pesticides.  Bird feeders that are not kept clean (and who washes their feeder regularly?) can harbor salmonella which can be fatal to feeding birds.  Finally, keeping the feeder up in the warmer months gives an unnatural advantage to overwintering species over Spring migrants and may be responsible for the displacement of some bird species by others, including introduced species like English Sparrows and Starlings.  If you must feed in warmer weather, provide food sources other than seeds (suet, nectar, peanut butter) that are in shorter supply than millet and sunflower seeds and support different species.

There you go.  Give a few of these a try.  I've got my BioPlus bar and chain oil on order for my new chainsaw.

Scary Statistics from the Litchfield Hills Greenprint

Here, and hot off the press, are some sobering gleanings from an ongoing assessment of conservation and development trends in NW Connecticut by the Litchfield Hills Greenprint:

• Harwinton, Connecticut adds about 20 new housing units each year.  So far this year, permit applications for new construction in Harwinton total more than 100 new residential units.

• Between 1985 and 2002, Watertown, Connecticut had the fastest rate of conversion from open space to development of any community in the Litchfield Hills (+22%).   Watertown averaged 69 new residential housing units a year between 1990 and 2005.  During that same period, the Watertown Land Trust was able to save 5.5 acres a year.

• New Milford, Connecticut lost 1,105 acres of forest land between 1985 and 2002 and added 770 acres of developed land in the same period.

• Litchfield County lost 127 farms and 7,601 acres of farmland between 1997 and 2002.  Connecticut loses between 8,000-10,000 acres of agricultural land each year, and at the current rate will have no farm land left to conserve in 35 years.

• While the average farm size in Litchfield County was 119 acres in 2002, 21% of these were smaller than 10 acres and nearly 56% were smaller than 50 acres.  Connecticut has just 30 farms greater than 1,000 acres.  11 of these are in Litchfield County, including 2 or the 4 farms in the state larger than 2,000 acres.

• The assessed value of undeveloped "back land" has more than tripled in Goshen, Connecticut from $3,000/acre to $10,000 acre.

• The federally threatened bog turtle has fewer than 5 known population occurrences in the state of Connecticut and may no longer be viable here.  Michael Klemens, noted herpetologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, predicts that if trends continue, the bog turtle could be extirpated in Connecticut in the next decade.

• The town of Bethlehem, Connecticut is the only locality within the Litchfield Hills Greenprint without any local zoning.  There are only 6 parcels of unprotected land greater than 100 acres in Bethlehem, and just 39 unprotected parcels greater than 50 acres.

• A proposed luxury development on 46 acres in Sharon, Connecticut with more than 80 housing units is able to bypass local zoning because it includes at least 30% affordable units and less than 10% of the Town's housing stock is classified "affordable." Affordable for Sharon is more than $250,000.

• Between 1991-1995, Goshen Connecticut added about 14 new housing units each year.  From 1996-2000 it added 25 new units a year.  From 2001-2005, the rate was 44 new units.  Goshen is now the 5th fastest growing locality in the state. 

Read 'em and weep.

"You Have the Right to Remains": Connecticut's Roadkill Law

Connecticut, for all its sprawling growth, is still blessed with some extensive rural areas.  Although just 1 in 8 of us lives in a rural part of Connecticut, we have more rural residents than some western states.  The Connecticut State office of Rural Health recognizes 65 rural communities (out of 169 towns statewide), with fully 1/3 of these located within the area served by the Litchfield Hills Greenprint.

With all this rural land available, many wildlife species are finding suitable habitat where once they were excluded, expanding both their ranges and overall population numbers across the state.  Some of these species, like white-tailed deer, take full advantage of the edge habitat created at the interface between developed lands and open space, in numbers that are at or near their pre-European settlement levels and far in excess of thresholds where they negatively impact habitat.  Others, like black bear, just a few years ago were highly uncommon in the state but their numbers are dramatically increasing today.

Much to the amusement of some but with serious intent, this past legislative session included modifications to the state's so-called "roadkill law" to address the impacts of vehicle collisions with bears and moose as well as deer.   Simply put, in Connecticut if your vehicle strikes and fatally injures one of these animals, once the authorities have attended to the accident scene you are entitled to take the animal home and eat it.  If you do not choose to exercise this right, anyone else who wishes to take possession of the carcass has the right to take it home and eat it.

Vehicle collisions with large animals are no laughing matter.  I once - I kid you not - hit a 16-ft-long African Rock Python, full on, when travelling at high speed in a light pick up truck in Namibia and ended up in a ditch. A wild turkey took out my side view mirror when it decided to fly in front of my car a few years back, but you are approximately 30 times more likely to be injured after colliding with a moose than with a white-tailed deer.  There were over 3,300 deer/vehicle collisions reported in the Nutmeg State in 2000 - modest by Pennsylvania or Michigan standards but still representing a  significant amount of trauma and damage.  In contrast, the first moose collision on record in this state happened in 1995, and there have been fewer than 10 since then.  There have been several motor vehicle collisions with black bears in Connecticut every year since the first record in 1991, and these are probably on the increase today.

Nationwide, an estimated 135,000 deer are killed in collisions with vehicles, resulting in over 100 human fatalities and at least 7,000 injuries.  The economic costs, it should go without saying, are considerable. Nevertheless, it is still highly improbable that a Connecticut motorist will actually be involved in a bear or moose collision, and even less likely that he or she will have the necessary time and skills required to take advantage of the somewhat dubious compensation the law provides of stocking the larder with bear meat and moose jerky after totalling the family car.  These "road culls" are not preventing bear, moose and deer populations from expanding in Connecticut, but higher traffic and further road development in our rural areas will likely mean more collisions with wildlife.

Extinction by the Numbers

Scientists estimate that there are more than 30 million species of organisms - plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and protists- alive on planet Earth today.  About half of these are rain forest species, and most of them are found in the forest canopy.  These forests are disappearing at the astonishing rate of 100 acres each minute worldwide, or 52,560,000 acres every year.

E.O. Wilson in Biodiverisy (1988) and The Diversity of Life (1992) estimates that the background rate of extinction in all this diversity should be 1-3 species a year.  Scientists differ, but estimates say we are experiencing between 1,000 and 10,000 times greater rates of extinction today and that these rates are both unprecedented and increasing.  According to Wilson, in the 1970s, the extinction rate was about one species a day, or at least a hundred-fold increase above the base rate.  A decade later it was one species every hour, or 8,760 species gone extinct each year.  The current rate of extinction is far higher, with estimates that 100 species a day, or 365,000 each year, could go extinct in the first decades of the 21st  Century.

On the other hand, for long-lived organisms it requires tens of thousands of years for speciation to occur and new species to emerge.  The Asiatic brown bear and the American grizzly are subspecies of the same animal, separated since the end of the last glacial period but still capable of interbreeding.   There are some fertile hybrids out there, such as Ogden's Pondweed (Potomogeton ogdenii), which since it was first described by science a few decades ago is known from only a handful of freshwater systems in western New England and Eastern New York.  Conceivably, this globally rare organism could go extinct and then reappear if both its parent plants remained viable and promiscuous.  There are not many species with that luxury.  Richard Leakey offered the opinion at a lecture I attended several years ago that Homo sapiens sapiens has stopped evolving.

The argument that extinction and recovery are part of the earth's natural cycle disregards the pace and global nature of the current extinction event, our role in accelerating it, and the amount of recovery time the planet will need to diversify once again.  Even the great extinction event at the end of the Mesozoic Era that closed the age of the non-avian dinosaurs affected fewer species and some portions of the globe more heavily than others.

Humans are capable of responding to what we perceive and changing behaviors both as individuals and collectively.  How many of us can perceive the extinction of hundreds of thousands of species every year when we have direct experience with few, if any of them?  Drowning walruses and starving polar bears are charismatic fauna impacted by climate change in highly visible and dramatic ways.  Who sees the rainforest canopy, one of the last terrestrial frontiers and until recently virtually inaccessible to science?  How are we to turn these numbers into meaningful experience while there is still time to mitigate our role in this period of extinction?

Today is by Senate declaration Endangered Species Day.  Tip of the Hat to Lene at Whorled Leaves for the serendipitous posting.

Comes a Tide

By mid August, 1955, the rivers were running high in the Litchfield Hills.  Hurricane Connie had just pounded the eastern seaboard for 11 days, dumping torrential rains on southern New England before the storm passed inland.  After 6 inches of rain, the valley of the Naugatuck, once the region's industrial heart and still its population center, saw its streams and rivers rise to flood stage.  The saturated ground and steep sided hills were unable to absorb more precipitation, yet worse was to come.  Hurricane Diane struck coastal New England less than a week after Connie, bringing on the worst flooding in the Connecticut's history. 

Although it ravished communities from the Carolinas to New Hampshire, the communities of the Naugatuck Valley in the Litchfield Hills were among the hardest hit by The Great Flood of 1955.  14 inches of rain fell in the headwaters of the Naugatuck and Farmington Rivers in little more than a day.  The Mad River in Winchester and the Still River in Torrington, two tributaries of the Farmington, tore out the hearts of those municipalities on August 19th, leaving their downtown's devastated and killing scores of people.  The Hartford Courant did a 50th anniversary feature last year that includes extraordinary film footage of the catastrophe, including video of an apartment house carried away on the flood waters.  The Connecticut State Library archives include harrowing images of the storm damage that echo recent images of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in urban New Orleans. 

Hurricane Diane was the sixth costliest tropical storm in the 20th century, with more than $852 million dollars in damages, or the equivalent of 7 billion in today's dollars.  The regional impacts of the floods have been long lasting.  Winsted and Torrington, already declining industrial towns when the storm hit, have never fully recovered from its destruction, and although Winsted has put considerable effort into revitalizing its downtown in recent years it is far different from the way the town looked prior to the flood.

The storm completely isolated large portions of the region, washing out roads and bridges as well as more substantial buildings and infrastructure. A massive investment in flood control by the Army Corps of Engineers in subsequent decades created a series of new impoundments in the Farmington and Naugatuck river basins that have arguably saved many lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in property, but also affected stream connectivity and created new barriers for fish passage in an already impaired watershed. 

Perhaps even more significant, the shattered transportation infrastructure of the Litchfield Hills kept the region remote and isolated while the new Interstate Highway system stayed coastal and followed the Connecticut River Valley.  The real estate development and sprawl of the 1960s and 1970s largely spared the Litchfield Hills, even as the local economy stagnated.  Large areas remained open and undeveloped here for decades longer than they might have otherwise as a result of the floods.

Today, the storms of 1955 are a distant memory.  Many residents today were just children when they witnessed the storm.  The real estate and housing market continues to expand in the Litchfield Hills. Torrington actually has the largest so-called ""micropolitan" area in the nation, with a city core of about 36,000 people but affecting a regional area with a population over 180,000.  Efforts are underway to restore fish passage at some of the dams on the Naugatuck, while flood control areas are viewed as potential greenways and recreational open space.  Far more people live in this area today who did not experience the floods than those who can still recall the day when the rivers came down in fury. 

Oh, My, No More Pie

The Connecticut state budget passed last weekend and yesterday was the end of the legislative session.  The environmental community hoped that money from a $100 million revenue surplus could be allocated for open space protection, and Senate Majority leader Don Williams supported allocating up $30 million for farmland protection.  At the end of the session, not one cent from the surplus was allocated to agricultural preservation, with major investment instead going toward Connecticut's transportation needs - both roads and mass transit.

There is previous legislative authority for farmland and open space protection, but it is extremely difficult to get money through the State bond commission and there is now a long list of unfunded projects that may be impossible to conserve without increased financial support from the State.  One farmland protection project that I have been associated with in the Litchfield Hills came to a screeching halt without $500,000 in state funding, and there are many more that now are more likely to be developed as a result.

If Connecticut is serious about open space preservation - and it is a very high priority for many of our rapidly developing communities - then it needs to make the investment in enabling non-profit conservation organizations and public entities to acquire fee interest in protected land and development rights.  If the goal is for 10% of the State's land area by 2023 to be protected through State ownership, and another 11% through non-profit, federal, and municipal conservation interests, then we can't keep removing slices from the conservation pie.  It will not matter if we develop new sources of private funding if the matching grants aren't available from the state to get the deal done.  Virtually no entity, however well financed, has the resources to conserve multi-million dollar properties on its own from a single source.  There should be $10 million -certainly not the less than $4 million- in the current open space grant round, and even that is inadequate.

The more I learn about the pace of conservation across the Litchfield Hills, the more convinced I am that state financing for conservation is absolutely critical to enable non-profit and municipal land protection projects to get done.  It is greatly in the public interest to conserve open space. After all, there needs to be homeland left to secure.

Open Space at a Snail's Pace

In 1998, Connecticut's Governor Rowland announced an ambitious goal to conserve 21% of the Nutmeg State by 2023.  The Rowland administration calculated that conserving 21% of the 3.5 million acres in Connecticut (wet or otherwise) would represent 673,210 acres (although 21% of 3,547,731 acres is 745,023 by my reckoning).  In any case, at that time and in aggregate, the 169 municipalities in Connecticut contained 14% permanently protected land, so using Rowland's figures in 1998 Connecticut had 25 years to protect 224,179.93 acres, or 8967.1572 acres each year for the next quarter century.

So how are we doing, Connecticut?  Governor Rowland resigned in a cloud of scandal to avoid impeachment and subsequently served some jail time after pleading guilty to one count of "conspiracy to deprive the state of his honest services."  The economic prospects of Connecticut in 1998 were quite different from the post 9/11 economy, and state investment in open space conservation has dropped at the same time that private philanthropy for land protection has sharply declined.   On the other hand, the pace of development across much of the state and soaring real estate values threaten the conservation gains made by local and regional land trusts and the state during the the last decade.

One measure of how much land is protected each year is the investment the State makes in open space acquisition.  Connecticut established an open space matching grant grant program in 1998 that expires when the state reaches its 21% open space goal.  In four grant rounds between 1998 and 2000, 7,084 acres were protected with the help of $20.5 million in state funding.  A grant round in 2001 protected 1,564 acres in 28 towns with $8.3 million.  Then in 2002, Governor Rowland allocated 80 million dollars from a state budget surplus to protect 15,300 acres of water company land in partnership with The Nature Conservancy which provided an additional 10 million.  In contrast, during the most recent legislative session, not one penny of the State's budget surplus when to open space preservation. 

In 2005 the state announced $6.8 million in grant assistance to help protect 2,000 acres in 24 towns and that after 10 grant rounds it was at 70% of its open space goal. 

Let's consider that statement for a moment.  That means all the land protection in the state in the seven years between 1998 and 2005 - 22,215.93 acres without considering the water company deal- pushed the aggregate amount of open space up from 14% to 14.7% of the total area of the state.  This number seems a bit low to me, since the 10 grant rounds by my calculations would have produced about this amount on their own.  The state DEP in the late 1990s was adding about as much open space through its direct acquisition as the matching grant program enabled.  In recent years its acquisitions have declined.  However, if we use the state's own figure of going from 66.667% of its open space goal to 70% in seven years, it will take  70 more years to reach the 2023 goal.  Even if we are charitable and throw in an extra 3% in 7 years to account for land protected by the state in fee, the 2023 goal will be reached in 35 years, or about twice as long as the target date.

It is difficult to get a handle on the actual pace of conservation in Connecticut.  Individual land trusts may be aware of what else has been conserved in the communities they serve, but the state's open space GIS data is error prone and local assessor's offices have an incomplete understanding of what is permanently protected in their localities.  Furthermore, the 21% goal is an executive benchmark.  The enabling legislation for Connecticut's open space aquisition specifies that the state would protect through direct aquisition 10% of the total land area and municipalities, non-profits and federal agencies would protect 11%.  It is not entirely clear from government press releases against which goal progress is being measured: the state's 10% or the total 21% protected open space.

In the Litchfield Hills, the Greenprint program that I direct is gathering data on the pace of land protection in each of the 25 towns in our area over the past decade, and comparing that with the rate of new housing construction in each of these communities.  Some preliminary data shows that communities with active land trusts, a deep local philanthropic base, current open space and development plans, and a strong sense that what they cherish is threatened are doing more land protection than those without these qualities.  A town like Roxbury in southern Litchfield County has a robust land trust that manages to conserve property at an astounding rate of 155 acres/year.  It sees about 18 new housing starts a year and has seen development sprawling in neighboring communities.  A land trust in a town like Watertown with about 69 housing starts a year is lucky to protect 5.5 acres in the same period.  Warren, CT sees about 10 new houses a year and its land trust conserves about 20 acres a year, which assuming an average lot size of 2 acres indicates that they are just keeping up with the current pace of development.  A 10 lot subdivision in Warren would be considerably out of character with the Town's development trend and the current rate of conservation would not be enough to compensate for its impacts. 

Whether any of these communities feels it has conserved what is most important to preserve its character or the ecological significance of its landscape is a different matter.  For some towns, the state's 21% goal is too little, while others do not have enough open space left to have a realistic chance of reaching it at all.  For Connecticut's overall open space preservation goal to be meaningful, the rate of land protection needs to increase dramatically and the only way for that to happen is for there to be larger and more reliable sources of conservation funding, especially from government sources.  Localities will also have to consider increasing their investment in preserving open space, including open space bond initiatives for land protection in their towns. 

One thing is certain.  We do not have 35 years left to conserve what we most value about this landscape and our communities.  All indications are that statewide and within the Litchfield Hills, development is far outpacing land protection.  To reach CT's open space goal, we need to protect nearly 9,000 acres a year, while every year we lose 16,500 acres to development.

"Hi Ho the Carrion Crow"

For reasons not entirely clear to me, our part of Canaan has an abundance of vultures.  Not a few, scattered buzzards soaring high and silently over the valley, but hundreds of birds.  On late afternoons they come winging up our street by dozens and by scores, roosting in the tall white pines and Norway spruce near the elementary school.   

Most are turkey vultures, whose familiar "V"shaped wings rarely flap as they ride the thermals.  But we also have black vultures, a southern species increasing its range spreading northward for reasons that may include global climate change.  Black vultures are smaller and more aggressive than the red headed turkey vulture and have white patches near their wing tips.  Their egg shells are weakened by DDT and the ban of that toxin has prop ably aided the recovery and expansion of this species. They frequent garbage dumps - we have a transfer station in Canaan - and can make use of large carcasses.  After the Battle of Gettysburg, when unburied horses made for a carrion bonanza, black vultures established a breeding population on Little Round Top at the extreme northern limit of the species range.  They are now breeding in Massachusetts and are sometimes seen as far north as Maine.

Vultures have one of the most keenly developed senses of smell of any creature.  Research has demonstrated that they can smell rotting flesh buried under leaves from thousands of feet above the ground.  Contrary to western mythology, an unhorsed cavalryman crawling across the desert would be unlikely to attract a vulture's attention unless he had a chunk of badly cured sow belly in his haversack.

This still does not explain why Canaan is the epicenter of vulturedom in our area.  We have a few farms out in East Canaan but no more open fields and tall trees than other towns in our area.  The Housatonic River does create local and variable wind patterns that move up the valley and may influence where and when updrafts develop.  Canaan Valley converges on the Housatonic Valley in our town, which may explain why raptors riding the currents would converge here, but I'm just speculating.