Walking the Berkshires

Sumer Is Icumen In

If the only time you've encountered the oldest known example of English verse sung as a round was in your tattered college paperback of Norton's Anthology, it is probably not the praise song that swelled your breast or issued from the stereo in your top-down convertible on this glorious summer day when the sun finally deigned to shine.  Unless, that is, your long-anticipated DVD/CD copy of Richard Thompson's 1,000 Years of Popular Music arrived in the mail today, as did mine, and the first thing you did was set laser to disc and thrill to the strains of "Sumer is icumen in /Llude sing cuccu!"  If you have young children, as do I, then they were probably weened on this stuff and sang right along with you.

Richard Thompson, in addition to possessing some of the fastest fingers of any living guitarist, has a devious wit to match.  When he was asked by Playboy magazine, along with other notable musicians, to offer a list of the top songs of the Millennium, he chose to take the task literally and offered a list of popular music of many styles and genres from just after the Battle of Hastings up to Britney Spears and "Oops, I did it again" - when played in a medieval style, Thompson suggests the latter air might better be rendered "Marry, Ageyn Hic Het Donne Yt."  This was too deep for the readers of Playboy, but not for Thompson who took the project and ran with it.  He has performed 1,000 Years of Popular Music at limited engagements during the last several years.  My wife and I were fortunate enough to score tickets to see one of these shows in late 2004 at The Egg in Albany and it was pure magic.  Thompson released a CD of this material in 2003, but the DVD/CD combo extends and elaborates in marvelous ways.  If you are considering exploring this stuff yourself, spend the $23 bucks on the new release.

The conceit here is playful yet also in earnest.  This is not a novelty album, although it may well  appeal to those of us whose tastes can run in that direction. The musicianship is of a high order, sometimes utterly brilliant, and Thompson performs in a trio that includes vocalist Judith Owen (wife of Harry Shearer of Spinal Tap fame) and the extraordinary percussionist Debra Dobkin.  The effect of this grand romp through the ages is to revel in rediscovering forgotten songs and reanimating classics from the American and British songbooks.  The progression of songs and styles moves from saucy Italian Renaissance to Scottish Murder Ballads and on through the English Music Hall, Texas Honkytonk and the Kinks with the Mikado thrown in for good measure. 

One can imagine Geoffrey Chaucer nodding in approval at this secular musical pilgrimage.  If that is too highbrow an analogy, then perhaps it is more like Forest Gump's "box of chocolates, where you never know what you are going to get but if your tastes are not overly narrow you are bound to enjoy yourself with every bite.

"Sing, Cuccu!"

"When the Levee Breaks..."

The admonition to "make hay while the sun shines" is a cruel joke on farmers in the Northeastern United States this year, where there has hardly been a dry day in over a month.  There has been so much rain, in fact, that some hay fields have been cut three times already without enough drying time to bale them.   It is very hard to get even mulch bales of hay around here, while feed corn rots in the fields.  The Addison Independent reports that Vermont dairy farmers face a perfect storm of challenges - high fuel prices, depressed milk prices, and the soggy weather - that could cripple the industry.  Vermont is seeking federal disaster relief for dairy farmers who have been impacted by the heavy rains, and elsewhere in the region farmers are feeling the economic impacts of the wet weather. 

The rivers are high but flooding is quite modest compared to the Delaware and Susquehanna drainages that are now experiencing record high water levels.  The Atlantic Ocean is unusually warm for this time of year, which in turn creates excess moisture in the atmosphere and can produce powerful rainstorms.  Marine life are often very sensitive to temperature gradients, and just a couple of degrees difference can lead to range contraction and loss of viability for many species. 

Compelling new research in this week's issue of Science reveals evidence that rapid changes in ocean water temperature profoundly influence the cycling of the Gulf Stream and the climate of the Northern Hemisphere.  A catastrophic release of glacial melt water from the Great Lakes of North America about 8,200 years ago precipitated the most pronounced climate cooling period in the last 10,000 years.  Rapidly warming ocean temperatures can affect climate change in dramatic ways as well, including a weakening of the Gulf Stream with corresponding harsher winters in western Europe and more severe droughts in Africa.

Climate change predictions anticipate increased crop damage in the US - an estimated $3 billion additional annually.  According to the Union of Concerned Scientists;

"The scenarios of higher temperatures and considerably more rainfall employed in the National Assessment suggest that heat waves, droughts, and especially floods, may occur more often, last longer, and inflict greater damage to crops than they do today. Production risks include direct physical plant damage by flooding and water-logging, as well as related problems such as increased pest and pathogen outbreaks, enhanced soil erosion, and threatened groundwater quality from increased pesticide and herbicide runoff. Current state-of-the-art crop models like those used in the National Assessment do not fully capture yield reductions due to increased climate variability and related disturbances. Once these effects are fully incorporated into the models, it is expected that the projections of future US crop yields under climate change could be significantly lower than currently estimated."

Climate Change is real and the activities of our species are accelerating its impacts.  This crisis demands leadership at the highest levels and particularly from the national government, which after all is charged by no less authority than the US Constitution with promoting the general welfare and securing "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

Environmental Downturn

The Danbury News-Times  describes the Connecticut Council on Environmental Quality's report on conservation trends across the state as "a green thumb down".  After years of slow but steady improvement in air and water quality, the Council described the state's open space conservation efforts as "off track", air quality in decline, and most other environmental quality indicators either static or losing ground.  This notably downbeat report is all the more remarkable because the Council on Environmental Quality is a state agency that monitors environmental trends and makes recommendations for improving environmental policy.  This is not a critique from some outside green group but a poor report card from within.

Readers of Walking the Berkshires have read about these same downward trends here, here, and here and learned of the work of the Litchfield Hills Greenprint to address them in Northwest Connecticut here.  The Council on Environmental Quality's full report highlights several key factors contributing to this environmental downturn, among them the following:

Development patterns are out of harmony with the state's natural landscape and the character of its communities. "Clearly, many of the state's environmental challenges require fresh attention, and none is so challenging as the current pattern of development. The solution is not clear, but the consequences of doing nothing are."

Land is the key- The conservation rate has slowed while development accelerates.  State funding is for conservation and land protection is both inadequate and reduced. 

We are losing forest land faster than it regenerates and farmland at an alarming rate.

This state report is a wake up call to public officials and state leaders that Connecticut is falling behind on improving environmental quality, and without redoubled its efforts, risks losing clean air, fresh water, rural landscapes and livable communities.  Not one red cent was allocated from last year's over $900,000 million budget surplus to conserving open space.  That is one trend  that cannot continue.  The state's goal of 21% protected open space across Connecticut by 2023 is not only off track, it is derailed (and if you think the transportation metaphor misplaced, recall that transportation infrastructure was the big winner in carving up the latest budget surplus).  Better planning and better conservation action go hand in hand, and it is high time for the state of Connecticut to step up and join with those forward thinking localities, planners and non-profits who are bearing the brunt of maintaining what is most significant about our landscapes and communities.

Eye of the Beholder

The Berkshire and Litchfield Hills are a sodden, mossy shade of green after a prolonged period of extremely wet weather.  My garden is growing the most extraordinary and vile mass of mold and fungi among the spinach greens, and the sun is notable by its absence.  Friends in the arid West would give their eye teeth for a fraction of the precipitation to which we've been subjected, but that is cold comfort for many in these parts.  Spoiled carnivals and wet weekends do not a summer make.

So on a day that began with a deluge and with a thick blanket of stratus clouds threatening perpetual rain overhead, I fantasize about the rare and wonderful beauty of this landscape throughout the year, the hidden gems and ephemeral pleasures beyond this monotonous gray.

Autumn is our crowning glory, a blaze of crimson and scarlet, russet and gold as first the red maples and poplars, then the sugar maples and ash, and finally the oaks and tamaracks join the grand pageant of the season.  The low angle light on a clear fall day is achingly lovely, and when it strikes a stand of tamaracks, tawny needles a quiver against a dark and threatening sky, it has all the high drama of a Wagnerian score.

Yet just as dramatic but altogether softer and ethereal are our woodlands when the Mountain laurel is in full flower, as they were last week.  A pale wash of white and pastel pink drifted below the canopy of our our forested uplands, nowhere quite so impressively as on the Taconic Plateau where an unbroken wall of laurel hovered between root and treetop.  There is no finer time to wander these hills than a rare day in June when the laurels are in bloom.

Deep in the cool of a hemlock ravine, wood thrush warble and water pours through clefts in the rock on the downward plunge to the valley floor.   Fingerling trout dart in the shadows, and ledges drip with wall rue and maidenhair beside the cascade.  On a sweltering day the ravines are naturally air conditioned and their secluded pools enticing for a bracing dip.

The long, sluggish oxbows of the upper Housatonic coil past cattle ruminating on the banks.  The water eddies at the confluence of main stream and tributary, gumming the riverbank where it undercuts willow and cottonwood.  A few, lazy miles of this meandering and then the quick rush into the gorge and it frolics over riffle and rapid.  Under the covered bridge and swirling around fly fishermen thigh-deep in the current, the river tumbles over the stones and down toward the sea.

There is also that delicious whisper of August wind in the early evening, flowing gently over the meadow grass and under the big maple where our hammock swings.  All is back-lit as twilight gathers, the nodding heads of sunflowers and the garden fat with tomatoes at the fence row.  My children and I rock in that sweet summer breeze, the drone of cicadas already heralding the approach of autumn.  There are still fairs to attend, a week or two before school begins, and yet there is that tranquil expectancy of the wheel about to turn, like the gravity arch at the top of the rope swing when you hang in the air above the dark water for a delirious instant.

The first snow that glazes the mountain tops but only nips the low places with frost may come in October or wait until all the leaves are gone.  A heavy snow will bend the trunks of birches nearly to the ground, and draw a fir's branches down like skirts at its base.  A bitter freeze without snow can mean black ice on the pond, the fastest, smoothest skating surface the winter world has to offer.  The stillness of snow falling through trees on a moonlit night was made for cross-country skis or just standing still and marveling.

These seasonal offerings, these exquisite feasts for the senses, are latent possibilities when fate and spirit conspire to reveal them.  The sun will shine, and the seasons turn, and this reverie manifest in the wide world around.

Can You Spot the Anachronism?

The air is thick with power smoke and the heat of mid-afternoon.  McLaws' confederate division surges across into the Wheat Field, into the Peach Orchard, and drives the Union III Corps back into...dense thickets of Japanese barberry, where the charge collapses in a tangle of thorns.  Until a few years ago, if you stood at this historic part of the Gettysburg battlefield, you would have been hard pressed to imagine the landscape as it was on that day, because invasive species had dramatically altered its former farm fields and fence rows beyond recognition.

Invasive plants have many acknowledged environmental and economic impacts, but in historic places like Gettysburg they can also threaten our cultural heritage.

Consider this image, a painting by acclaimed Civil War historian and artist Don Troiani who is one of the great masters of military art and nearly fanatic about historic accuracy.  He does not dress his models in reproduction uniforms but in items from his vast collection of original clothing, weapons and accouterments.  He demands that his models have 19th century physiques and facial features (no reenactors with waists over 32 inches need apply).  He pores over historic photographs and visits the sites of the events he depicts to ensure that the perspectives and terrain are as close to what was there at the time as possible.

Yet for all this extraordinary attention to detail, Troiani has painted an anachronism in this marvelous scene entitled "Retreat by Recoil", which shows Bigelow's 9th Massachusetts Battery on the verge of being overrun by a brigade of howling Georgians.  There in the lower right corner, in among the field stone, is a spiky shrubby form that can only be Barberry.  Now Berberis vulgaris or common barberry was certainly introduced to North America prior to the Civil War, but because it harbored a wheat rust it was aggressively rooted out and fines were imposed in some states for those who allowed it to remain on their properties.  This scene is at the Trostle farm, not far from Gettysburg's bloody Wheat Field, and so it is safe to assume that Troiani painted what he saw at the site - Berberis thungbergii, or Japanese barberry.

The problem is, Japanese barberry was first introduced at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston in the mid- 1870s from seeds collected in St. Petersburg, Russia.  Gettysburg, you will recall, was fought on three days in July in 1863.  Troiani has painted an extremely realistic and accurate study of the men and uniforms of the period, but unwittingly, an invasive species has been introduced to the historic flora of the site before its time.

Only a Civil War buff and invasive species expert could have made this connection, perhaps, but that is what is so insidious about the cultural impacts of invasive species.  Without our being aware, they so insinuate themselves into our landscapes and waterways that we become accustomed to their presence, even forget that they are naturalized and not part of our native ecology.  The green crabs I hunted for under rocks at my grandparents' home in Buzzard's Bay are invasive, as are the meadows of Loosestrife in the Millbrook Marsh where I spent many a delightful childhood hour mucking about in swamps.  Gettysburg with barberry is not the historic landscape it seeks to preserve and robs us of our shared heritage.

It is very hard to remove vegetation and kill animals within National parks.  The mandate for historic preservation also encompasses protecting the entire flora and fauna of these places as well, and until the threat of invasive species was widely recognized it was difficult for land managers to get authority to control these plants on National park lands.  The current leadership at Gettysburg Military Park is committed to both ecological and historic reclamation and has done a tremendous job removing barberry and other invasive plants, as well as restoring the slopes of Little Round Top to their open condition at the time of the battlefield.  Now as one stands where the 140th and 146th NY (my gr-gr-step grandfather among them) pushed back the confederates from the summit, it is an open slope rather than the deep forest to which it had succeeded that lies in view. 

I believe these steps are tremendously important at a site that is meant to convey a static moment in time, and commend the park Service and leadership for following this policy.  Now, as Wofford and Barksdale and Kershaw and the rest press on against the wavering blue lines of memory, they are met as of old with bayonets of steel rather than the thorns of barberry.

update (7/7/226):  You can see a close up of the offending plant in a follow up post here.

"Don't Know Much About Forestry"

Associate Supreme Court Justice (and Hotchkiss School graduate) Potter Stewart's quip that "hard-core" pornography is hard to define but "I know it when I see it" could equally apply to many people's view of logging and forestry in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills.  Many residents who would not presume to tell a local dairy farmer that his farming practices are unsustainable and causing environmental degradation feel differently about timber harvests.  We quite rightly rally to support the farms which are emblematic of the working landscape of rural New England and yet are increasingly non-viable, but there is little call for - or understanding of - policies that would promote high quality, sustainable silviculture and better forest management. 

Forestry in southern New England today is the orphan stepchild of agriculture, and like many orphans suffers from loss self-esteem, low-expectations, neglect and abuse.  My friend "The Forestmeister" pointed out an article in Saturday's Berkshire Eagle about public reaction to a proposed forest management operation on state land in Becket, Massachusetts.  The story illustrates so many of the values and attitudes that are so often at odds when it comes to forestry decisions in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills that it prompts closer scrutiny.

The land in question is along Buckley Denton Lake, about 60 highly visible acres within October Mountain State Forest: itself one of the the largest contiguous blocks of forest held and managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.  According to the article, the Commonwealth put a cutting plan out to bid for winter harvest that calls for a 30-40% reduction of forest cover - a selective harvest of about 800 "low quality trees"- to improve overall timber quality in the affected stands.  Local residents and abuttors have responded angrily to DCR's plans, citing concerns about another timber harvest on nearby state land.  "Why did they make such a mess down the road?" one resident asked.  "That land looks like it was raped."

Before going into the relative merits of the arguments for and against what DCR has in mind for the forest around Buckley Denton Lake, it is worth pausing to consider the overall state of the forestry profession and of forestry awareness in the communities of southern New England.  I am a loss as to how to say this charitably, so at risk of giving unintended offense let me say without reservation that the former is a shambles and the latter is poorly informed and can give rise to mis-guided reactions. 

Although the Commonwealth has sought and received provisional Green Certification for all its nearly 500,000 acres of state forest lands, the quality of stewardship and forest management on both private and state properties leaves much to be desired.  The discredited and destructive practice of high-grading - removing all the valuable timber and leaving nothing but junk as replacement trees - is still permissible in Massachusetts.  Cutting plans can be filed by those who are not licensed foresters, devaluing the forestry profession and resulting in landowner driven, rather than forest-driven decision making.  The Society of American Foresters code of ethics does not mandate that member foresters disassociate when a landowner insists on harvesting unsustainably, although The Forest Guild does.  Short-rotation harvests and liquidation cuts are common despite state efforts to educate the public.  There are also unscrupulous loggers who bilk landowners out of the true value of the timber they harvest. 

This sorry state of affairs is allowed to continue because there is little public awareness of the issue and corresponding public outcry for forestry reform.  Although Massachusetts has about 68% forest cover, during the last 20 years the Commonwealth has actually lost more forest land to development than it has regenerated. There are twice the number of forest landowners in Massachusetts than just a decade ago, meaning that forest parcels are smaller and forest management - if any - is more likely to be based on the objectives of the property owner rather than the needs of the forest system.

Even in forestry circles, there are profound disagreements about what policy changes are required for meaningful forestry reform.  Rather incredibly, some DCR officials remain unconvinced that forest species composition as well as stand structure should be addressed in forest management plans.  Nor does DCR believe that it can fully eliminate liquidation cutting and high-grading from all forest cutting plans approved by state foresters on private land.  There is contentious debate over whether anyone besides a licensed forestry professional should be able to file a forest cutting plan, giving rise to jeers from some reform-minded foresters that you wouldn't go to an unlicensed surgeon to have your appendix out or hire an unlicensed electrician to wire your house.

Policy is meaningless if it is incompatible with the values and attitudes of the governed.  Regulations are just paper if there is no will to enforce them. Forestry reform will not occur without an informed and vocal electorate calling for change and demonstrable leadership by policy-makers and their constituencies on this issue.

Massachusetts is a referendum and initiative state: a more democratic process, perhaps, than others but prone to poorly-informed policy-making directly from the electorate without a clear understanding of its consequences.  In 1996 a ballot measure passed in Massachusetts with broad support from the populous, urban eastern region and from several major environmental organizations that banned leg hold traps for fur-bearing animals.  The intentions of the measures sponsors were to address concerns over cruelty to animals.  It also removed the only practical means of managing the Commonwealth's already robust beaver population, which in consequence tripled in the span of a few short years without meaningful checks on its growth.  Trapping all but died out in Massachusetts, and the preferred means of dispatching a live-trapped beaver is still to drown it: hardly a humane measure.

State officials and those with regulatory authority are, as a rule, ill-equipped to address concerns from local residents about the impacts of their decision-making.  The Berkshire Eagle reporter could hardly hide her disdain when describing the arrival of DCR Chief Forester Jim DiMaio and his subsequent engagement with the citizens of Becket who opposed the state's plans for Buckley Denton Lake:

"During the meeting, the state's chief forester, James DeMayo, showed up after a drive from Boston and took over a discussion he thought was contentious. After admonishing everyone to behave respectfully, he said that the state has spent "millions" to become certified as practicing forestry under strict standards."

There is a long history of smoldering, nearly secessionist resentment in the Berkshires over the power of Boston, and a not-entirely misplaced mistrust of its intentions.  People are quick to assume the worst of state officials and those who were not elected to represent their own interests.  Considered on its merits, the Commonwealth's proposed timber stand treatment at Buckley Denton Lake sounds reasonable to one with more than a passing knowledge of forestry, but what residents see and value are trees, whatever their condition, and the illusion of a pristine Lake.  These are incompatible values and will conspire to create friction and local resistance unless jointly addressed and considered.

A great deal of Massachusetts forests is without forest management of any kind.  Some of these areas are justifiably set aside as ecological reserves - nearly 100,000 acres in this status are proposed on FSC certified state lands.  The remainder can and should be considered for other purposes, including high quality silviculture.  The Commonwealth wants to increase timber harvests on state lands and many, both in the environmental community and local residents, are concerned such logging be of the highest standard and that the state may not have the desire or capacity to ensure that this is so.  Justification for early-successional habitat creation deserves particular attention, as it is unclear that Massachusetts forests should have substantially more young trees and open habitat than they do today to maintain native species diversity, whatever benefits there may be for grouse and grassland birds that were never common here in pre-European settlement times.

At the same time, residents of the Berkshires and Litchfield Hills need a better appreciation of high-quality siliviculture, not only to distinguish good from bad, but to value forest management that will sustain our woodlands as important parts of the regional ecology and rural economy.  Most of the region's forest lands are in private ownership and without permanent protection.  If they have no value as working forests in a time of elevated land values, they are more likely to convert to development.  If they are managed heedless of the ecology of the forest system, they will be ecological sinks and blights on the landscape instead of the dynamic, highly functional woodlands they could be. 

Environmentalists need to have a better understanding of forestry, where it is ecologically as well as economically valuable and what reforms are needed to realize its full potential.  Government officials need to be better listeners and communicators and approach their mandates with openness and humility if they wish the support for their policies of those who live on the land. Rural residents need to be able to see beyond the short-term aesthetic impacts of a well-managed timber harvest and the permanent scarring and damage caused by a lousy one - and demand the former.

Foremothers

I come from a long line of extraordinary women.  As the family archivist I am constantly astonished at what these women thought, and did, and preserved the memory of through the years. 

The silhouette at left is Phoebe Hatfield (1720-1796) , the wife of Robert Ogden, Jr. of Elizabeth and later Sparta, New Jersey.  The Ogden nose is immediately recognizable and has reappeared regularly in her progeny of either gender until at least my grandmother's generation.  She had 22 pregnancies and bore 14 children, 9 of whom lived to adulthood: numbers that are incomprehensible in this age but were an accepted part of life in the 18th century.

Phoebe's youngest daughter, Hannah Ogden, was a girl of 18 in 1779 when she wrote a remarkable letter that survives in our family papers.  Corresponding with a close female acquaintence, she displays a playful wit and shares thoughts on the course of the war, concern for absent friends and family off with the New Jersey regiments, and scandalous gossip of fellow Elizabethtowners.

"The Girls here Look upon the Command increse (sic) and multiply as very asential (sic) to happiness as they are all increasing; Mrs Pollack is return'd has Left behind her Daughter The Poor Little Wretch is as yet Fatherless through the Delicacy of her Mother, who declines mentioning the amorous Youth who intic'd her to betray her Virtue...Our neighbors the British are rather troublesome but do us no material damage."

Letters from Hannah Ogden to her brother Col. Matthias Ogden of the 1st NJ Line are mentioned in Wheeler's Ogden Family Genealogy, but this one example is all that our branch of the family has preserved of her writing.  She lived with her parents after the Revolution in Sparta, New Jersey and died unmarried at 28.

The men in our family have at times been trials to their long suffering mothers.  Imagine how my gr-gr-gr-gr-great grandmother, Sarah Gilmore Olmsted must have felt to come downstairs one fine morning in the 1820s only to discover the following waiting for her with the breakfast toast:

"Dear Ma-

        You will no doubt be surprised at not finding me in the house this morning; but the cause is I am requested to act as second in an affair of honour, which is to take place this morning near Chester [PA].  We leave here at 7'o'C in a hack and shall probably return between 11 & 12 o'clock - You need be under no apprehension fear as to the result for no injury will be done to Either party, as they fight with swords and are both inexperienced in the use of the weapon -

           Yours,  E. Olmsted"

Edward Olmsted, at least, came through the encounter unscathed and went on to be a noted attorney in Philadelphia, but on the subject of how his poor mother fared the archives are silent.

Family names endure in our tribe, and for one we have a precise record of which foremother named Margaret gave rise to the rest.  A bit of genealogical doggerel from my Great Grandmother Margaret "Madge" Olmsted written in 1933 sets the record straight: 

From Scotland George Ross sailed away / To far off Delaware

In New Castle he settled / And long was rector there.

Joanna Williams was his wife / And children six she bore

The second one was Margaret / of whom you've heard before.

                 She married a young parson / but ere long he was dead

                 Then William Currie courted her / And soon the two were wed.

To St. David's Church at Radnor / Young Currie took his bride

And wrote a touching epitaph / when, after years, she died.

They had a son named Richard / and Hannah Potts he wed

Their daughter, Margaret Currie / was to the altar led

By Mr. Thomas Walker / Of Chester Valley fame

And their son, William Walker / wed a fair Quaker dame

Called Sarah Pennypacker / She many children bore

Among them that dear Margaret / Whom all of us adore.

Our own beloved "Dear Ma" Stearns / whose name is yours

and mine

You see the way that Margaret / Has come down through our line.

Thus antique names have modern lives. The name Margaret

has continued on for three generations further,  passing from

mother to daughter and down the collateral branches

of our family tree.    "Esther" has another proud lineage, from Esther Rogers Gracie whose Manhattan estate is now the mayor's official residence to my Gr-great Aunt Het the Suffragist, but there is no bit of playful rhyme as with Margaret to aid the genealogist.  The women in my family who gave up their family names preserved their own stories, and we much the richer for it.

 

Conservation by Computer in the Litchfield Hills

  The Litchfield Hills Greenprint has released an locally-driven assessment of conservation priorities, land protection trends and development threats across 25 towns in Northwest Connecticut.  The Danbury News Times and Waterbury Republican newspapers gave prominent coverage of the Greenprint's map and data release in June 23rd's editions and most local news outlets are interested in featuring the story.  As the director of the Greenprint, I find the extremely positive public response to what we have shared deeply gratifying, but also essential if these maps and figures are to be meaningful and able to inspire an increase in both the pace and quality of land protection by many conservation interests and municipalities across the Litchfield Hills.

Getting to this point has been a true collaboration.  Towns, land trusts, state agencies, planners and private citizens willingly shared their time and information and helped markedly improve the model we constructed to aggregate all this data and spatially represent the most significant resources for conservation.  Unlike some information gathering tools that have information flowing all in one direction, the Litchfield Hills Greenprint is meant to be both relevant and responsive to local values and attitudes. The conservation priorities our predictive model suggests are not tied to any one organizations mandate or funding source, but help us collectively better understand what we individually already know and recognize the patterns and processes that make this landscape and our communities so special and influence conservation and development activity across this region.

New Englanders, conventional wisdom holds  are a fractious bunch, often defining themselves in contrast to their neighbors.  Regional planning is viewed in many communities with suspicion and in Connecticut is particularly under-resourced.  Yet even the most insular of communities in the Litchfield Hills have started to realize that the threats they face individually are greater than themselves and what happens down the road in the next town may profoundly influence life in their own.  The Greenprint data, a regional perspective reflecting issues of deep local interest, has been greeted with astonishment and enthusiasm in town after town and folks are hungry for more.

We are still sifting through the results of this assessment, but some fascinating information and trends have already emerged.

• The 25 towns of the Litchfield Hills Greenprint area comprise 571,666 acres.  20% of these is permanently protected open space.  This compares to less than 15% statewide but is still below Connecticut's goal of 21% of the state in permanent conservation by 2023. If each acre conserved were of equal conservation value, one might conclude that we should focus our land protection work in areas of the state with less conservation land than the northwest corner, but the fact is that this region has far more conservation value than many parts of the state.  75% of the region has forest cover, compared to 60% of Connecticut as a whole.  There is more land in agricultural use in Litchfield County than anywhere else in the state.  More than 90% of the Litchfield Hills Greenprint area has significance for preserving water quality.  1/4 of the state's biodiversity is concentrated here.
• The Greenprint assessment of those attributes of the Litchfield Hills and its communities that with conservation value determined that nearly 50% of the total land area has conservation importance.   Some of that significant land is in permanent protection, leaving a bit more than 200,000 acres in play, or about 35% of the total land area of the Litchfield Hills.  That's a lot of land, and some of it will certainly be developed and may even be able to be developed without compromising the conservation values of those properties.  Some of our communities have significant percentages of their towns in permanent protection, but almost without exception these are also places with large amounts of unprotected land still of conservation importance.  In contrast, there are communities in the Litchfield Hills with 15% or less protected open space.  New Milford has 8.2%.  Bethlehem has 4.5%.
• Nearly 73% of the lands already protected were identified as having conservation significance according to the model criteria developed by the Litchfield Hills Greenprint.  Because protected status was not a criterion for determining conservation importance, there appears to be a strong correlation between what people told us they value and would like to see conserved and what actually has been protected to date.  It is also possible that conservation areas that have been spared development impacts for a long time will develop better habitat qualities, scenic and recreational opportunities, etc and would therefore would emerge as significant resources.  Even so, we are doing far less good a job protecting some of the important conservation resources of this area than others.  We have 85,549 acres of farmland cover in this area, and only 1/7 of these fields and pastures are permanently protected.  We lose farmland more rapidly here than any other landcover type. 
• We have protected less than 20% of our riparian corridors and only 25% of the natural areas along our major rivers.  Less than 14% of our prime agricultural soils are protected, and much of what remains is in areas highly threatened by development.

While is is extremely useful to be able to spatially represent areas of conservation value, it will also be extremely important to anticipate where the development threats are greatest.  Understanding the patterns of rural sprawl has been a keen interest of mine, and the existing models did not adequately represent what we believe is driving development pressure in the Litchfield Hills.  Therefore, this program has developed a new conceptual model to predict two types of development with conservation impacts : large parcels divided and developed with multiple residences and intact natural areas fragmented by inappropriate development and poorly sited infrastructure.  We constructed the model using parcels greater than 100 acres -we had these parcel layers for every town in the Litchfield Hills - and unbroken natural areas greater than 200 acres.  We looked at desirability factors in each town , factors that placed the specific parcel or natural area at risk of development, and building constraints. The results are brand new and will undergo peer review and refinement, but the most fascinating and compelling finds are that when the areas of greatest development and habitat fragmentation threat are merged with the areas of conservation significance, it highlights about 2.5% of the total area of the Litchfield Hills as likely places for conservationists to focus their land protection efforts before they go on the market. 

There is much to do, but we now have a powerful tool, reflecting local values and attitudes and using locally-derived data, that can help ensure that the ecological qualities of this landscape and the unique character of its communities will endure for generations to come.  The task for all of us working in land use planning and conservation across the Litchfield Hills is to turning this powerful assessment tool into sustained and coordinated action.

Concrete Jungle

Bootstrap Analysis has an extraordinary post this week on finding the urban prairie in blighted Detroit. The vacant lots, rank with weeds and rubble, that the author explores as an urban ecologist are astounding examples both of the catastrophic collapse of human communities and the habitat adaptations that wildlife can sometimes make in the face of massive, unnatural disturbance.  The author provides a contemporary satellite image of one such area, along with an aerial view of the same neighborhood from 1961,  and the contrast could not be more striking.  The elms that once shaded children at play and neighbors chatting on front steps are long gone, and race riots, poverty, drugs and chronically under-resourced city budgets have left a desolate, ruined landscape.

Yet life remains.  Our urban environments, even the most neglected and inhospitable, still provide habitat for more than rats and roaches.  Coyotes are able to negotiate urban spacial gaps to occupy Manhattan's Central Park.  Peregrines nest on the ledges of skyscraper windows.  Migrating birds pause in the feral green of abandoned lots and neglected places across the urban landscape.  It is a small consolation, perhaps, and hardly mitigates the horrendous decline of the inner city and the plight of its residents.  Still, there is more of conservation value beyond city parks and wealthy suburbs, when there are eyes to see.

My friend and former colleague on the Massachusetts Invasive Plant Advisory Group, Dr. Peter Del Tredici of Boston's Arnold Arboretum, has written recently about urban ecology and the value of plants in urban habitats for wildlife and people alike.  Writing in the February edition of Landscape Architecture, Del Tredici identifies a disconnect between the advocates of ecological restoration using native plants to replace invasive ones and the nature of urban environments:

"Regardless of how we feel about the unique assemblages of plants that populate our sprawling cities, they have become the de facto vegetation of the urban environment.  As such, we need to acknowledge that they are actually performing significant ecological functions, including water and air filtration, heat absorption, mineral cycling and carbon storage...From a functional perspective, the presence of Pragmites in disturbed landscapes is a symptom of environmental degradation rather than its cause.  Research has shown that a number of invasive plants have a similar kind of 'Jeykll and Hyde' impact on the local ecology, pushing out some native native plants while providing food and shelter for a wide variety of native animals, especially pollinating insects and migrating birds.  Like so much else in the modern world, the designation of a species as invasive is a relative concept that depends on the context in which the plant is growing."

In other words, conservation is all about the values we place on certain qualities and attributes of the environment over other aspects and land uses. While some might choose to challenge Del Tredici on the relative value of Phragmites over the full, potential native expression of biodiversity in the habitats where it invades, he is absolutely right to ask that we take plants growing in urban environments on their own terms and assess their impacts and benefits locally as well as their potential to become invasive in minimally-managed habitats. 

The urban prairie of desolate Detroit is far from the unplowed soils and seed banks of its presettlement history.  One would not attempt to successfully to restore full ecosystem function and a tallgrass prairie system amid the ruins (although some pioneer cemeteries retain the soil horizons and seeds that the plowed lands did not spare and now form remnants of native habitat).   Del Tredici recommends that the primary consideration of landscape architecture in urban environments should be sustainability.  Many invasive species will tolerate the extreme and harsh conditions of the city better than native plants.  There is certainly the risk of their becoming a source for introductions of invasive material to uninvaded habitats, but they may be less of an ecological sink than we who manage natural areas may have suspected.

Seeing the Forest...and the Trees

I visited the National Botanical Garden in Washington D.C. yesterday,  a magical hour spent wandering through forests under glass.  Along a path lined with desert succulents I saw an old friend, Cyphostemma currori, a giant of the grape family with poisonous seeds that grows in southwest Africa.  Here it was in miniature, not the leafless giant of the Namib escarpment, its waxy yellow bark cracked in the relentless sun, but a young plant with shoots of green and standing no taller than my shins.  In time and in the right conditions, it could grow 15 feet and an impressive girth.  There is a big one on the top of the Grootberg in ≠Khoadi //Hôas Conservancy where Bernadus "Bob" Guibeb and I once rested after scaling the mountain one hot African morning.

Our relationship with trees is as ancient as our very species. Stone, bone, and fire hardened wood were our earliest weapons. Many cultures have their Yggdrasil myths, their trees of life.  The traditional Herero people of Namibia have the Okuruo, the ancestral fire that must never go out, sustained by four sacred woods.  Tolkien's Ents and the Greenman are humanoid manifestations of the spirit of the wood, the integral relationship between people and our environment. 

Some trees, like the sugar maple, are emblematic of this region today but were far less prevalent in the first growth forests of New England and may yet withdraw to Canada altogether before the close of the present century as most climate change models predict.  Our older neighborhoods are often in deep shade, although trees planted in urban settings live shorter, stressful lives than they would otherwise.  The average street tree lasts only a few decades, and I often curse the neglect of the urban forest when walking past root-bound, salt burned trees in the city. 

Large perennial woody plants come in all forms and sizes. I love the pachydermal beech, the stark white of paper birches bowing under snow.  I love the mighty baobabs of Africa, their massive forms so wide that twenty arms cannot join around them yet collapsing into fibrous mounds at the end of their long span of years.  I love the shiny bronze of yellow birch above all: the tree we planted for our stillborn first child.

The elms of our region, and their devastating decline since the 1930s and the introduced pathogen Dutch Elm Disease, resonate so profoundly that people in the Berkshire and Litchfield hills are willing to sponsor the injection of elms in the public viewshed with fungicide to protect them.  In the late 1990s, I co-founded a group called Elm Watch that, in addition to finding sponsors for many of our remaining, specimen elm trees in this region, promotes awareness of the community forest through advocacy, education and direct action. 

Litchfield County is 75% forested, yet we take our trees for granted.  I love to split wood, and the satisfaction of sore arms and a well laid woodpile, but understand that forest conservation and forestry reform are critically needs.  There's a bumper sticker I've seen in these parts that reads; "Hug a Logger; You'll Never go back to Trees."  Fair enough. We all need a little love and understanding.  But the trees that sustain us, that provide food, shelter and spiritual sustenance, deserve our notice and appreciation as well.