Walking the Berkshires

The People Shall Govern....But Not in Their Backyards: The Wind Energy Siting Reform Act

There are very few environmentalists who would argue against the importance of reducing our economic dependence on fossil fuel with renewable alternatives.  Yet the implications of this priority often place us in opposition to strategies and policies which would have regional benefits (economic as well as ecological) at the expense of locally valued resources.  This situation often sets up a dichotomy between the needs of biodiversity conservation and the needs of economic development.   It also puts us on the defensive, for quite often what is proposed as the greatest public benefit is often imposed on those who must bear the burden of its localized negative impacts and who have limited political influence.  Ask an ovaHimba pastoralist in Namibia about a proposed hydroelectric dam on their ancestral land, or an Appalachian landowner in coal country about the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal for examples of the power dynamics that are often at play. 

The fact remains that we cannot wean ourselves from fossil fuel without finding viable alternatives to fill the void. None of these alternatives is without cost and all of them - even solar - involve some environmental impacts as well as benefits.  Whatever policies we adopt, everything hinges on changing individual and collective behavior, and that puts us squarely in the realm of competing interests.

In Massachusetts, the Patrick Administration has made renewable energy generation a top priority.  It has embedded this mandate within the reconstituted Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, which means that the same state agency that houses a division with a mandate for providing clean water and protecting rare species also has one with a mandate to promote renewable energy development.  Whether this creates synergies or silos is a matter of debate. but it certainly sets up situations where the needs of one give way to the other.  When it involves the use and management of state owned lands, all of these intersecting interests come into play.

A 2009 Commonwealth report found the potential for 947MW of renewable electricity generation from wind on state lands.  A map included with the report identified 86 MW of potential at three sites in north, central and south Berkshire County, but downplayed the potential for offshore generation because - surprise - these far more productive areas are offshore and not on state owned properties.  Furthermore, places like Mt. Everett Reservation may indeed have 15 MW of wind generating potential, but are also extremely ecologically sensitive and there have been bloody battles fought there for decades to prevent the industrialization of the mountaintop.

I have a dog in this fight both as a longtime Berkshire resident and a landowner of coastal property in SE MA.  I am aware of the noise, nuisance, aesthetic, landscape fragmentation, habitat destruction and bird strike concerns, as well as the need to be able to find some sites where the proximate impacts can be mitigated.  I have come to feel that offshore wind generation in Buzzards Bay and Nantucket Sound could have fewer negative ecological impacts and greater benefit than mountaintop development of wind installations in the Berkshires. 

I place a lower value on the aesthetic concerns of wind turbines and a greater one on the biodiversity impacts.  I would prefer a few large industrial generation installations offshore to many of them in the mountains.  This is how I add up the costs and benefits of wind energy siting in Massachusetts as I understand them.  I represent one reasonably well informed and pragmatic perspective, and there are countless others who bring their own values and perspectives to this question.  They deserve a place at the table. 

Yet the state senate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has found it expedient to bypass local regulations and pass the Wind Energy Siting Reform Act in February, 2010.  Local government oversight can be messy and inefficient, but it also is part of the bedrock of New England-style government.   We recognize that even the town crank has the right to speak her mind in open forum, and that those who live closest to the resource have valuable perspectives that may be completely undervalued at the macro level.  It can be frustrating for investors and can make for a more complex business environment, but the alternative is top down, high power politics that undermines individual communities.

Since the Commonwealth has demonstrated a low level of environmental oversight for its forest management actions on state owned lands, it is naive to think that it will weigh the costs and benefits of the local environmental impacts of wind generation on state lands with any greater sensitivity.  There must be a way for environmentalists and renewable energy developers to find appropriate sites and design the best installations with the least negative impacts to meet our energy needs and safeguard existing environmental and community values.  This cannot be done by state government and private industry in a vacuum.  Governor Patrick will lose environmental voters he can ill afford to alienate if he signs this bill into law, and environmentalists will continue to be branded as NIMBYs unless we make it clear that we want to be part of the solution and deserve seats at the table to find them.

Forest Feud in the Bay State

There is a war going on in Massachusetts over the management of the Commonwealth's forests.  It is splitting environmentalists and blacking the eyes of more than one state agency.  It has attracted the attention of the Boston media in a market where it is often hard to get coverage of anything west of Worcester.  At its core, it involves mistrust and miscommunication on a rather grand scale, and flaming emails and blistering opinion pieces are just part of the fallout over what some are calling the folly of felling the Bay State's forests.

The Commonwealth is accused of mismanaging the forest resources under its care, including badly conducted timber harvests, slipshod reasoning for liquidating entire stands and many other administrative and programmatic lapses that have jeopardized its credibility with the public and with outside reviewers.   Back in 2004 the Commonwealth received provisional "green" certification from the Forest Stewardship Council for half a million acres - virtually all of publicly held forestland - and following a review last summer it failed to retain this FSC certification.

The FCS 2009 recertification auditing report is fascinating reading (scoll down a bit here for the .pdf).  Its findings include a number of major and minor corrective actions that either had not been addressed when previously identified or which had manifested more recently.  Among these were a number of auditing standards that clearly require more planning staff and resources than the various state agencies have to work with, which in itself is a deficiency called out in the plan and a chronic underfunding problem of longstanding.  As a result, the Commonwealth has withdrawn whole sections of state forests, - including the SE portion of Massachusetts - for which management plans have not been drafted from FSC eligibility.

Other findings point to significant agency lapses and even systemic failures.  For me this one was the most damning section of the review:

"Prior to harvesting of conifer plantations (often with complete removal), BoF and DWSP have not completed an adequate environmental assessment to assess impacts of long term ecological functions of the forest.  Since their initial certification in 2004, all agencies under this certificate have harvested some plantations of non-native (and in some cases, native white pine) conifer species.  BoF has been the most aggressive, with the least developed rationale for converting conifer plantations.  DFW's conversion has been very limited and well-justified ecologically.  Thus, this...does not apply to DWF.  Justifications offered to the audit team differ by agency.  For BoF the justification centers of two points: 1) that non-native species are intrinsically in conflict with biodiversity goals, and 2) aggressive regeneration harvesting of non-native stands presents an opportunity to create early successional habitat. 

For DWSP the stated reasons for removing conifer plantations include: diversify forests, eliminate non-native species and address failing stands.  DWSP also makes the point that diverse native stands offer better resilience to disturbance, thus protecting watershed values.

This rationale does not take into consideration the fact that such plantations offer valuable habitats viz: dense mature coniferous habitat used during migration as as winter habitat for animals.  In addition, such habitat require at least 50 years to create, whereas early successional pioneer hardwoods require only a year or two. The precautionary principle would thus suggest that clearcutting such stands would be a last, not first, resort (as mentioned again, below, Norway Spruce is non-invasive).  The evaluation team found no evidence that the positive aspects of retaining these plantations on the landscape have been considered, and thus BoF and DWSP have not presented a balanced environmental impact assessment - that addresses the pros and cons of their maintenance - prior to implementing a program for their rapid removal.

Second, forest management agencies are charged under FSC standards to maintain productive forests.  Existing plantations offer some of the most productive stands on the entire ownership, as long as they are not in decline owing to forest health issues, such as root rots.  We note that the Adams Road (Savoy SF) plantations averaged over 200 square feet of basal area and did not appear to be suffering from forest health issues.

We further note that Norway Spruce, while an exotic species, is demonstrably non-invasive and poses little threat to native plant communities."

The review team went on to call for an immediate halt to all clear cutting by the BoF and DWSP until a thorough environmental review is conducted.  Given that the Boston media are still highlighting clear cuts on state land, it is unclear whether the commonwealth heeded this very strong requirement to cease and desist back in August of last year.

What is going on?  Is Massachusetts, the bluest of the blue and greener than most, really doing a hatchet job on its natural resources?  What, aside from the insular nature of state agencies and general lack of oversight and transparency, is causing these behaviors?   Do you know what a well managed forest looks like?  Does the Commonwealth?  As one with more than a passing familiarity with many of the principal actors in this drama, I will offer a few thoughts on that in a subsequent post.

Lost and Found Burial Ground of My Williman Ancestors

Two years ago, I discovered some fascinating information about the little known Williman branch of my family tree and posted it here. Yesterday I received a telephone call from a gentleman in South Carolina who read the post and with masterly understatement told me had new information to share. 

What he had found was simply extraordinary.  He is an historian working in part of the greater Charleston area, who was contacted by a utility company which had found old grave markers in one of its rights of way.  The images which appear in this post were taken by him, but out of respect for the sensitivity of the site which he is trying to document and preserve I will refrain from revealing either his name or its location.

Suffice it to say that in a tucked away corner of wooded land are the remains of three of my direct ancestors and several of their relations by marriage.  There are eight grave markers, most of which were installed as horizontal slabs and all of which are now on the ground, as well as clear evidence of more graves that either lacked permanent markers (possibly those of tenants, servants or slaves) or where such markers are now missing.  The eight remaining markers appear with identifying numbers in the image at right.

My new friend in South Carolina was lead to me by my post that concerned Christopher Williman (1746-1813).   Being a good researcher he also found my cellphone and home telephone numbers - thank heavens I didn't treat him like a telemarketer calling bright and early on MLK Day!  Christopher Williman is buried in the grave in the picture at the top of this post.  The grave is also marked at right with the number seven, and at #8 is his wife Mary (Walther) Williman,who died in 1804 at age 40.  These are my 5th Great Grandparents.

I was told that another of my relatives mentioned in that blog post, Angus Bethune (more on him, below), was also buried here, but did not receive the pictures until later that evening.  In the meantime, I spent the day doing my own research, greatly facilitated by a propensity of at Google to scan anything that isn't nailed down and post it at Google Books.  Under various copywrite agreements, a great deal can be viewed and even more can be queried using this tool, and by the end of the day I had reconstructed the names and marriages of all of the Williman children and some of the grandchildren.  Then I received the photographs, and discovered that I had identified three more of the names on the graves as well!

My Great Aunt Margie, whose family archive of genealogical material I inherited in 2003, would have been utterly captivated by these new finds.  She knew the bare bones of the Christopher Williman line, but Angus Bethune was listed simply as the husband of one of the daughters: Margaret (Williman) Bethune.  Now, thanks to the surviving top half of his gravestone, I know that my 4th Great Grandfather, Angus Bethune, was 46 years old when he died on December 20, 1813.  I also found several court cases in which he was involved, and details of his house on Broad St. in Charleston from a city inventory.  He was a prosperous merchant, like the Gracie family into which his grand-daughter, Elizabeth Davidson Bethune, subsequently married.   

And speaking of "Davidson".  I now know the origin of that middle name.  Grave #1. belongs to Gilbert Davidson, the second husband of another Williman daughter, Eliza.  She married Gilbert Davidson on Jan 15, 1801, the same day as her sister (my 4th Great Grandmother) married Angus Bethune!  This double wedding suggests a close relationship between these siblings - at least until the family estate was divided - and six years later my 3rd Great Grandmother was given Davidson as her middle name.

There is an Eliza Williman associated with Grave 6, but she was Eliza (Merritt) Williman, daughter of James Merritt and 1st wife of Christopher Williman, Jr.  She lived just 26 years (1789-1814).  Grave 4 belongs to Sarah Cleiland Williman, a three year old child who died in 1819, suggesting a second marriage for Christopher Williman, Jr. who I believe was the only male child of his parents to have issue. 

Grave 2 belongs to Joseph de Jongh (sometimes appearing in court records as Jough).  His stone (at right) reveals that he was a native of Ostend, Flanders, and died on June 15th, 1823 in the 46th year of his age.  Gilbert Davidson died that same month, which may indicate an outbreak of one of the malignant fevers at that time.  I found a snippet reference at Google Books from a Liverpool business and Market journal of his marriage in 1810 to a "Miss Harriet Williams (sic), daughter of Christopher Williams (sic), esq., of South Carolina."  Harriet Williman (b. 3/4/1784) was yet another Williman daughter, bringing to 4 the number of spouses of Williman children buried here.

Grave 3 (at left) is broken where the name was originally inscribed and will require more study to determine whose grave is marked by the slab.  There is also a grave in the space between stones 1 and 6 that probably once had a marker.

 The information which has been unearthed in South Carolina and in the electronic ether will help document and hopefully preserve this 200 year old family burial ground.  It is amazing that it has survived, unremarked and unremembered, for as long as it has.  It is more amazing, still, that so much evidence exists to document the lives of the principle remains, though we may never know the identifies of those at the lowest rungs of their society who are buried here as well.  I am deeply grateful to my new friend in Charleston who has taken on this project with the sort of passion and dedication that I can only hope I would show to his ancestors had our roles been reversed.

For the Record:

Johan Christof (Christopher) Williman) (1746-1813) (Grave 7) and Maria Rumpf (Walther/Walter) Williman (abt. 1764-1804) (Grave 8) had the following known descendants:

1. George Williman (b. 1/18/1772 - not still living as of his father's will of 12/26/1813)

2. John  Jakob Williman (b. 9/4/1774 - d. 1804) married but no issue

3. Maria (Mary) Williman (b. 12/7/1776) m. 11/7/1795 William Peter(s), esq. of PonPon, St. Paul's Parish - d. before 12/26/1813

4. Eliza Williman m. 1) 11/20/1793 Dr. George F. Habnbaum, 2) 1/15/1801 Gilbert Davidson (Grave 1) d. June 1823

5. Margaret A Williman (b. 4/14/1782) m. 1/15/1801 Angus Bethune (Grave 5) d. Dec 20, 1813 age 46 They had children, including Elizabeth Davidson Bethune (1807-1864) m. Archibald Gracie, Jr. (d. 1865) of NYC, Elizabeth, NJ and Mobile, AL. Their daughter, Esther Gracie, married Dayton Ogden, whose son Archibald Gracie Ogden married Margaret Stearns Olmsted, and whose daughter Athalia (Ogden) Barker (1911-2007) was my maternal grandmother.

6.  Christopher Henry Williman (d. young abt 1783)

7.  Harriet Williman (b. 3/4/1784) m. 1810 Joseph de Jongh/Jough(d. June 15, 1823 age 46.)  They had a sole male heir, William F. D. Jongh/Jough (Grave 2) , still living in 1850.

8. Christopher Williman, Jr. (b. 4/23/1786 - 1864) m. 1) Eliza (Merritt) Williman (Grave 6) (1789-1814) They had two daughters who survived to adulthood: 

a. Maria Williman (b. 9/5/1810 - d. 9/19/1877 in GA) appears to have had three marriages.  The first was apparently to a Mr. Johnston.  The second was on 8/19/1826 to Wilbrandt Schmidt esq.  The thrid was on 7/27/1838 to Alexander Inglis.  Their son, Alexander Inglis, Jr., served in the Confederate Army from Georgia. 

b.  Harriet Eliza Williman, who in May 1838 married in New York Bvt. Maj. James Alex Ashby of the 2nd Dragoons who fought and was severely wounded in the Second Seminole War and died in Charleston 7/30/46, supposedly of complications from wounds suffered 10 years before.

Amazing, amazing stuff.

Descant

"April is in my mistress face / And July in her eyes hath place

Within her bosom is September / But in her heart a cold December."

                                                    - Thomas Morley (1594)

I remember every note of the first tenor part for this shortest of madrigals. All the choral music of the Christmas season has put in mind my singing days, when I could follow my last, clear note reverberating from the Chancel through the high columned Nave.  In Canterbury Cathedral, this lasted seven seconds. 

It wasn't Morley, then, on that March night when we visiting choristers and the Dean's wife had that incredible space all to ourselves.  Illuminated only by the candles in our hands, the columns disappeared overhead.  We descended stone steps hollowed by the knees of pilgrims, and had a moment of musical intimacy in the crypt as powerful as what we produced in the endless space above.  I was not quite seventeen years old.

I have known two great stands of eastern trees that stood for cathedrals.  One was Cornwall Connecticut's Cathedral Pines, eviscerated in a whirlwind.  The other is Cathedral Woods on Monhegan Island in Maine, where Red and White Spruce contend with a parasitic dwarf mistletoe that conspires to lay them low, leaving only Balsam Firs and hardwoods to reassemble the forest.  I have wandered in Muir Woods and among the great Sequoia groves, seen the clear cuts amid the old growth of the Olympic Peninsula during the height of the Spotted Owl war.  I was befriended in a logger bar by a shell shocked Viet Nam vet who saved me from  the impotent rage of one of its patrons.  I was 21.

Sometimes I stand by the shore, watching the great swells dash and cream against the rocks below, and yearn to lift off like the gulls flying below the headlands.  An old friend once wrote a poem about the gravity arc of the rope swing, where "if you time it right, you can hang like lightning in the air."  Hang like the high note in the vaulted cathedral, or the toppling trees in the wind.  All of an instant, rootless, and lighter than air.

Astronauts in training simulate such weightlessness in deliberate free fall, in a plane flying parabolic arcs.  Astronauts in space are always falling toward earth.  Deep Sea divers can also become disoriented in their three dimensional environment, with only their telltale bubbles to distinguish down from up.  In my diving days, I sometimes would hang at neutral buoyancy, rising and falling ever so gently with every breath.

These days I do not sing in choirs, or swing out over dark water.  But I still wander, amazed, in the cathedrals of the heart and forest, and slip loose from earth as I lift my eyes on brittle nights brimming with stars.

Reflections on Ken Burns' : The National Parks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

Nature Notes: Stacking Wood

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

Stacking Wood
by Tim Abbott

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

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

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

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

Forests on the Skids

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bog Turtle Disease Alert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hogweed Hiding in Plain Sight

I saw one of America's Most Wanted while driving to work today. It was unmistakable, though I had to stop the car to be sure.  There by the roadside growing halfway down the embankment but still high above the guardrail, were the enormous stalk, leaves and flowers of Heracleum mantegazzianum: the notorious Giant hogweed.

I must have driven passed this plant all growing season without noticing it, which might seem remarkable for a species that can grow a dozen feet high or more.  This one was about 5' above the roadgrade, and about the same amount of plant downslope in a tangle of poison ivy that discourgaed closer inspection.  The thing that cause my eye were the massive inflorescences: huge platters of flowers that looked a bit like Queen Anne's Lace on steroids.  If it had not been in bloom, it might have escaped detection.

That's the challenge with new incursions by invasive / exotic species.  There is often a delay between the time when they take hold in a new place and when they are observed and recognized for what they are.  The mantra of invasive species control is early detection and rapid respponse, because for many of these organisms it becomes exponentially more difficult to eradicate or contrain them with the passage of time.

Heracleum mantegazzianium has been around for a long time.  It was introduced horticulturally, as so many of these species were before their invasive attributes were recognized, with the first record of its planting back in 1917.  The shady, moist areas in which it particularly thrives have not been especially overrun with Hogweed run amok, at least in where it is just gaining a toehold, but the plant I observed clearly had escaped from cultivation.  There is a known population of the plants in Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut, a mile or so from where this one was observed, and utility wires above probably provided the perch for the bird which was the vector for the spread of their seed.

Hogweed, however, has one additional attribute which has made it a top priority for State and Federal noxious weed eradication efforts.  The plant contains the toxin furocoumarin, which can make skin highly photosensitive, causing weeping blisters and permanent scarring.  Contact with the eyes can cause blindness.  For these reasons, authorites consider a threat to public health.

The plant superficially resembles cow parsnip and Queen Anne's Lace, but its size at maturity is a dead giveaway, especially when in bloom.  I did my part for early detection and reported this finding, along with photographs and detailed information about its location, to Donna Ellis of the Connectticut Invasive Plant Working Group; Elizabeth Corrigan, who is responsible for coordinating rapid response efforts for this plant in our region [email protected]; and Les Mehrhoff at the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England.  It turns out that Corrigan drove by the same site on the same day and by her account "nearly drove off the road" when she saw the plant. 

It is fortunate that I have lots of connections in the New England Invasive Species world, and that we have the chance to get this plant before all those seeds rain down.  Who knows where else it may be lurking, unnoticed, out there in the wild?

Last Week's Piece in the LJ

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

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

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

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

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