Walking the Berkshires

Whether Invasive or Just In-Migrating; You Cannot Conserve the Status Quo.

There have been some concerns raised in the land trust community that one of the impacts of climate change will be the displacement of some native species by others that are expanding their ranges.  A recent article by Attorney James L Olmsted entitled: "The Butterfly Effect: Conservation Easement, Climate Change and Invasive Species"suggests a number of changes that land Trusts can make to their easement language to anticipate this problem, but the underlying premise that in-migrating North American species "will in many cases be invasive" is on questionable scientific ground.

 It is wrong to think of species and natural communities as static and restricted to where they are today, or were at the time of European contact. 

The term “Invasive” is both relative in space and time and too  broadly applied to North American species that are expanding their natural ranges in response to environmental factors and opportunities.  Birds have been doing this for a very long time.  The black vultures now present in large numbers in Connecticut were not found north of Maryland in the first part of the 19^th century (all those dead horses at Gettysburg gave them a beachhead).  Cardinals were not part of my mother’s Massachusetts girlhood.  Coyotes are filling an available large predator niche after the extirpation of wolf and cougar populations.

The term “Invasive” has more validity when it is restricted  to introduced species,  and then only to  those which  have such characteristics as spreading across spatial gaps, establishing virtual monocultures and multiple dispersal methods.  Having these attributes, species should be demonstrated  to displace and outcompete native species to be considered invasive.  Under this definition, House Sparrows are invasive, but Cattle Egrets which, bless their hearts, got here by crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean all on their own, are not.

When I was part of the Massachusetts Invasive Plant Advisory Group that developed criteria to determine which species should be considered invasive or potentially invasive in the Commonwealth, we had a very hard debate about Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), a central Appalachian species which can be problematic in pine barren systems in the Northeast.  Had the glaciers receded a few thousand years earlier, Robinia would likely have expanded its natural range a few hundred miles further north, resulting in a different kind of natural community where it overlapped with pitch pine and scrub oak.  Humans helped it make the jump, planting Black Locust for fence poles (which sometimes resprouted!). 

My advice for anyone drafting a conservation easement or management plan is to start by answering the question; “What are we trying to conserve and managing for?”  The question of invasiveness relates directly to whether a species impacts the viability of conservation targets.  The best example I can remember from my TNC days concerned a fen in NJ that was also a bog turtle site.  The fen had a large and expanding incursion of purple loosestrife (an exotic species non-native to North America).  There were two possible conservation targets to manage for at this site: the rare natural community represented by the fen, and the federally threatened bog turtle species.  The condition of the fen was severely degraded and attempting to eradicate the loosestrife threatened worse disturbance as well as the bog turtles that still were using it, so it was determined not to try to manage the fen as fen, but as bog turtle habitat.  The bog turtle basking areas  were being shaded out by the loosestrife, so the management prescription was to cut the loosestrife stalks by hand each year before they set seed.  This took several days of cutting by hand, but was the best response available to conserve the primary conservation target.

So, if we are managing for rare and restricted habitat types, some of which will not be viable in their current configuration, or indeed in any form with climate change, we are making a choice to prioritize them against the prevailing forces of change.  That may indeed be the right thing to do, but even then the calcareous fens of Connecticut will not have the same species composition and structure as those in Maryland even when our climate changes to that of Maryland today.  There are special gaps that are unlikely to be crossed by native fen species present today in Maryland but not in Connecticut.  That is the beauty of natural variation.  Diversity matters, but it plays out in many different ways from site to site.

Especially with large, “functional” landscapes, the idea is not to manage them to maintain exactly the species types and forest composition of today, but so that they are robust and resilient enough to maintain biodiversity, in whatever forms may be viable in the future.  Invasive plants may well be a factor that needs to be accounted for, but it does not begin or end with a list of species that are “meant to be here” and others that are not.

 

 

Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative Website Launched

It has been a year in the making, but today our brand new website for the Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative went live at www.litchfieldgreenprint.org.This will be the virtual home for the Collaborative and a major communications tool and resource for us and for those who care about conserving what makes our region so special.  There is an interractive map portal with lots of data specific to Northwest Connecticut and additional content that will be available to Greenprint members once I provide them with passwords.  We are having a soft launch during its shakedown cruise and will ramp up the publicity later next month.  Overall I am very pleased with this product.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Connecticut's "Still Revolutionary" Brand: The First Salvo

With my 18th century interests and Connecticut residence, a tag line like "Still Revolutionary" certainly ought to appeal to me, but I am not the target audience of Connecticut's newly minted $27 million promotional campaign.  Watch the initial video and then we'll read the tea leaves together.

   So, does this speak to you?  Does it reach out to your heart and disposable income and say come to Connecticut?  Whose vision is this?

Well, it is Governor Malloy's, certainly, and the professional consulting firm hired to promote our state.  It seems to be directed toward at affluent professionals, vacationing families with children, cultural and heritage tourism, and particularly at successful African Americans.  I'll return to this last demographic shortly, and consider the curious choice to emphasize a storyline connecting an African American man to his Connecticut roots and an ancestor who served during the Revolution,  rather than hitching a ride on the Civil War Sesquicentennial which is totally absent from this video.

Actually, there is a great deal that is not emphasized in this two minute and seven second-long "Connecticut: Still Revolutionary " brand launch.  Western Connecticut is missing, for one thing, with its world class trout streams and outstanding outdoor recreation opportunities including national treasures like the Appalachian Trail.  Aside from someone falling backward off a bridge on a zip wire in slow motion - overwhelmingly the preferred camera speed for this promotion - the only way people in this ad seem to enjoy the outdoors is from their vehicles. 

Classic New England fall foliage and white steepled village greens just didn't make the cut. One would not get the impression from this video that Connecticut has any farms at all, except for wineries.  So much for Agra-tourism.  So much for bucolic landscapes and covered bridges. There is plenty in the video about the Connecticut River Valley and the Southeastern part of the state.  We have Mystic Seaport and Aquarium and the two big casinos on full view.  It was nice to see the Essex Steam Train and Hartford Symphony featured, but this still leaves a great deal of the state and what it has to offer out of view.

The "Still Revolutionary" motto implies that The Land of Steady Habits is full of disruptive technology, a place where invention and independence are both highly valued.  So where are the heirs to Samuel Colt, or P.T. Barnum, or David Bushnell (who was both a Revolutionary and an inventor)?  Making wine, or making bets at Foxwoods, maybe, but they are not in evidence in this initial promotion. And why is that nice white couple that shows up in their car at 1:32 seconds into the video using a paper map to "follow the sky" like it says in the promotional song?  Don't they have GPS?

If the creators of this campaign really wanted to make a strong connection between our state's Revolutionary past and our innovative present, all it required was a shot of the full-scale replica of Bushnell's American Turtle submarine at the Connecticut River Museum fading into a shot of a sub from General Dynamics putting out to sea.  Stick Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park in the sequence and the African American man in the video could make a direct connection to his Revolutionary forebears by viewing its Jordan Freeman plaque commemorating the heroics of one of its black patriot defenders. It just feels like another missed opportunity.

Let's examine the story arc of the African American couple in the video who come to Connecticut.  Their inspiration is apparently the discovery of an image in a book of a black soldier of the Revolution, with the inference that he is an ancestor.  Given the popularity of genealogy programs like Henry Louis Gates' "Finding Your Roots", this is a pretty good hook.  You can clearly see the soldier's cocked hat and hunting frock (and anachronistic mustache, too), though it is not clear whether the illustration is meant to be a photograph or a black and white reproduction of a painted or engraved portrait.  Given that daguerreotypes were not available before 1839, one hopes it is not the former.  Again, going with a contemporary photograph of a black soldier from the Civil War would have made the connection so much easier, but then there would be nothing in the film that directly references the American Revolution and the "Still Revolutionary" tag line.

The story continues as the couple get on their motorcycle (visually relaxing as they enjoy the freedom of Connecticut's roadways). Then the man dismounts, removes his helmet, and tries to orient himself.  He glimpses a quiet stream.  He sees the shade of his ancestor marching away through the forest (the only glimpse of outdoor recreation in the video that is truly Revolutionary).  He then goes to dinner at a casino to toast his homecoming. 

If he had had his moment of ancestral connection at Putnam Memorial Park, or Fort Griswold, I would have bought it.  If the choice had been to highlight the service of African Americans in the Civil War and the State's considerable contributions to the cause of Abolition - after all, we have the birthplaces both of Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown right here in western CT - I would have been more satisfied.  But then, it is not about me, or my interests. It is about that guy on his motorcycle and others like him and what will motivate them to come to relax and spend money in Connecticut.

I wonder whether the consultants and focus groups used for this promotion deliberately chose not to link to the Civil War for its target African American audience.  Being reminded of slavery is not the same as being reminded of freedom.  There were more than 300 men of color from Connecticut who fought during the Revolutionary War, the vast majority of them for long terms of service in the Continental Line.  For most of the war, they were part of integrated regiments, and this is what the video shows in its brief depiction of the ancestral soldier, marching away in single file behind two fellow white soldiers.  This is not part of the popular narrative of the Revolution, but neither is slavery.  

The message here is; "You are successful, a self made man, and you can be proud of the part your Connecticut ancestor played in winning our freedom." It is not a Revolutionary message, though it does put people of color back into the story of our nation's founding.  It does not put them in our extraordinary natural areas, but there may be a reason for that as well.  I once shared a plane ride with the poet Nikky Finney, who remarked that when she was growing up in rural South Carolina, her grandparents had an intimate knowledge of their farm that stopped short at the uncultivated woods beyond their fields.  Bad things could happen to you in there.  There were trees with strange fruit.

I would like to think that when the African American man in the promotion gets off his motorcycle, he is struck by the stillness of the woods and the movement of the brook and something else awakens inside him when he sees the ghost of his revolutionary ancestor.  A sense of belonging as well as continuity.  A connection to place as well as history.  An investment in what happens here going forward.  That would be a great outcome, for him and for Connecticut.

Connecticut Cougar came from the West

As predicted, the cougar killed on a parkway in SW Connecticut came East from a population in South Dakota.  From the Black Hills to the Gold Coast was a trek of 1,500 miles, and along the way this same individual was detected in Minnesota and Wisconscin. 

"Some experts suspect this could be the same animal filmed by a trail camera in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, leading wildlife experts to map its likely path from the U.S. into Ontario Canada, circling the Great Lakes and eventually crossing back into New York and Connecticut."

This is the same route taken by the western Coyote on its move into the east.  It is the first wild mountain lion confirmed by the authorities in CT in 100 years.  There will be more.

Midsummer's Eve with the Faeries at the Bottom of the Garden

Last night the twilight lingered long past 9:00.  I stepped outside into the warm evening air and instead of turning toward the street I headed into the backyard and out to the gardens that face the meadow.  It is not a large field, less than two acres on the assessor's map and further reduced by boundary incursions from various neighbors.  The rank grass and remnants of wild apple trees slope into wet meadow before reaching the neighbors on the far side.  It is flanked on the west and south by a screen of mature trees.  The elderly owner of the field lives in Kansas but grew up here, and she keeps it undeveloped because of the fringed gentian she remembers from her childhood.  There are very few of these flowers left in the field, but it is prime firefly habitat, and on Midsummer's Eve they were out in great profusion.

I have watched them in early summer ever since moving here in 2002.  Cold evenings dampen their glow, but warm nights with the mist rising send them wisping through the air, over the tassels of uncut grass and through the branches of the apple trees.  A few outliers may venture into the shadows of my garden but they avoid the lawns and other managed places, and when the field is cut their dance is done.  Every year I hope that the mower will be delayed, that the old man with the tractors who lays the grasses down to maintain the owner's claim will postpone his passes through the field so the fireflies will linger. 

This is a timed event, like sap rising in Spring and wild geese heading south in September.  My garden path ends at a wrought iron gate with nothing but magic and wonder in the rank meadow beyond.  I am loathe to leave when the faeries dance under the hazy stars.  Long may they return.

Species of Special Concern

My children know that when you go looking for Box Turtles, you will not find them, but when you live where they live, it often happens serendipitously.  This old tortoise was walking across the cut in the bank that leads to the beach at Windrock.  The Massachusetts Heritage and Endangered Species Program lists  the eastern box turtles as a species of Special Concern in the Commonwealth.  I sent in a record from our property a number of years ago, making the surrounding area priority habitat and ultimately strengthening the environmental significance of the open space protection efforts that have saved so much of Great Neck from the heavy development pressure that has affected the remaining woodlands and shoreline of this coastal community.  Windrock itself qualified for Chapter 61B, a "current use" open space tax abatement program,, based on the environmental condition of our property and we cited the presence of this species to help make that case..When our neighbor cleared a part of the woodlands between us to build a stately home, the order of conditions for the construction work mandated a turtle barrier around the build site.

We are delighted to be sharing this land with these turtles.  I have the same thrill when I spot one of their long necks peering above a patterned shell that I felt as a child.

A Day in Pictures on the Housatonic River, May 8th, 2011

1. Scott Heth of Sharon Audubon with a screech owl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.  Green Man from the Grumbling Gryphens Children's Theater

3.  Nic Osborn and Curtis Rand get ready for another day of paddling from Source to Sound.

4. Housatonic Valley Association River Adventure flotilla sets out at Bartholomew's Cobble on its way to Connecticut.

5. Kayaks and Canoes passing undfer the Bridge on Ramapo Rd. in Ashley Falls, MA.

Nature's Notebook Recap

In all this relentless Revolutionary War history stuff there has been precious little space to go, er, Walking the Berkshires.  Those of you with free registration can get your fix of my recent nature writing in the Lakeville Journal at this link, and since I cannot find today's article online, below in full:

"To Every Thing There is a Season"

By Tim Abbott

I heard a chorus of wood frogs over the weekend, resounding from the wetlands along Sand Road in Canaan on Sunday afternoon.  I thought the weather was still too cool during the rain on Friday, but apparently love stirs even the coldest blooded creatures and the great amphibian migration is on.  As I write this story, the forecast for tonight is for rain and temperatures in the mid 40s, which should bring out the frogs, toads and especially the salamanders in earnest.  Emily and Elias and I will once again head out with our flashlights to escort yellow spotted salamanders across the road in Salisbury and nearby Sheffield where we have found them before.

This Spring has seen a convergence of two timed events that for me herald the turning of the season.  Our maple tree continued to give copious amounts of sap right into April, just as the amphibians began their march.  Had I set two spiles instead of the single pail, it would have been a year that rivaled 2009 for production.  As it is I have sugared off more than 1/2 a gallon from that one tap and will likely get another quart before the sap turns buddy and the run is over.  The butternut experiment is on hold, as a forester friend reminded me that these trees leaf out much later than maples so their sap will not rise as early in the season.

My birthday is during the second week of April, and I associate this time of year with the last vanishing pile of snow and the first snowdrop and crocus blooms.  Last year was so warm there were daffodils in blossom on my birthday, nearly 10 days ahead of schedule.  Things feel more in balance for 2011 after our long and snowy winter.  Already I can see the tips of Spring ephemeral wildflowers - trillium and trout lily - emerging from the black mud of moist woodlands.  I await the first mourning cloak butterfly, beating its tattered wings after overwintering for a few more weeks before its life cycle ends.  I look forward to visiting the herring run down at the Cape in another two weeks and hope to see the number of fish increasing after several years with a closed season.  This is a time, after all, of renewal, and faith in the return of life.  They are swinging bats in ballparks, and hopes are high on opening day.

As April advances, there will be other timed events that most of us will never see.  Bog turtles will bask on tussocks, and rattlesnakes on the mountainsides.  Things secretive and small will sprout in crevices and scurry beneath the pale moon.  The song of the wood thrush will trill in our greening woods, and fingerling trout will dart in secluded pools. 

No matter how gray or dreary, this is the time of year when the relentless urge to rise and reproduce sets the very grass to rampant growth.  I make my resolutions in Spring, that time of eternal second chances, rather than in the bleak midwinter.  I watch my children marvel on the night of the salamanders, finding their place in the dance.

Going the Extra Mile Too Far

I am researching a feature story for my local paper about an historic wildfire that blackened more than twenty square miles in three adjoining states in our region back in 1930.  It is the sort of project I might easily have decided to publish here at Walking the Berkshires rather than in the Lakeville Journal, although I will certainly link to it here once it comes out at the end of December.

I am intrigued by the choice of the newspaper over the blog, and by the choices I continue to make in the course of my research about the associated costs and benefits of following various leads.   These choices impact the kind of story and the version of history I will ultimately produce, so I choose to make them explicit here (even those that make me uncomfortable).

The primary reason for researching and writing the story itself is that it has engaged my curiosity.  The great wildfire was a momentous occurrence in its day that has all but faded from modern memory.  And yet there is fertile ground here for an historian to synthesize events that took place, and the choices made by participants in the context of their own time, that still inform the patterns and processes that shape the landscape of our communities today. 

Clearly this is too long a research topic for a single blog post. As often happens with my research, I can envision at least one road not taken that could lead to a book, or more graduate school. For now, serializing the story in blog format feels like a constraint that weighs against the challenge of crafting a full-length newspaper feature, especially when my editor has embraced the project. It lends itself to some boots on the ground reportage as well as electronic data mining.  There is certainly a local audience for what I will write, and for personal recognition, which I readily admit is balm for a battered ego.

My reasons are certainly not pecuniary.  I do this as an amateur and on my own time, and for this am compensated by the paper at a rate of $2/column inch.  Being thorough is very important to me as a writer and researcher, yet the cost of doing the research itself, both in terms of time and money, does come into play and will ultimately shape the direction of the story and availability of sources.  The challenge is to do enough research, and follow enough leads, to produce good and accurate work that adds insight and does not perpetuate errors.  That is a pretty high bar, even for a piece in a local paper.

I have decided to let the needs of a 1500 word story define the research questions.  I want to provide a perspective on the fire as it was experienced in all three states, where it is known by different names.  I want to place these events within the larger context of the environmental and social conditions of the day.  I want to be able to determine what parts of the mountain forest burned, and how this may affect their condition today.  And I want to make the past come alive for residents today, to reawaken interest in the narrative and stir latent memory.

There are two research avenues open to me.   I can search for archival material online, some of which is only available for a fee or through an institutional affiliation.   I can search the microfilm records of the local print media that covered the story, and interview residents who may still remember those times of the stories of those who were there.  Good reporting, let alone good history, requires that I follow leads in both these areas.  Indeed, the Lakeville Journal archives for this period are available on microfilm in a local library, and the opportunity costs to me in consulting them are very slight.  Following the local angle of the story in adjoining states, however, takes a greater commitment in time and money.

The Poughkeepsie Journal archives are available on microfilm at the Adriance Memorial Library: an hour's drive to the west.  For the Berkshire Eagle I would need to travel north about the same distance to Pittsfield's Berkshire Athenaeum.  The New York Times and Hartford Currant both make their archived articles available online but for a fee.  In the case of the NYT this has become frustrating for me because judging from the first paragraph of the stories that I can view without payment, there are at least a couple of articles that contain information about the topic not available in other print media.  Is it worth it to me and to my research for this project to shell out $3.95 per article, or buy a bundle of 10 at a reduced rate but perhaps more than the story requires? 

For now, I have resisted.  Instead, I am engaging local contacts in the communities that experienced the fire in New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut to see what leads they can provide.  Already an elderly resident of Mt. Washington, MA, has been in touch and recalls that several annual town meeting reports from the years after the fire included payments to those who helped to fight the flames.  I have spoken with the forester responsible today for the core area in CT that was burned in 1930 who says that there is still evidence of natural disturbance from around that time in certain forest stands and species composition in these woodlands.  I have found a number of AP stories online about the fire and the many other blazes that raged across the Northeast during that dry spring in 1930.    At least for Connecticut, there are historic 1934 aerial photographs of the affected landscape, though whether of not the path of the fire can be discerned from them is still an open question to me.  .

My graduate thesis adviser gave me some very good advice about research; you will never be fully finished with it, but there comes a time when you have done all that it requires of you.  If the story cannot be told or understood without my going the extra mile and paying the NYT the equivalent of 4 column inches of my compensation, then so be it.  If not, then I will leave that for other researchers.

 

Saving Where the Wild Trout Are

There were wild fingerling brookies in this pool when I visited yesterday.  Further downstream is a pool with scores of fish, including native trout that are well over a foot in length. No one stocks this stream, and very few know the value of what it contains.

I am working with a landowner to save over 1,300 feet of frontage along this trout stream through the donation of a conservation easement to a local land trust.  It is a small strip of deciduous forest with a very special stream, as important in its own way as a large farm parcel or forest tract is for protecting those resources.

Eastern brook trout have completely vanished from nearly 40% of the subwatersheds where they histoically occur in the Highlands region that runs between south Central Pennsylvania and the MA/CT line.  We have some of the most intact and productive wild trout streams that remain in the region here in Northwest Connecticut.  This is one of them.