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.

 

 

Nature's Garden in my Backyard

I cannot tell whether the fog that hangs in the air outside will burn off later today, or continue to mist through the trees and keep everything green and damp throughout the day.  My vegetable garden calls for my spade, and if I do not make the time to thoroughly work over that small patch of ground it with be thick with deep rooted weeds when I plant it in earnest a week or two from now.  Another bed of perrenial herbs and wildflowers is overrun by choke cherry suckers, and it may be that this year I am forced to destroy the garden to save it.  There is garlic mustard testing the boundaries of my modest backyard from beachheads it has established at the property lines.  Ignore that, and the choke cherry suckers will be but a modest inconvenience in comparison.

I love gardens in spring, however, especially the one that contains ephemeral wildflowers.  I have let the dog toothed violets and ramps seed and grow where they will, and watched with delight as new Jack-in-the-Pulpit plants appear in other parts of the flower bed from their parent.  There are Dutchmen's britches and bloodroot and both have started to find new niches amid the ferns.  There are trillium and wild geraniums and wild ginger, and even a clump of calcium-loving large yellow ladyslippers.  There is a new seedling growing this year, apart from the clump of many flowered stalks nearby, and I believe it has accomplished that most unusual feat for one of these orchids and actually germinated.

Later in the season the cardinal flowers and white turtleheads will rise above the fading green leaves of these plants as the early flowers have all gone to seed.  I'm not sure what blight did in my formerly vigorous stand of Giant Solomon's Seal but it has all but vanished where once it flourished.  I watch, and I weed, and I wonder, and still it is this garden that helps me mark the progress of Spring to early summer better even than the uncurling maple leaves, or the nesting wrens at the back of the yard.  It has taken a decade for this garden to assume its present shape, and with luck, and a bit of intervention when an invader makes a run at it, it will continue to evolve and change for many years to come.

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.

Last Week's Nature's Notebook Column in the LJ

I wrote here in the Lakeville Journal about the Mountain Lion that was struck and killed by a car in Milford, CT, among other incipient arrivals in western New England.  Fair use excerpt:

"The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection is working on the standard hypothesis that this was an illegally held captive animal that somehow got loose, perhaps wandering over from New York, as the eastern mountain lion is officially extinct outside of the Florida panther subspecies.

Preliminary investigation of the specimen, however, confirmed that it had not been neutered or declawed and was a lean animal, which does not strengthen that hypothesis, so they are waiting for DNA tests.

Moose have been known to wander to Long Island Sound, but it is hard to imagine a viable population of cougars becoming established on Connecticut’s Gold Coast. The western mountain lion, however, visits backyard swimming pools and overlaps with encroaching development in the wildland/urban interface. They are expanding their ranges east and, like the coyote before them, it is only a matter of time before a few of these big cats wander into our region (if, indeed, they have not already done so).

Wildlife officials often say that if we had mountain lions here, there would be physical evidence from collisions with cars. There is one such example of that now, and it will be very interesting to learn whether this was truly someone’s pet or a long-ranging pioneer from Illinois and points west."

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.

Earth Day with Right Whales

There are fewer than 450 North Atlantic right whales living today.  Nearly 100 of them are feeding off the tip of Cape Cod this week, and the children and I went out looking for them.  Off Race Point we joined scores of people gazing out at the twin spouts and rolling flukes of half a dozen whales about half a mile from shore.  over at Herring Cove in the lee of the dunes we saw a dozen or so more, lifting their tails and gorging on the zooplankton that has brought them to this place in (modern) record numbers.

I had never seen a right whale before today.  I have watched finbacks and minkes, humpbacks and pilotfish, and once in Puget Sound saw a pod of orca swimming in procession past San Juan Island and another time a beluga whale in the Cape Cod Canal.  Never before had I seen this rare and wonderful giant, let alone nearly a score of them, and right off the beach.  I could have watched them all afternoon, and wityh binoclears and telescope they seemed very close indeed.

My children were very interested in the whales, but also in shells and sand and the feel of the sun on their bare pink toes.  There were gannets and mergansers and sandpipers darting, and all along the horizon a backdrop of whales to crown a magical Earth Day.  If you look closely at this picture, you will see the telltale Vee of a right whale spout far beyond the children at play.

The Herring that Leaps

Hope is a herring leaping, though the falls are high and gulls wait by the plunge pool. Though other fish cluster below, backed up in eddies and crowding the stream, the herring that leaps is all quicksilver, blue backed and shimmering above the swift dark water,

It gives everything to instinct all in a moment when it shoots the flume. Nothing less than total commitment, risking all on a single cast, will break the bonds of the running stream and carry the fish above the falls. 

Whether the gull swoops or the force of the stream forces it back to its fellows, the herring that leaps is a fastball rising, and we at the herring run rise too in wide-eyed wonder, willing it to clear the wall.

This Week's Piece in the Lakeville Journal

Here is a link to my Nature's Notebook column in today's Lakeville Journal, readable with free registration.  Fair use excerpt:

"Perhaps one of these frosty nights I will stamp the snow down and build a small fire. I will feed the small flames with bits of dry stuff and shield them from the wind. I will put my three-legged pot to boil and roast sausages on a skillet, and feel the heat of the fire on my face and the frozen night air at my back. The woodsmoke will mingle with the Milky Way and the owls will call from the pines as they prepare to mate. It will be a little touch of the wild in my own backyard, a reminder of the give and take of fire and ice."

 

The Great Taconic Wildfire of 1930

The Lakeville Journal ran a feature article of mine in yesterday's edition on the historic 1930 wildfire that swept across the Taconic Plateau from New York into Connecticut and Massachusetts.   I first heard about this fire when I worked for The Nature Conservancy, and this fall I decided to see whether I could develop a single comprehensive narrative out of the various perspectives of the event as reported and experienced in each of the three states.

I am deeply grateful to my editor, Cynthia Hochswender, for her enthusiastic support of this project and willingness to feature it prominently in the paper.  I would also like to acknowledge the following individuals and institutions who helped locate key archival documents and shared oral history material with me for this piece:  Joel Carlson for his knowledge of modelling wildfire behavior; Thomas MacEntee, a geneablogging friend who helped me access the archives of the Poughkeepsie Journal online; Mason Library (Great Barrington), for access to microfilm of the Berkshire Courier;  Edgar Masters for oral history material in Copake; William Morrill for oral history material in Salisbury; Curtis Rand for his perspective as Mt. Riga's forester; Laura Riva of The Salisbury Association who provided a copy of a key article from the Western Connecticut News; Scoville Library (Lakeville) for access to The Lakeville Journal's microfilm archives; and Eleanor Tillinghast and Cile Van Deusen for Mt. Washington oral history material.

As this was not an assigned story, I wrote for personal satisfaction rather than for pay, and so in addition to being readable here with free registration, a slightly edited but otherwise complete text of the story is reprinted below, along with the above map which I created to illustrate the approximate extent of the Great Taconic Wildfire but that did not make it into the print edition.

The Great Taconic Wildfire of 1930 swept across the Riga ridge
Local History – Tim Abbott
January, 06, 2011

“If an aviator had left western Pennsylvania on Sunday morning for Eastport, Maine,” reported The Hartford Courant on May 6, 1930, “he would have seen the smoke of forest fires out of control, from the time of his takeoff until his landing at the Canadian line.”

It was a terrible fire season. More than 100 wildfires raged that week in Massachusetts, and those in New Jersey burned at a rate of 20,000 acres a day. In Nashua, N.H., flames driven by 40 mph winds destroyed several hundred buildings in the city’s Crown Hill section.

It was unusually dry that spring with rainfall across the Northeast at 50 to 75 percent below normal. Strong winds combined with low humidity and plenty of available fuel made an especially destructive combination.

In our region, a serious fire burned from East Mountain in Wingdale, N.Y., into Kent, and another flared up north of North Canaan near Clayton, a village of New Marlborough, Mass.

“Practically the whole sky was red over Dutchess County last night” read the May 5 edition of the Poughkeepsie Journal, “and stiff winds made fighting the fires difficult and dangerous.”

The big local fire, though, and the one that people here still recall (though details have faded with the passage of time), was the wildfire that raged between May 4 and 8 across the Taconic Plateau at the border of Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts.

It is remembered as the Mount Riga fire in Connecticut, and the Taconic Park Fire in New York. It was fought on all sides of the mountain with every available resource, from American Legionnaires and drafted onlookers to Boy Scouts and students from area schools including Hotchkiss and Salisbury and from as far away as Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

The fire burned a great swath of forest from Copake and Ancram in New York to Undermountain Road in Salisbury, while advancing on two fronts into Mount Washington, Mass., before the flames died down.

An article in the May 7 Poughkeepsie Journal from that year quoted Copake Fire Chief Howard Wilsey saying that, “Sometimes the blaze shot 40 feet in the air when it hit the pine trees and dead chestnut trees." 

“The crackling and snapping of the flames struck terror in the hearts of those congregated to watch the progress of the most awful fire we’ve ever had." 

“Rabbits ran from the woods singed and burned. Partridge and quail abandoned their nests in the face of the terrible thing that was happening, almost became tame. They flew down into Copake and accepted without fear the crumbs that were offered to them. They seemed to realize that they were banded together with the humans in a common fight against the fire.”

The Poughkeepsie Journal also reported that rattlesnakes were driven out of the mountain in great numbers by the fire.

Tracing the fire’s path

Piecing together the chronology of the fire, and even determining its cause and true extent, depends on analysis of newspaper accounts from all three states and benefits from oral history material collected in several affected communities.

Just as the steep and remote terrain challenged firefighting crews in 1930, the tri-state location of the fire means that there is no single, comprehensive account of what happened when the fire was active or during its aftermath.

Most accounts agree that the fire began on Sunday, May 4, in the vicinity of Boston Corner in Ancram. The May 8, 1930, edition of The Lakeville Journal adds that it started “along the Harlem rail track near Weed Mine.” Many suspected the cause was a careless match or cigarette tossed by a fisherman, although it could have been ignited by a passing train. The same northwest wind that burned all those homes in Nashua fed the flames of the Taconic Fire, which spread rapidly into Taconic State Park and up the steep flanks of the mountainside.

Fueling the flames

Wildfire behavior is affected by weather, fuel characteristics and topography. The Connecticut Western News (May 8, 1930) attributed the rapid spread of the fire to “a howling wind that came out of the north … [and] the more resinous growth on the western side of the mountain.”

The Berkshire Courier (May 8, 1930) reported that the fire “spread rapidly through the undergrowth, took a firm hold in the standing timber, and within a short time had extended far beyond control.”

There were many dead trees available as fuel as well, killed in the previous decades by the chestnut blight fungus.

The wind blew the flames against the steep sides of the mountains, and carried firebrands great distances to ignite new fires ahead of the advancing blaze.

Edward M. Brazee was among the Salisbury residents who first encountered the fire as it came up over  Mount Brace into Connecticut on the evening of May 4. In an unpublished account recorded in 1996 for the Salisbury Association oral history project, Brazee recalled, “The fire was going right through the tops of the trees. That laurel was high too. Laurel burns like the devil when it gets hot. And you can’t move through it. That’s the bad thing…. Those hemlocks, that’s another thing that burned like gasoline … Probably a lot of them it didn’t kill. But a lot weren’t too big and so [for them] the fire was a crown fire, up there at the height of the trees.”

Salisbury Fire Warden Donald J. Warner told The Lakeville Journal that in 1914 another fire had raged on  Mount Riga, but “the present blaze traveled farther and was more destructive in 48 hours than the entire two weeks of the 1914 fire.”

Once it reached the Riga Plateau, the 1930 fire lost speed but still made steady progress to Bingham Pond and then toward Lion’s Head, Bear Mountain and the eastern escarpment.

All the while, volunteers trailed behind with Indian pumps, shovels and brooms, and lit backfires to protect the camps on Mount Riga and keep the wildfire from reaching the more thickly settled areas below.

“All Monday,” The Lakeville Journal observed, “the smoke covered the countryside like a fog and thousands of autos lined the entire length of Undermountain Road.”

The fire threatened homes and infrastructure in both Mount Washington and Salisbury, while Copake, N.Y., was virtually under martial law as hundreds of men were dispatched against the fire that was backing against the wind up the slopes of  Mount Alander.

State police walked the hose line pumping from Preachy Hollow Brook, to discourage any of the conscripted firefighters who were being paid by the day who might have been tempted to extend their employment through sabotage.

Losses of life, homes

Rumors spread that two Boy Scouts from Thomaston, Conn., had been lost in the fire. While this proved unfounded, there were a number of close calls, as some men had their clothes and shoes burned or got caught in backfires.

Reports that cottages on Plaintain Pond and Mount Riga were burned were unsubstantiated, but along Undermountain Road some outbuildings were lost while firefighters protected primary structures.

The fire extended down Riga Brook toward Salisbury village and was checked by the bridge above Factory Street. Up at High Valley Farm in Copake, with the flames right above on Alander Ridge, a team of draft horses plowed furrows as a firebreak around the main homestead and other buildings.

By May 7, the fire was still raging on Lion’s Head and had moved into Massachusetts from both New York and Connecticut.

“At Sage’s Ravine,” wrote The Lakeville Journal, “the blaze was intense and pine trees blazed like torches. Much of the mountainside was inaccessible, and nothing could be done, only to watch the fire burn itself out.”

More than 500 men arrived from Torrington and Winsted to fight the fire in Connecticut, and more came from the Berkshires and as far away as Poughkeepsie and Hudson in New York.

The wind dropped, and the fire was finally put out on Alander Mountain the following day.

The aftermath

Contemporary estimates of the extent of the 1930 Taconic fire vary considerably, ranging from 6 to more than 30 square miles.

Analysis of historic records and first-person accounts argue toward a more conservative estimate of 8 to 10 square miles, with the largest portion in Connecticut.

Mount Riga’s holdings burned north and east of Riga Lake, sparing Bald Peak but burning over every other promontory from Lion’s Head to Sage’s Ravine, as well as much of the Scoville ore mine vicinity down toward Undermountain Road.

It never reached Mount Everett Reservation in Mount Washington, though it burned much of what is now Mount Washington State Forest in the southwest part of the town. It did advance to within a mile of the church and school in that community.

There was a concerted effort after the fire at the local and state level to keep sightseers away from the burned areas and prevent the spread of new wildfires.

The woods were closed to trout fishing across all three states and the roads to the Taconic Plateau were barred by state police to all but property holders.

‘Considerable grandeur’

The Lakeville Journal reported: “A number of people visited Bald Peak at the height of the fire and the scene, while appalling, was also one of considerable grandeur.”

As of this writing, however, no contemporary photograph of the wildfire or its suppression efforts has surfaced — although the 1934 aerial survey of the state conducted by the state of Connecticut does appear to show evidence of the fire.

Fire Warden Warner would write in gratitude to his fellow citizens of Salisbury: “During the trying days last week when the forest fire was raging, there was always one comforting thought and that was the realization of how splendidly our people stood together in the crisis. Men and women, boys and girls, all did voluntarily and ungrudgingly all and more than was asked of them, in many cases they did more than they should have done.”

Mount Alander fire losses

Not everyone was as sanguine as they counted their losses. The part of the fire that burned over Mount Alander from New York charred more than 2,000 acres in Mount Washington, owned by William Miles, that had once been used for charcoal for the Copake Falls iron furnace.

The state of New York leased the summit of Mount Alander for a fire tower, located in Massachusetts and manned by Mervin Whitbeck of  Mount Washington, who also worked for Miles.

The fire warden’s shack survives today but the tower was ordered taken down by Miles, who canceled the lease shortly after the fire.

It was relocated first to Washburn Mountain across High Valley in Copake, and then to Beebe Hill, farther north in Columbia County, where it remains today.

Impact on forests

Edward Brazee recalled that one could still see the scars of the fire on the big trees in the 1970s.

Curtis Rand, a licensed forester and now Salisbury’s first selectman, notes that there are 80-year-old poplar stands growing on the mountain today in some sections where the fire passed through.

There are fewer pitch pines today on the acidic ridgetops of some of the peaks that were in the path of the fire than on the ones nearby that were spared.

Connecticut does not experience wildfires of the scope and severity of the 1930 Taconic Fire anymore. When the woods were younger and careless smoking put more land at risk of fire, it was not unusual to lose more than 50,000 acres annually to wildfires.

These days, the state averages 1,800 acres burned. When  Mount Everett Reservation caught fire in 2004, it burned for six weeks and consumed just 18 acres. However, it also burned underground through thick layers of duff and leaf litter, and it took the mutual aid of more than 20 communities from three states to respond to that fire, echoing the response that was required to combat the 1930 fire.