Forests on the Move a Logger’S Diary the Plight of the Moose Self-Pruning Branches, Stinging Nettle Soup, Strong Owl Stomachs, and Much More

SPRING ’15

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE FOREST

Forests on the Move A Logger’s Diary The Plight of the Moose Self-Pruning Branches, Stinging Nettle Soup, Strong Owl Stomachs, and much more

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THE OUTSIDE STORY Each week we publish a new nature story on topics ranging from coprophagy to jelly fungi.

EDITOR’S BLOG “If you were to describe deep January cold to someone who’d never experienced it before, you might point out that you can hear it.” From: A Glorious January Day

WHAT IN THE WOODS IS THAT? We show you a photo; if you guess what it is, you’ll be eligible to win a prize. This recent photo Cover Photo by Mandy Applin showed old plow troughs on a “Spring is a very enjoyable time of year to be forest floor. a nature photographer,” said Mandy Applin, who got this shot while hiking one of her Sign up on the website to get favorite trails in Bushnell’s Basin, New York. our biweekly newsletter “I found these colorful maple keys along the delivered free to your inbox. bank of Irondequoit Creek. Surely they were For daily news and information, proclaiming the end of mud season!” FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK

VOLUME 22 I NUMBER 1 REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS CENTER FOR NORTHERN WOODLANDS EDUCATION, INC. SPRING 2015 Virginia Barlow Copyright 2015 Jim Block Northern Woodlands Magazine (ISSN 1525-7932) is published Elise Tillinghast Madeline Bodin quarterly by the Center for Northern Woodlands Education, Inc., Executive Director/Publisher Marian Cawley Tovar Cerulli 1776 Center Road, P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 Dave Mance III Andrew Crosier Tel (802) 439-6292 Editor Steve Faccio Fax (802) 368-1053 Patrick White Giom [email protected] Assistant Editor Bernd Heinrich www.northernwoodlands.org Robert Kimber Amy Peberdy Subscription rates are $23 for one year, $42 for two years, and $59 for three years. Stephen Long Operations Manager Canadian and foreign subscriptions by surface mail are $30.50 US for one year. Todd McLeish POSTMASTER: Send address corrections to Northern Woodlands Magazine, P.O. Emily Rowe Brett McLeod Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 or to [email protected]. Periodical Operations Coordinator/ Susan C. Morse postage paid at Corinth, Vermont, and at additional mailing offices. Web Manager Bryan Pfeiffer Published on the first day of March, June, September, and December. Joe Rankin All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written Jim Schley consent of the publisher is prohibited. The editors assume no responsibility Poetry Editor Michael Snyder Adelaide Tyrol for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Return postage should accompany all submissions. Printed in USA. Chuck Wooster For subscription information call (800) 290-5232. DESIGN Northern Woodlands is printed on paper with 10 percent post-consumer SFI-00665 Liquid Studio / Lisa Cadieux recycled content.

NorthernWoodlands / Spring 2015 1 Center for Northern from the enter Woodlands Education C BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Someone left a plastic zip bag full of soggy pink something, labeled “bobcat,” Richard G. Carbonetti LandVest, Inc. in the office sink. Naturally, I asked Dave Mance for an explanation. He pushed Newport, VT back from his computer screen, observed me with bleary eyes, and denied Vice President knowing anything about it. This led to a full staff discussion and the conclusion Bob Saul that we’d had a visit from a local forester who sometimes leaves things in our Wood Creek Capital Management office, and who is just the sort of person (I mean this as a compliment) who Amherst, MA would find a dead bobcat and take a chunk home for forensic purposes. Treasurer/Secretary Then I reexamined the bag label. It said “borscht” not “bobcat.” Oops. In my defense, the Tom Ciardelli handwriting was messy, and pickled pink cabbage looks gruesome. Biochemist, Outdoorsman I mention this because occasionally I get asked about the office culture at Northern Hanover, NH Woodlands. The answer is many things – hardworking, frugal, passionate about what we do Si Balch – but right up near the top of the adjectival heap is the word “quirky.” In our office, if you Consulting Forester announce there’s an unclaimed bag of bobcat thawing out in the sink, your co-workers don’t Brooklin, ME recoil in horror or suggest you’ve lost your mind. They start listing suspects. Sarah R. Bogdanovitch Our readers are quirky, too. One of your number recently sent me a hilarious letter about Paul Smith’s College using a caribou hoof casting to leave tracks across a snowy field. The local hunters were not Paul Smiths, NY impressed, you reported, but “five does hung around for a few days, hoping to hook up with Starling Childs MFS the ‘big guy.’” Another won my heart by telling me how she uses brownie sculptures to teach Ecological and Environmental students the different shapes of scat. Gross? Absolutely. But such fun for a kid and surely more Consulting Services Norfolk, CT memorable than a lecture. Yet another of you emailed photos of an ermine that had just lost a bloody effort to capture a blue jay. You took pity and offered a consolation prize: a dead David J. Colligan Colligan Law, LLP mouse that you just happened to have stowed in the freezer. (We’ve shared these photos on our Buffalo, NY website, as part of a new reader submitted image gallery we’re launching. Take a look.) As best as I can determine, this sense of quirk has been a defining characteristic of Northern Esther Cowles Fernwood Consulting, LLC Woodlands, all the way back to the founding days. One of our board members recently pointed Hopkinton, NH it out as a key element of our success, and I think that’s right. We’re serious about education, Dicken Crane but we’re playful, too, and open to surprising possibilities. Holiday Brook Farm This time of year, we want people to notice and care – a lot – about vernal pools, and habitat Dalton, MA for returning migratory birds. We want landowners to view themselves as stewards of their Julia Emlen woodlands – and to check with foresters and other knowledgeable folks before cutting trees. Julia S. Emlen Associates But earnest preaching gets tedious. A sense of play, a willingness to look at familiar subjects Seekonk, MA from an unfamiliar tilt, is often a better educational approach. Something to keep in mind as Timothy Fritzinger we’re all out there this spring, sharing our love of the woods with others. Alta Advisors P.S. Curious to learn the answers to our autumn reader quiz? They’re available on our London, UK website,www.northernwoodlands.org. Just type in “quiz answers” in the search field. Sydney Lea Writer, Vermont Poet Laureate Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director, Publisher Newbury, VT Peter S. Paine, Jr. Champlain National Bank Willsboro, NY Kimberly Royar Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department Montpelier, VT Peter Silberfarb Dartmouth Medical School Lebanon, NH

The Center for Northern Woodlands The mission of the Center for Northern Education, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) public Woodlands Education is to advance benefit educational organization. a culture of forest stewardship in the Programs include Northern Woodlands Northeast and to increase understanding magazine, Northern Woodlands Goes to School, The Outside Story, The of and appreciation for the natural Place You Call Home series, and wonders, economic productivity, and www.northernwoodlands.org. ecological integrity of the region’s forests. in this ISSUE

26 features 26 Forest Migration BENJAMIN LORD 34 Moose Decline SUSAN C. MORSE 44 Conservation Easements CHUCK WOOSTER

34 44 52 Journal of a Logger JAMIE SAYEN 58 Back in Time – A Photo Essay ERIN PAUL DONOVAN

departments 2 From the Center 4 Editor’s Note 6 Letters to the Editors 8 Calendar 9 Birds in Focus: Bobolink BRYAN PFEIFFER 11 Woods Whys: Self-Pruning Branches MICHAEL SNYDER 13 Tracking Tips: Curious Sign SUSAN C. MORSE

52 14 Knots and Bolts 25 1,000 Words 62 Field Work: At Work Logging (and Training) with John Adler PATRICK WHITE 66 Discoveries TODD MCLEISH 70 The Overstory: Red Pine VIRGINIA BARLOW 73 Tricks of the Trade: The $5 Froe BRETT R. MCLEOD 75 Upcountry ROBERT KIMBER 76 WoodLit 79 Outdoor Palette ADELAIDE TYROL 80 A Place in Mind TANYA SOUSA

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 3 EDITOR’S note

By Dave Mance III

It’s important for a boy to have older male role The backwoods part of any adventure was key, as Ed always models who aren’t their father. When I was sought out the path of most resistance. He once took a Boy growing up, Ed Colvin was one of those men Scout troop on a 23-mile day-hike over Glastenbury Mountain in my life. in a foot of snow, an act that today would probably get an adult Ed was my neighbor and my best friend sued for child endangerment. If the parents were at all per- Jamie’s great-uncle, which is how I got to know turbed, sitting on a class-four road with the police at one o’clock him. But the thing that drew me into his orbit in the morning waiting for their lost children, it never made was that he was an adventurer. In our globalized world, that the final cut in his story. To hear Ed tell it, it was all a rollicking word has come to evoke some lone-wolf jetsetter who scales adventure – including the mutiny – and everyone went home Kilimanjaro or takes a canoe ride down the Amazon, which is smiling and happy. The moral, of course, was that the boys misleading. Ed was a provincial adventurer – a Vermonter who persevered – a way of thinking also common to men who grew spent his life living right next door to the town he was born in. up in the 1930s. This isn’t to say he wasn’t curious about the outside world or In fall we hunted deer together and in spring we fly-fished. that he didn’t travel, it’s just to point out that he could find We could have fished on the pond in his backyard, but instead adventure right outside his back door. This approach to life we’d head up to a remote chain of beaver ponds in Stamford, made him especially intriguing to kids who could still see the Vermont. Ponds accessible only after an oil-pan-denting drive world through those same fresh eyes. up a series of logging roads in his blue Jeep, and then a three- My father taught me the mechanics of how to hunt and trap mile hike into the wilderness. There were no proper trails in; he and fish; he introduced me to the science in nature – the names found the ponds by renting an airplane. And part of what made of the trees, why the mountains look like they do. Ed was one him a special human being is that after he found them he went of the people who showed me how to overlay a sense of wonder and found some kids to take there. and adventure on top of all that. If we were to analogize my Ed was a good fisherman. Maybe great. I remember him upbringing to learning how to paint, Ed showed me how to landing a dry fly on a swimming beaver’s back; rolling his casts use light. sidearm to hit little pockets of water in brooks that were only as He was a character, see. One of those old-timers who just wide as his pole was long. But of course the real lesson – or at don’t exist anymore. (I love that cliché; love that the bar keeps least the one I picked up on – was that we were hunting stories rising and that people will always use it, even as it means some- as much as we were hunting fish. Yes, there was a sizzling cast thing slightly different every time.) Raised in an old rural world iron pan full of brook trout at the end of the day – Ed showing where men shod horses and Gypsies stole children and sheep- us how to eat the little ones bones and all. But I remember the killing painter cats screamed from wildlands that stretched peripheral stuff even more clearly. Scrambling to keep up with farther than you could walk. him as he wove through the woods so I could hear the stories Ed possessed a sartorial panache typical of woodsmen who – about monster trout and buck deer and Frank Hollister (who grew up in the 1930s, which is to say he wore a uniform in the was half-Indian and the kind of old-timer who just didn’t exist woods. In cold weather, a red plaid coat, bedecked with patches anymore) that he tossed flippantly over his shoulder. At night, like a boy scout or an Army sergeant. Wool poor-boy hat with we’d listen to the “bears” hooting around our campfire, just out- buttons, and wool socks pulled up over his Bean boot tops. side the firelight. Worried looks on our faces. Ed presiding over Black ash pack basket. Knife and sidearm (a .38 revolver) and the moment – “shhhh” – his hand on his pistol. A twinkle in his rifle. Dutch Masters cigar wedged permanently in the corner of eye that said: “Isn’t this fun?” his mouth. In the warmer months, a floppy Gilligan-style hat, As I got older, I did all I could to catch up to Ed in the adven- well-worn fishing vest over brightly colored shirt and collar, turing department. It wasn’t a competition – it wasn’t even a Bolo tie. And wool pants, even in summer. Knife and sidearm conscious effort – but looking back, I see his fingerprints on and fishing pole. That same cigar that was somehow always lit many of my more ridiculous jaunts. That Jamie was often my and always the same size. Picture him walking into a backwoods partner in crime on these epic deer and moose drags, or nights trout pond, leading the charge like an avuncular General Patton, spent huddled in a snow pile on top of some unnamed moun- with Jamie and me, or his sons Billy and Eddie, or a gaggle of tain peak, is no coincidence. My portfolio of stories came to Boy Scouts trying to keep up, the scene equal parts Norman rival Ed’s – as a born teacher, he was quick to point that out. And Rockwell painting and Wes Anderson movie. yet I still don’t feel like I ever quite touched the joy he felt being

4 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 in the woods. Some of this is just nostalgia, I know; the gauzy Stamford, Vermont, because it’s close to the Massachusetts light through which we see the past. But beyond that, I still don’t border and because there are big woods there. The same big think I ever quite got his sense of wonder. His stories all had woods that Ed Colvin introduced me to. It wouldn’t be enough a liminal, dreamlike quality to them. Bucks jumping over his to trap a beaver, of course. We needed to ram my truck up into head and disappearing into the mist. A bobcat stalking him after a place where nobody with common sense would drive. And he’d killed its mate for a farmer’s bounty. This was more than a then make a day of snowshoeing out away from any signs of storyteller’s embellishment; I think he really felt these things in civilization like proper mountain people. Hotdogs roasted on a way that was mystic, and primal, and old. As society churns sticks over a campfire for lunch. The kid would need to test her- along, many of us sacrifice the fantastic at the altar of cold rea- self. Fall through the ice in 12-degree cold and get wet at least a son; I hope that as a culture we don’t ever lose it all together. couple times and go home feeling tired and cold and tough. Anyway, Ed’s body got old before his mind, a symptom of We had just started our way up the mountain when I got his other, more sedentary life as a businessman and a legislator, a phone call from Jamie. Ed, who’d been bedridden in the VA and no doubt those ubiquitous cigars. After a while he couldn’t for close to a year, had taken a turn for the worse and had only make it up into the woods anymore, which left me swinging by hours to live. I turned around and met Jamie down there, and his house and sharing my hunting and fishing exploits like a cat we sat next to Ed in his hospital bed. We tried to seed his mor- might leave a mouse by the front door. At first you could tell phine dreams with his stories so he could take them with him he really appreciated it – that he could live through my stories into whatever comes next. or, more accurately, relive through them. But as of last year his I just spent 1,500 words trying to put a frame around this mind started to go the way of his body. We knew the end was man who meant a lot to me, but I think the context of that coming soon. phone call probably speaks louder than any eulogy I could There’s a 13-year-old girl in Williamstown, Massachusetts, write. He died the next morning, on some random winter day, who wants to learn how to trap a beaver. And through the grape- on the same day that I was preparing to pass on some of the vine she got hooked up with me, and I told her I’d teach her. On love of adventure he’d instilled in me. How many other kids did January 25, 2015, I took my partner out for a recon expedition he teach? And they’re all out there passing it on. This is the way to see if we could find an active flowage. We headed toward that those who have gone before us live forever.

Boy Scout Troop 331 at a beaver pond. Ed Colvin is standing in the back row, second from right. Author is in the front row, far right.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 5 letters to the EDITORS

There Are Benefits to Budworms coefficients. The experiment he ment properties throughout the Northern Forest To the Editors: might try would be to start with region, including some of the former Champion While the spruce budworm outbreak the addition of 1 pint of water lands, and have found that, without exception, [“Caterpillar Clash,” Winter 2014] may into the 20 quarts of 10 percent wood harvesting on investment lands is ongoing, seem to be mostly bad news, it can ethanol/gasoline mix. He would and volume removals are at or near the maximum be good news to backyard bird- then separate the water/ethanol sustainable harvest level on these ownerships. If ers and beyond, who miss seeing layer. I’m guessing this will be harvest amounts from the private investor lands those beautiful evening grosbeaks. something over 2 quarts volume are currently lower than observed during the Between 1975 and 1980, it wasn’t at all unusual and probably about 85 percent ethanol. He could “Champion heydays,” that is most likely because to have flocks at our feeders numbering 50 or 60 then add another pint of water and again draw the current owners purchased a forest with a or more! Nowadays, we see a pair or two at best, off the lower layer, which I’m guessing might be greater percentage of young stands than was and usually that’s in the summer thanks to the about 25 percent ethanol. If he mixes the two found at the onset of the Champion era. few that now nest as far south as southern New water/ethanol layers he should get something Robert Bryan, Harpswell, Maine Hampshire. And sharing in budworm feasts are like 3 quarts, but now about 66 percent ethanol. Tennessee, Cape May, and Bay-breasted warblers The final result should be purer gasoline. And the whose populations (and clutch sizes) also swell combined water/ethanol layers may actually sep- On Matters of Faith during outbreaks, adding to the diversity of spring arate a small layer of gasoline! Needless to say To the Editors: and fall migrants seen hereabouts. there are many permutations of this modification I would like to respond to the letter from Mr. Meade Cadot that would soon exhaust a reasonable person. Southwick [Winter 2014]. His statement, “…awe Harris Center for Conservation Education Russ Seaman, Rougemont, North Carolina for what is need not have anything to do with Hancock, New Hampshire belief or faith” is certainly true. But happily for me, it does. It seems only natural that the work of Former Champion Lands Still Working a Creator would reflect His beauty and love. Does The Gift that Keeps on Giving To the Editors: no one ask why a place or scene of natural beauty To the Editors: I enjoyed Patrick Hackley’s article, “The Nullhegan and grandeur is sometimes described as sacred? I gave my Autumn 2014 issue to an “old-timer” We Knew: Recounting the Last Years of a Working It’s because God made it, and it shows through. down the road who I know loves your magazine, Forest [Summer 2014]. However, the subtitle of When I experience the awe of fall’s beauty or my but is too frugal to buy it. He’s 87 years old, lives the article and some of its content reminded me woodland in spring, I feel His embrace and the on the same farm he was born on, and still man- of the often misquoted Mark Twain quip, “The wonder of His gift. Before felling a challenging ages 40 head of cows, all by himself. Won’t let report of my death was an exaggeration.” Hackley tree, I pray for His guidance and help. For the anyone help him. I occasionally bring him my notes that in the 1980s Champion International Christian, His revelation is more clearly shown in old issues of Northern Woodlands, and he reads purchased 132,000 acres of timberland in Essex Scripture, but even there it is not devoid of mys- them, cover to cover. I realized after I gave him County, Vermont, and 190,000 acres nearby in tery. God may not have told us everything, but He my Autumn issue that I wanted to keep an article northern New Hampshire. As he states, of that told us enough. from it. So I had to buy another copy! It’s all fine; I total, 84,000 acres of the Vermont land are now Gil Holtz, Fishers, New York love the magazine, and I love passing it on. owned and managed by a timberland invest- Gib Geiger, Waitsfield, Vermont ment group, with the land permanently protected To the Editors: by a conservation easement preventing future I want to thank you for including Martin Melville’s development. In New Hampshire, 146,000 acres article, “Theology of a Quaker Logger,” in the Ethanol Experimentation of the former Champion lands are actively man- Autumn 2014 issue. My family has subscribed To the Editors: aged investment timberland, also protected by a to Northern Woodlands for close to 10 years Dwight Broome [“Ethanol Exorcism,” Winter 2014] conservation easement. That makes 64 percent of and we enjoy reading it from cover to cover. My looks like a busy man but he may be interested in the Vermont land and 72 percent of the Vermont- husband and I operate a small farm and woodlot a little experimentation in his method of “purify- New Hampshire total actively managed as private in northern New York and we both faithfully serve ing” gasoline. Currently he mixes two quarts of “working forest” 22 years after Hackley moved our local church. Needless to say, we have a water with a mixture of approximately 18 quarts on, with the “last years” of timber production close tie to our 200-plus acres and stewardship of gasoline and 2 quarts of ethanol. Presumably nowhere in sight. is very important to us. As young-earth creation- he then separates out about four quarts of 50/50 Near the end of the article he notes that, “Wood ists, we were so pleased that Mr. Melville’s article ethanol/water. This will be contaminated with still flows from the land outside of the refuge, but was allowed to give glory where glory is due! We at least the odor of gasoline. And the gasoline at much more infrequent, modest amounts than would love to see more articles included in the will still have a small amount of ethanol in it during the Champion heydays.” I have worked future such as his. – it’s all dependent on what are called partition professionally on many large timberland invest- Kristy & Gary Sullivan, Carthage, New York

6 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 New to Northern Woodlands Your Help To the Editors: A few years back, reader Victor Tremblay stopped I am a new subscriber to your magazine and by the office with a stripped maple stem he’d cut am truly impressed with the content, layout, and in Granby, Vermont. There were twigs stuck to the quality of writing. I don’t own a woodland, but as stem with a black-like substance. The twigs were a University of Rhode Island master gardener who a different species of wood, clearly from another oversees a couple of research endeavors, I find tree. They protruded at odd angles. your magazine to be filled with interesting infor- Tremblay said there were examples of this all mation, some on topics we deal with. I commend over his woods, and produced pictures to cor- your efforts and I am renewing for two years. roborate. He wanted to know what did it, and Rudolph Hempe, Narragansett, Rhode Island we told him we’d look into it for him. We sent a few emails out to a few experts, but had no luck. Some wondered if it was a hoax. A Thing of Beauty Just recently Tremblay wrote us again and To the Editors: brought the subject back up. He suggested we Thanks for the great article on basketmaking run a picture in the magazine, saying: “. . . ask [“Rising from the Ashes,” Winter 2014]. I have your intelligent readers for their assistance . . . I used Maine Indian ash baskets for many years, bet you would get a huge response from many primarily for gathering edible wild plants and people who would like to get involved in this mushrooms. These “work” baskets are rugged challenge.” and durable. We should have done this earlier, Victor. A couple years ago, my mom (who grew up in So, here are two photos of the mystery twig Bangor) asked Richard Silliboy if he would make and substance. Let us know if you have any ideas a “work” basket for my birthday. The basket he as to how this came to be. made is so beautiful, however, that I can’t bring myself to use it outside for foraging. I keep it inside and use it as a mail basket. We love to hear from our readers. Letters intended for publication in the Summer 2015 issue should be sent in by April 1. Russ Cohen, Arlington, Massachusetts Please limit letters to 400 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 7 CALENDAR

A Look at the Season’s Main Events

By Virginia Barlow March April May FIRST WEEK Days are longer, the sun is stronger and April 1: Skunks are active now, but May Day is the midpoint between the turkey vultures are here, seeking roadkill. don’t worry, it’ll be another week before Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice / They prefer to eat animals soon after there’s any odor to their spray / The The chipmunks now being born each they have died but they can metabolize tiny, brilliantly purple female flowers of weigh about 3.4 grams. They’ll be bacterial toxins, allowing them to feed beaked hazelnut are open, and the male weaned at roughly 50 grams, in just over on carrion in a fairly advanced state of catkins are shedding pollen / Later in five weeks / Wild ginger is flowering. decay. Other scavengers are turned off spring otters add frogs, salamanders, Small pollinating gnats and flies warm sooner / Black, withered stalks of last and baby ducks to the menu. Fish and themselves within the ground-hugging year’s Indian pipes may still be erect / crayfish are top choices year-round / flower / Eastern tent caterpillar eggs begin Most of last year’s cattails have If it’s warm, there may be a lot of “firsts” to hatch. These early-season defoliators broken off, adding material to the soil this week: first phoebe, tree swallow, of hedgerow apple and cherry will soon at their feet kestrel, and/or chipmunk begin building their unsightly tents

SECOND WEEK Short-tailed weasels are showing brown The genus name for trailing arbutus, Robins are plucking earthworms to feed around the eyes and mouths, as pelage Epigaea, is derived from the Greek word their young. When they don’t have small turns from winter white to summer meaning “upon the ground,” which is mouths to feed, they eat more fruit / The brown / The distress call of the male wood where you should look for this small, tiny four-petalled flowers of bluets, though duck – a loud whoo eek, whoo eek – sweet scented wildflower / By now ruby- only a couple inches high, are sometimes sounds more like an angry woodpecker throated hummingbirds have reached numerous enough to turn a large area a than a duck / High water spilling into New Jersey / Returning robins will feed on beautiful pale blue / At this time of year, floodplains means good feeding for last summer’s rose hips when worms are Baltimore orioles will eat oranges and migratory waterfowl / Chickadees prefer scarce / After spending the winter in the grape jelly from the bird feeder / Balsam birdhouses that are in or near woods. On soil, white pine weevils are ascending to fir trees are the first conifers to open their their own they use rotten stubs, tree the terminal shoots of their host trees to buds and show bright, light green needles cavities, and abandoned woodpecker holes feed and lay eggs

THIRD WEEK March 21: The vernal equinox, or first On rainy nights when the temperature is Wild strawberries flowers provide nectar day of spring, when day and night are of above 41 degrees, spring peepers migrate for many species of bees; mice, deer, equal length all around the world / Early to their breeding ponds. The males may chipmunks, and grouse are among the phoebes are singing. People who don’t stay for a month, but most females arrive, many animals that eat the leaves – love phoebes might not call it singing / mate, lay eggs, and leave within a couple not to mention the berries / Common Nerves and blood vessels in the tip of a of days / Tree swallows probably aren’t yellowthroat females are building nests, woodcock’s bill allow it to sense odors really showing off, but they look as though often within the protective prickles of and movements as it probes deeply into they are as they skim ponds for insects / blackberry thickets / A single brown the soil. As soon as the ground thaws, Many wind-pollinated trees – quaking thrasher may have 2,000 songs in his woodcocks will be there / Ravens may aspen, balsam poplar, big-toothed aspen, repertoire / The clear, musical chirps and be seen now carrying building materials willow, elm, boxelder and red maple – trills of the spring field cricket (Gryllus to the construction site are in flower veletis) can now be heard

FOURTH WEEK Humans often mistake grouse drumming Sometimes flickers all seem to arrive on the Moose are giving birth. Usually one calf is for an engine of some sort and, strange as same day / When the water temperature produced, though females older than four it may seem, grouse may mistake one of reaches 50 degrees, perch begin to spawn often have twins. They’ll each weigh our engines for a grouse. They’ll sometimes / First of perhaps three litters of northern 300-400 pounds by the fall / White admiral stay nearby when someone is mowing the short-tailed shrews is born. This common butterflies are as likely to be seen sipping lawn / Gray squirrels are born, usually in a shrew has a poisonous bite and preys on from scat, guano, or puddles as from nest high in a hardwood tree / Gray comma mice and voles that are larger than it is / flowers. The undersides of the wings of butterflies may fly on warm days. They Queen bumblebees fly in a zigzag course white admirals are as pretty as the upper overwintered as adults, and commas in this close to the ground searching for a nest sides. These butterflies are often seen in first generation don’t need flowers, preferring site. A single queen will begin a new colony, the forest / Canada mayflower, also called rotten fruit, carrion, tree sap, and dung often in an abandoned mouse nest wild lily of the valley, is blooming

These listings are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on your latitude, elevation – and the weather.

8 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 BIRDS in focus

Story by Bryan Pfeiffer A Bobolink’s Carbon Fingerprint

Life can be rough for the bobolink, a charismatic grassland bird whose population is declining. Halting that decline is a challenge for North American ornithologists. After all, bobolinks spend about eight months of the year, from September through April, either in long- distance migration or at wintering sites in South America. But the ornithologists don’t necessarily JANETANDPHIL / CREATIVE COMMONS need to chase these songbirds across the Llanos or Pampas. It turns out that when bobolinks return north each spring, they unwittingly bring back clues about what they were up to during winter. The evidence is encrypted in their feathers. To understand what feathers can reveal about bird behavior, I offer you a short refresher course in Each feather provides carbon clues as to what a bobolink happened to eat while nuclear chemistry. (Stay with me; this is cool stuff.) Recall that wintering in South America, and on its migration. an element’s nucleus contains, among other crazy particles, protons and neutrons. The most abundant form of carbon, Carbon But there’s something unusual about bobolink biology that 12, for example, has six protons and six neutrons. makes this research even more powerful: bobolinks grow feath- But nuclei sometimes contain extra or fewer neutrons. These ers like few other birds. Nearly every species of North American are isotopes, some of which are unstable or radioactive. But oth- migratory songbird molts its wing and tail feathers only once a ers persist in the environment – and in feathers. One of these year, usually after breeding. The new feathers give the songbird stable isotopes is Carbon 13. Although it’s scarce, Carbon 13 in greater efficiency during the long flight south. But bobolinks feathers can tell us something about what bobolinks were doing grow an entirely new set of wing and tail feathers during the in South America last winter. winter as well. Very few birds do this. During earlier trips to Where might a bobolink pick up its carbon? The only source Bolivia and Argentina, Renfrew figured out the timing and is food – insects and seeds from wild grasses. But bobolinks orderly sequence of the bobolink’s winter molt, which generally also feed on cultivated rice in South America. That’s a problem runs from mid-January to early March. because rice farmers sometimes use organophosphate pesti- Each new feather, grown at a particular time during the cides, including one called monocrotophos, which is notori- molt period, takes on the carbon fingerprint from whatever ously toxic to birds. the bobolink happened to be eating at the time. Each feather The carbon in a bobolink’s feathers can reveal what the bird is like an entry in a diary that the bobolink carries north. So was eating. Rice has a particular carbon signature, based on the when Renfrew clips a particular feather she can determine not relative abundance of Carbon 13 and Carbon 12 (from carbon only what the bobolink was eating (rice or native grains), but dioxide) that the plant assimilates during photosynthesis. Rice when during its molt cycle it might have been facing risk in rice has a higher proportion of Carbon 13 than native grasses, and fields. this carbon isotopic ratio is like a tracer, moving from carbon Renfrew has concluded that some bobolinks eat rice for most dioxide in the air to rice to feather. You are what you eat. And of the winter, some eat native grasses instead, but most of the that distinctive carbon ratio, like a fingerprint, stays with a birds go back and forth on their diets. Bobolinks do seem to hit bobolink when it returns north to breed in May. the rice in April on the way north. Here, waiting for bobolinks, is my colleague Rosalind Renfrew has plenty more to do on behalf of bobolinks, Renfrew, a conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for including working with rice farmers to curb pesticide use. For Ecostudies (VCE). By clipping off and analyzing the tips of a that work, an extra neutron in Carbon won’t do her any good: few wing feathers, Renfrew can determine whether a particular Renfrew will need to book a flight to South America. bobolink has been feeding on rice or on wild grasses. She can then investigate whether this hampers a bobolink while nesting Bryan Pfeiffer is an author, wildlife photographer, guide, and consulting naturalist who and fledging young here in the U.S. or Canada. specializes in birds and insects. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 9 Allard Lumber Company Tel: (802) 254-4939 Fax: (802) 254-8492 www.allardlumber.com [email protected]

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10 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 woods WHYS

By Michael Snyder

I’m interested in learning more about how trees self-prune. How does a tree “decide” that a branch is no longer useful?

Think of it as nature’s cost-benefit analysis. Instead of the landowner or forester choosing which branch to prune and when to prune it, here, the tree makes the call, withholding its investment of food, minerals, and water from any branch that fails to produce at least as much carbohydrate (tree fuel) as it consumes. Any branch that remains a productive contributor, paying its way in the tree’s overall energy budget, will persist. Any that don’t get shut off. Of course many factors influence this balance between photosynthesis (the food-making) and respiration (the food consuming) within a tree, but access to light is the driver of And just as shade-tolerant trees can linger in the deeply shaded over-whelming importance. As long as a branch has sufficient woods, so too can the lowest branches linger in the darkest light, chances are it will manage to be a net producer, remaining depths of a shade-tolerant tree’s crown. Indeed, it’s easy to find alive and on the tree. This is most readily observed in open- living branches on the butt log of a beech or hemlock tree. Shade- grown trees. With unlimited access to light, they tend to have intolerant species are very different. They photosynthesize rap- more live branches, lower down the trunk, for longer durations. idly in full light, which works great in open conditions, but their In other words, self-pruning is rare in the open. high photosynthetic rates are offset by similarly prodigal rates In the woods, natural pruning is a common occurrence, espe- of respiration. Under shade, the lower branches of intolerants cially in dense stands where there simply is not enough light for all can’t get enough light to pay their high costs of simply being trees to keep all branches. Accordingly, branches low on the trunk alive, and they perish. As any walk in the woods will show, lower die from shading and competition. They die at varying rates, usu- branches die young on shade-intolerant trees like aspens, paper ally over several growing seasons, and some persist as dead stubs birch, red pine, elms, ashes, and cherries. They’re known to be for decades. Immeasurable numbers of shoots and small twigs good at self-pruning. Typically they have shorter, more open perish through such self-pruning every day but, surprisingly, it crowns and they naturally occur in lower densities, too. is also a regular occurrence among more sizeable branches on But there is more to this story. Early death of a branch does saplings, poles, and sometimes even sawtimber-sized trees. not necessarily ensure its early shedding. Although the tree does As any tree becomes overtopped, the amount of light reaching shut the slacking branch off from receiving nutrients, it cannot its lowest branches is significantly reduced. This shading reduces sever it. For that, the tree needs outside help; dead branches the rate of photosynthesis, which in turn leads to a reduction do not fall until further weakened by fungi, insects, and other in the number of leaves on the shaded branch as the branch agents, such as animals, wind, snow, or ice. Temperature and attempts to equalize its energy use. This is a physiological moisture play a key role through their influence on wood- process, beginning with the parent stem sealing the branch decaying fungi. Notice how drier branch stubs persist longer. off by depositing compounds (resins or gums) at its base. This Natural pruning has significant practical implications for leads to senescence, or physiological aging, and ultimately to the forestry, largely through its influence on tree form and lumber death of the entire branch. quality. A healthy tree will grow over and around any remaining How long the shaded branch survives varies among tree branch stub (depending on length), forming a knot, then clear species, following nicely along the spectrum of shade tolerance. wood, and a scar in the bark outside of that. Less healthy trees Remember, shade tolerance is the relative capacity of each will exhibit persistent branches and stubs and all manner of tree species to compete and survive under shaded conditions. malformed scars and wounds in various stages of closure. Foresters rank tree species on a continuum from those trees The fact is, our forests are filled with these vestiges of foregone that are very intolerant of shade, like trembling aspen and red branches, naturally pruned over the years by the forest itself. pine, to those very tolerant of shade, like American beech and eastern hemlock. Shade-tolerant species are better at balancing Michael Snyder, a forester, is commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, photosynthesis and respiration under severely limited light. Parks, and Recreation.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 11 Just what is SFI®?

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12 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 TRACKING tips

Story and photos by Susan C. Morse 1 2

Curious Sign

It’s spring, and the snowpack is retreating. But it’s not just coltsfoot and trout lily that are emerging from beneath the melting snow. Over the years I’ve found plastic oil jugs, PVC pipeline sections, a 2-gallon bucket, an old hubcap, a Nerf football, a broken canoe paddle, numerous plastic soda bottles and beer cans, one rubber boat bumper, several plastic flower pots, a hunter’s tree stand cushion (and accom- panying “pee bottle”), not to mention “No Trespassing” signs, trail marker signs, and any number of bird feeders and small garbage containers that have somehow made their way into the woods. All of these findings have one thing in common: they have been bitten by a wild animal. Enjoy the following photos; this is a learning opportunity you can really sink your teeth into!

Susan C. Morse is founder and program director of Keeping Track in Huntington, Vermont.

4 5 1 The action of a ‘bite’ is achieved by forceful upward movement of the lower jaw. 2 This float from an Alaskan Inupiat fishing net was quite the toy for a polar bear cub. Two separate bites left arcs of incisor impressions on the top of the float and numerous canine holes can be seen below. 3 Close inspection of this sign reveals bear hair in addition to teeth and claw marks. 4 A wider view of the damage done. 5 Gloved fingers on lower right point to where this U.S./Canadian boundary sign was marked by a black bear.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 13 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ FORAGING ]

Stinging Nettles: A Favorite Spring Green There’s no mistaking the stinging nettle. Sure, its paired, heart-shaped, coarsely-toothed leaves are easy to spot. But it’s the painful burning sensation one gets from even a light brush against a stem or leaf that makes the stinging nettle memorable. While its edible properties aren’t as well known as its more irritating ones, stinging nettle is still one of our region’s more popular wild edibles. Because modern populations have ancestors native to both North America and Europe, botanists debate how many species or subspecies to split our North American nettles into, and popular sources may list them as Uritica dioica, U. gracilis, or U. lyallii. But outside of the library, the distinctions are only incidental to foragers. The stinging potency varies from one population to another, but all stinging nettles sting. The “hairs” of the nettle plant are hollow tubes atop a tiny, bladder-like reservoir of histamines, acetylcholine, and formic acid, among other compounds. When you brush against them, these tubes act as little syringes, injecting the chemical mixture into your skin – an adaptation that protects the stinging nettles from predation. And maybe it’s a good thing they are so protected. Nettle greens are mild and hearty, without a trace of bitterness. They are also unusually

BENJAMIN LORD nutritious and a source of vitamins A, C, and D; calcium, iron, potassium, and other minerals; and protein. Without their sting, nettles would surely be eaten by all kinds of creatures. Fortunately for the human forager equipped with the tools and skills of cooking, heating the greens quickly denatures the Left: This is the correct way to pick stinging neddles (even with bare hands, the tough irritating chemicals. Greens can be steamed or boiled. They skin of the fingers and palms offers protection). Right: And this is the wrong way to can be used like spinach but are coarser and stringier, so I prefer pick them (any contact with the backs of your hands or wrists will leave you stinging). to chop them well. Nettles are particularly good in soups. Surplus leaves can be dried (drying also destroys the sting), and the dried leaves can be used to brew tea or thicken stews. and Tortellini Soup Nettle greens can be gathered from when they first appear Stinging Nettle in spring. The youngest spring shoots are the most tender, but • 1 pound stinging nettle the top few pairs of leaves from each stem can be gathered until • 6 cups chicken ortri-color vegetable tortellini broth the plants reach maturity in June. After that, the leaves become • 1 pound frozen tough and stringy, but still brew a mild and earthy tea. • 1 can petite diced tomatoes Picking nettles can be intimidating at first, and many guides • 2 cloves garlic, minced Bring chicken broth to boil. Lightly steam nettles to remove their sting, then recommend gloves, but experienced foragers often forgo them. chop into fairly small pieces. Add The tough skin on the palms and fingertips is not easily stung, garlic, nettles, andSimmer tomatoes for to the broth. and if one is careful to avoid brushing nearby plants with the 5 minutes. Add tortellini tender skin on the backs of hands or wrists, nettles can be and simmer until they float to the surface. comfortably harvested with bare hands. I prefer to gather Garnish with Parmesan with one bare hand to hold the nettle shoot and one gloved cheese if desired. hand to wield a pair of kitchen shears and nudge nearby stems out of the way. Whatever method you choose, I expect that it won’t take long for you to stop avoiding the nettle patches and start seeking them out. Benjamin Lord

14 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 [ NATURALLY CURIOUS ]

Tough to Stomach

Owls swallow small prey, such as mice and voles, whole, while larger prey is torn into smaller pieces before being swallowed. Once eaten, the prey goes directly into the owl’s stomach; owls have no PHOTOS BY MARY HOLLAND/WWW.NATURALLYCURIOUSWITHMARYHOLLAND.WORDPRESS.COM crop, and thus no ability to store food for later consumption. Like other birds, owls have a stomach with two chambers. One is the glandular stomach, or proventriculus (inset). The proventriculus produces enzymes, acids, and mucus which begin the process of digestion, though because the acids are weak, only the soft tissues are digested. The second stomach is the muscular stomach, also called the ventriculus, or gizzard. The gizzard serves as a filter, holding back bones, fur, teeth, and feathers that are difficult to digest. The soft parts of the food are ground by the gizzard’s muscular contractions and allowed to pass through to the rest of the digestive system. This picture shows the contents of a deceased barred owl’s proventriculus; from left to right, a meadow vole, a masked shrew, two northern short-tailed shrews, and a deer mouse or a white- footed mouse. After taking the picture I left the contents outside, and that night a resident barred owl recycled the meadow vole and masked shrew. Mary Holland

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 15 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ STEWARDSHIP STORY ] regeneration of mast-producing trees like red and white oak, and native shrubs, especially blueberry, that will benefit many wildlife species. In addition to creating valuable wildlife habitat, these projects also produced sustainably harvested wood and supported local businesses. TR Building Local Land Works, from Hartford, Connecticut, completed the work at Stafford Hill, while Sawyer’s Trucking and Logging, out of Hubbardston, Massachusetts, It was early, even for the birds, when photographer Bill Byrne and I arrived conducted the timber harvest at Phillipston. These projects generated fire- at Jim Conkey’s sawmill in New Salem, Massachusetts. C & M Rough Cut wood, sawlogs, and low-quality softwood chips. The firewood was sold to is nestled in the woods just a stone’s throw from the banks of the Quabbin local residents for winter heating; the chipwood was used by Pinetree Power Reservoir. This small-scale sawmill has stood in the same location for more in Westminster, Massachusetts to generate electricity; and sawlogs were than 30 years processing local forest products. trucked to mills in New Hampshire, Maine, or Canada. We were there to watch the mill make lumber for the new Massachusetts Most lumber that originates in Massachusetts is trucked out of state to be Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (DFW) headquarters in Westborough. processed and sold, because the state economy does not generate enough The building includes a geothermal heating and cooling system and solar support for sawmill operations in the Commonwealth. The environmental and photovoltaics, but just as noteworthy is its connection to the forest and economic consequences of this situation result in an increased carbon foot- to local forest products manufacturers. Some prominent interior building print for each piece of lumber used in the Commonwealth and a significant components came from wood harvested as part of MassWildlife’s efforts to loss of wood processing jobs as they increasingly move out of state. While restore wildlife habitat for native species. Massachusetts has excelled at reviving the local food market, we are failing to Black cherry handrails were milled from trees harvested during a support our local forest products market in a state that is 60 percent forested. shrubland restoration project at the DFW’s Stafford Hill Wildlife Management The cherry and oak logs in this story are a happy exception to the trend; Area in Cheshire. The reclamation of these abandoned agricultural fields our logs were processed entirely at Massachusetts mills. After the rough supports declining species such as the eastern towhee, chestnut-sided sawing at C&M Rough Cut, the boards were trucked to Lashway Lumber warbler, and American woodcock. in Williamsburg to dry in state-of-the-art vacuum kilns. Lashway Lumber is Flooring in the building’s library came from northern red oaks one of the few remaining family-owned (four generations) sawmills in the harvested as part of a habitat management project at DFW’s Phillipston state. After kiln drying, the red oak was moved to the Ponders Hollow mill in Wildlife Management Area. Approximately 40 acres of young forest habitat Westfield for tongue-and-groove processing as floorboards. was created on this abandoned agricultural land. The goal was to promote The new building was completed in 2014 and during the December building

16 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 [ ECOLOGICAL ETYMOLOGIST ]

Dear E.E.: I’ve always been curious about the name dogwood. Does it have anything to do with dogs?

It certainly seems like it should, and the ever-wise internet tells two canine tales. According to some people, when the wind blows, the branches rub together and make a distinctive barking sound. And it’s a great story – imagine Sherlock Holmes running through Baskerville only to find

PHOTOS BY BILL BYRNE the baying hounds were just noisy trees – but it’s just not true. Another theory holds that, long ago, weary pet owners bathed their dogs in a decoction of dogwood bark to cure both mange and fleas. While there may be some truth to this, the OED tells us that this story (dating from Loudon’s 1838 Arboretum) refers to Euonymus euro- paeus, once called a dogwood but now known as European spindle. In reality, our red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea) was likely named not for dogs but dags – wooden spikes or skewers that were sometimes made of dogwood. Historically, dag could refer to any number of pointy objects, from daggers to the trailing wool around a sheep’s haunches, from thin branches to the horns of a young deer. In fact, the word cornus means horn. So the word dogwood refers to many things, but unless you’ve got Counter-clockwise from top left: Oak logs harvested during a habitat management project were milled locally one of those demonic into flooring for the library of the new Massachusetts DFW headquarters building. Black cherry harvested little terriers, your during a shrubland restoration project was used to make staircase handrails. dog isn’t one of them. dedication, the handrails and flooring were lauded as a testament to how responsible stewardship of our forest lands can support local jobs and local wildlife. That’s a hopeful message, but the story doesn’t end there. To ensure that sustainably harvested local forest products remain available in years to come, we all need to support a local market that demonstrates responsible stewardship of our forest lands, supports local jobs for our neighbors, and reduces the carbon footprint of the very materials that sustain the structure of our lives. Rebecca DiGirolomo

Rebecca DiGirolomo is a habitat biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. An earlier, more detailed version of this article was published in MassWildlife’s 2014 Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Trapping.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 17 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ MANY MILES AWAY ]

Exploring the Yucatan

The best way to learn about science is to do science. That’s why I took 12 Vermont high school students to the Yucatan for two weeks as part of an Operation Wallacea program. The group, known as Opwall, conducts research and conservation in 14 high-biodiversity sites around the world. We spent the first week in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage site for biodiversity and culture. Our mission was to work with Opwall scientists who were collecting data to write grants; the grant money would be used to help the local people live sustainably. Currently, forests are being cleared for cattle ranching, which is reducing the buffer between highly populated areas and the protected land of the Selva Maya, the last stronghold for endangered animals such as Baird’s tapir, jaguars, and spider monkeys. Opwall will be showing locals how to make a living from ecotourism and honey production, rather than cattle farming. Eight hours from Cancun, we finally rolled into our camp and stepped off our air-conditioned bus. We were now well within the boundaries of a for- pace fast over relatively flat terrain. Vines the size est that stretched from the Yucatan to Guatemala. Day One of chairlift cables occasionally cross the path, trip- Home was a cluster of tents gathered round a fire Sometime around 5:30 the forest erupts, first ping anyone who drags his feet. I imagine Tarzan pit, a few ramshackle buildings, and a latrine. I told a single call, then another, soon a cacophony. swinging from these vines, moving swiftly through my students this would be the trip of a lifetime, Monkeys? No, Just chachalacas, a large ground the jungle, but the forest is so dense that Tarzan and the next five days would prove me right. bird, followed by woodpeckers and parrots. Back would have needed to employ an army equipped home, the only sound that could rival this is a with chain saws to clear a path for him. family of ravens coming down from their nesting Melanie, Katy, Anna, Rylee, Meghan, and Sandy, cliffs in June. I pride myself on knowing the sounds along with Joto and myself, hike on. Our destina- of the northern forest, but as I lie in my tent on this tion – an aguada or small pond – is approximately first morning, everything is just jungle sound. 1.8 kilometers out. Joto had set up pitfall traps This region does not receive enough rainfall to where, hopefully, some small animals would be be considered a rain forest, though it is tropical. We found in buckets recessed below the ground. We had arrived at the beginning of the rainy season, find a mouse in one and a frog in another. The but no rain yet. Average yearly precipitation for data are logged and we head back to camp. the Yucatan is around 42 inches, about the same After lunch, Dr. Kathy Slater, a primate special- as Vermont’s, but of course we get a lot of ours ist and senior research coordinator for Opwall, as snow. gives the students an inspiring introduction to My students are put into groups with students forest ecology. Back at our transect we turn from a Scottish school. The group I’m with heads rocks and logs over looking for herps. We find out with Joto, the camp herpetologist, to “Transect a snake and a lizard. Once again, we record the One.” (To standardize data collection, all groups species and location. The greater the biodiversity

MARK PAUL collect data from the same plots on the same documented, the more compelling the grant four transects, each transect being two kilometers applications will be. long.) The path through the forest is narrow, the After the sun goes down, we embark on the

Calakmul Biosphere Reserve is a World Heritage site for biodiversity and culture; it’s home to huge expanses of unbroken forest, a nearly endless array of wildlife (including the howler monkey and common Mexican tree frog), and thousands of structures left over from Mayan times.

18 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 net four times, not returning until around 1 a.m. We catch 13 bats, four species in all, and record weight, wing length, and sex for each. We also determine whether or not the bats are sexually active. Some are and some are not. Day Three

I’m a bird guy, so I am especially looking forward to my group’s chance to catch birds. We are, of course, up early. Renee and Rachel, two ornithologists working for Opwall, lead us out of camp. Renee begins to identify the birds we hear: “That’s a sulphur-bellied flycatcher; over there, that’s a lesser greenlet.” We pass pendulous nests of the northern royal flycatcher – all empty; they are apparently done breeding. But other birds are not. Directly over camp is an active nest of the Altamira oriole, and bat falcons feed their young every day high above on the radio tower. We turn off the road and onto our assigned transect. We carefully step over lines of army ants, the only wildlife humans have to worry about. MARK PAUL Later that day, James tells us that we had come very close to evacuating camp in the middle of the night. Fortunately, a long trail of approaching army ants had decided to detour around our camp. “Sometimes you just have to leave and let them Day Two go through before you can come back,” he offers Having worked the night shift, we get to sleep in, matter-of-factly. if we can, before learning jungle survival skills Our morning effort turns up two birds: a female with James, the camp manager. We first talk red-throated ant-tanager and a quail that gets about choosing a campsite and then make a away. Other teams have had better luck. Later shelter. No problem. But if you are really lost in that day, Renee takes me for a walk and we find a the jungle, how do you survive without food and black-headed trogon. When we get back to camp, Tim, another herpetologist, is holding a puffer

MARK PAUL water? James shows us how to wrap a plastic bag around leaves to collect evaporating water. snake. While we were gone, it had entered the OK, so what do we eat? By now we have all seen nest of a golden-fronted woodpecker and eaten scorpions, but I don’t think it has occurred to us all of the young. last part of our herp day. We are going back to that they can be eaten. James had done us the the aguada, this time armed with nets and plenty favor of collecting a few. All we have to do is kill Day Four of bug repellent. Insects rule the night. They are them and cook them. We use pliers to get a grip everywhere our headlamps put their beams of on the squirming animals, then we pretend the By now, we can easily identify four prominent light, and the din is obnoxious. But who hasn’t been scorpions are hot dogs, and hold them over the tree species. The chicozapote, with its angular molested by deer flies, black flies, and mosquitos fire with a sharpened stick. Someone describes scars, is unmistakable. This tree, native to Meso- back in the North Country? We can handle this. the taste as crunchy and a little burnt. No one America and the Caribbean, produces chicle, the Somehow, Melanie finds a turtle that looks to says they taste like chicken. sticky substance used exclusively for many years everyone else like a rock. Then we catch two tree We visit a different transect in the afternoon, to make chewing gum. Today, gum is synthesized, frogs. Too busy to think about insects now, there this time to determine forest biomass. We mea- but sticks of this natural chewing gum can still be are data to record. Each specimen is weighed sure plots and determine the percentage of purchased. and identified. As we circle the aguada we find canopy and diameter of the larger trees. All trees Then there are two trees, the chechem and el a trail camera that someone has set up in hopes are tagged and eventually identified by species, chacá, which are always discussed together. The of recording large mammals. Well, we are large though not by us. That night, we hike a different chechem, with its spotted, wavy-edged leaves, mammals. We trigger the camera and provide a transect with Miguel to collect bats in mist nets. produces a very acidic sap and will cause an itchy group shot of eight Homo sapiens. We set up a series of four mist nets and visit each rash and even blisters if touched. It is related to

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 19 KNOTS & BOLTS

the Anacardiaceae family, which includes poison ivy. El chacá is the antidote tree, its flaky, deep red bark providing a neutralizing base. The Mayans used this tree for tea infusions, oils, and anti- inflammatory ointments. A young kapok tree, or la ceiba, is unmistakable, with large spikes covering the bark for its first seven years or so of growth. I remember reading a story to my boys when they were young, in which all of the jungle animals were very upset with a boy who was going to cut down a large kapok tree. I would use special voices as each animal told the boy why the kapok tree was so valuable. It is the most sacred tree to the Mayans. Mid-day, we revisit transect three, where earlier we had baited all of the butterfly traps with banana slurry. We walk over a porous limestone shelf. During the last ice age, this land was underwater and calcareous deposits from tiny crustaceous skeletons slowly built up. Today, the Yucatan Peninsula is no more than 15 meters above sea level. But this is more than a natural history lesson. Knowing the bedrock is porous helps explain perhaps the biggest difference between this semi-arid forest and our northern forest. In the northeastern part of the United States, a walk in the woods often results in muddy boots. The bed- slowly from the surface through the aquifer, Students help collect bats in mist nets, and then record rock is typically metamorphic and water moves helping to create rich, moist topsoil. Here in the the species, weight, length, and other data. Yucatan, the limestone and dolomite are easily dissolved, which allows surface water to quickly “City of the Two Adjacent Pyramids,” but there infiltrate and percolate. Consequently, the forest are far more than two pyramids in this region. has a very thin layer of topsoil and is very dry. At least 6,750 ancient structures have been There are no rivers or lakes here in the Yucatan – identified. From 250 BC to 950 AD, this city, with just the occasional aguada. Surface water moves its 150,000 inhabitants, ruled the Mayan world. quickly to underground pools called cenotes. From atop the highest structure, looking south to We arrive at our next butterfly trap. There are Guatemala, southeast to Belize, or northwest to two butterflies. We i.d. them, clean out the trap, the Gulf of Mexico, there is unbroken forest as far and move on. It is hot in the midday sun – maybe as the eye can see – a view that hasn’t changed 90 degrees – but there are no bugs. The absence in thousands of years. A view that we want to of surface water has its advantages. preserve. Butterflies are cool, but back at camp we find Below us, there are keel-billed toucans and out that Francisco, one of my students, has seen howler monkeys in the forest canopy. Somewhere a jaguar and has pictures to prove it. He saw the out there, resting in the shade, are ocelots, mar- third-largest cat species in the world on the only gays, pumas, jaguarondis, and jaguars. And in this road leading in and out of camp. The Mayans vast jungle, there are still ruins to be discovered. revered the big cat and honored all kings by refer- Tomorrow, we will leave for Akumal where we ring to them as the Jaguar King. Francisco is the will swim with turtles and rays. But for now, my Jaguar King! students feel as though, in some small way, they KATHRYN TRAHAN have helped preserve the cultural and biological Day Five diversity of the Selva Maya and at the same time reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide by working On our last full day in the Calakmul Biosphere to conserve a large carbon sink, the Calakmul The bark of young kapok (or la ceiba) trees is covered reserve we visit some of the Mayan ruins, for Biosphere Reserve. with large spikes. which this area takes its name. Calukmul means Mark Paul

20 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 [ THE OUTSIDE STORY ]

How Beavers Recycle Tree Defenses

Around a beaver pond, we sometimes catch a whiff of beaver odor. People acid. (Beavers are not the only animals that have this trick – leaf beetles also have described it to me as smoky, woody, or like tobacco. It may waft over ingest salicin when munching on willow leaves. They use the glucose as a from the lodge, or it might emanate from scent mounds – little piles of mud nutrient and the salicylic acid for defense against predators, such as ants.) by the water’s edge. Beavers make scent mounds by dredging mud up from Even humans appropriate beaver castor, though we use it to say: come the bottom of a pond, then carrying it up on land in their front paws while here! Castor sacs are a secondary product of the fur trade and are sold to walking upright. The beaver drops the mud, then squats over the mound and perfumers who use it to give perfumes an “animal note.” In fact, the chemical applies castoreum from glands near the base of the tail. investigation of castoreum was driven by the perfume industry. The smell means: keep away! In some neighborhoods, this territorial We’re also not above recycling plant compounds for our own purposes. advertisement works remarkably well. I’ve been involved in studies where Salicylic acid is the active ingredient of aspirin. Over two thousand years human-made scent mounds effectively deterred free-ranging beavers from ago, physicians in ancient Greece prescribed willow bark to fight fevers and settling in unoccupied beaver habitat. inflammation. Native Americans used willow bark against headaches, and When a beaver detects a foreign castor smell in its territory, it implies today we still treat pain of the lower back and osteoarthritis with willow bark brazen behavior that has to be dealt with. The residents invariably eliminate preparations. the strange scent mark. They paw it apart and scent mark over it. If they And so there rages a chemical arms race in the woods. Trees bolster their come across the perpetrator, they’ll attack viciously. Researchers have found defenses against herbivores, especially during the dormant season. Beavers that beavers can identify family members by their castor smell; they can also and other animals defeat these defenses by breaking down, detoxing, seques- distinguish between neighbors and complete strangers. tering, and recycling potentially harmful compounds. Plotting their next move, Castoreum contains many different kinds of compounds: alkaloids, pheno- trees will crank up their defenses. Two- and three-year-old aspen saplings lics, terpenes, alcohols, and acids among them. The beaver appropriates the are rich in bitter-tasting salicin-like glycosides. Beavers avoid these and feed ingredients from the plants it eats; ironically, the plants use the compounds on larger, less bitter trees, allowing the young trees to prevail. Each measure to say keep away. provokes a countermeasure. The race goes on and no one ever wins. Plants synthesize a bewildering variety of secondary compounds that differ Dietland Müller-Schwarze from the basic classes of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. Some, like alkaloids, taste bitter, while tannins are astringent. When they work, the compounds Dietland Müller-Schwarze has studied beaver behavior for over 30 years and defend the plants against mammal and insect herbivores, as well as fungi and currently is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Biology at SUNY College of other microorganisms. These secondary compounds interfere with digestion Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. and inhibit reproduction. Some are outright toxic and even deadly. Compounds from a number of trees in the beaver’s diet end up in their castoreum. Benzyl alcohol occurs in aspens and poplars, ben- zoic acid in black cherry and scots pine, and catechol in common cot- tonwood. In summer, beavers eat aquatic plants such as pondweed and pond lilies, and the alkaloids that these plants use to deter insects also end up in the beaver’s mix. Beavers cope with plant chemicals in different ways. They have a protein in their saliva that binds tannins and renders them harmless. They deal with other compounds by breaking them down into their com- ponent parts: when they ingest salicin – a bitter chemical in willow and poplar bark – it gets broken down into sugar and, eventually, salicylic The Outside Story is sponsored by the Wellborn Ecology Fund of New Hampshire Charitable Foundation: [email protected].

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 21 KNOTS & BOLTS

[ TECHNOLOGY ]

Laser Vision

Aaron Weiskittel vividly remembers when the power of LiDAR hit home for him. The University of Maine professor of forest biometrics was with a crew of students on a mountain ground-truthing a LiDAR scan. They had noted some white spots that he thought were just processing errors. But they weren’t errors. They were the footprints of an old donkey skid, a piece of logging equipment that was hitched to a tree and used to haul other equipment uphill to a harvest site. No other type of mapping technology could have noted that level of detail, Weiskittel marveled. “With LiDAR you could see the ground was disturbed, even though it was only five-foot deep divots. But you could see that as big as day.” LiDAR (a conflation of the words light and radar) is a remote sensing technology that generates data by firing a laser beam thousands of times a second at an object; distance is measured and images are created by analyzing the reflected light. Archeologists already use LiDAR to search for ruins, geologists to measure fault lines, electric companies to check on vegetation encroaching on power lines and even and cheaper, to lay out a haul road or a harvest block. It can pinpoint vernal measuring the sag in the lines, surveyors to make digital maps faithful to a pools, detect unique natural features, and measure the canopy height, a key centimeter. The military uses it (of course), as do NASA, the U.S. Geological indicator of forest growth and total biomass. Survey, and a host of other government agencies. Some of this is possible using high quality aerial photography, but LiDAR When it comes to woodlots, LiDAR can “give you a whole new perspec- offers a three-dimensional look at the land that provides a much clearer pic- tive on what’s below your canopy,” said Weiskittel, who is working on how ture of what’s really happening on the ground. It’s also much more efficient best to exploit LiDAR’s potential in the North woods. It can provide finely than a manual survey of a site. detailed information about soil types and terrain that make it much easier, Canopy measurement is especially useful in areas where the forest is

LiDAR (right) provides a three-dimensional look at what’s really happening on the ground (and what has happened in the past) in a way that traditional aerial photography (left) can’t match. These images show the same location in Connecticut.

22 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 At left: LiDAR has the power to measure tree height and dimension. This image shows height profile across a narrow transect of old-growth Douglas fir forest. Each dot represents a “hit” and return of a laser pulse. The colors correspond to height in meters above the ground. dominated by one or two species, say Douglas-fir in the western U.S. or loblolly pine in the South. In Finland and Sweden, where a handful of tree species predominate, most of forest inventory work is now done using LiDAR. In New England, where the forest is typically composed of many species of trees, things get messier, said Weiskittel. “The one thing it’s not very good at is species identification. In a mixed-species closed canopy, it’s hard to differentiate between a hardwood and softwood, much less by species.” That may change, however. Researchers are working to mate LiDAR, which can make a virtual picture of the ground and the trees on it, with spectral imaging technology, which can differentiate species of trees. “That’s the Holy Grail,” said Weiskittel. Even with it’s current limitations, the technology is proving very useful for predicting key forest attributes like height and volume, despite the complexity of the Maine woods. J.D. Irving Ltd., a large woodland owner in maritime Canada and Maine, is already using LiDAR to plan roads and harvests and is experimenting with combining information from inventory plots on the ground with LiDAR to make projections about wood volumes across the landscape. “We’re really very impressed with the information you can gain and how that can influence the kind of job you do, from an efficiency standpoint and an environmental standpoint,” said Greg Adams, Irving’s manager of woodlands research and development and nurseries and tree improvement. Robert Wagner, a University of Maine professor of forestry and the director of the Cooperative Forest Research Unit, sees LiDAR as a technology that has the potential to revolutionize forestry. LiDAR can provide a high- resolution, three-dimensional image of the forest, right down to every stump and rotting log on the forest floor. It “has the potential to eliminate forest sampling,” he said. “We’ll be able to measure every tree in the forest. We can actually put a window on the screen and measure the volumes.” The Cooperative Forest Research Unit has already paid to have the forestland where it is conducting research projects measured with LiDAR. With digital technology changing at light speed, LiDAR’s potential is probably nowhere close to being realized. It will undoubtedly get more precise and cheaper. “Pricing is now competitive with other imagery and decreasing but a minimum acreage is needed because of the fixed costs,” said Weiskittel. That means it’s probably not going to be cost effective to fly LiDAR over your back 40. But some researchers are looking at the possibility of using drones to fly the forest with lasers, which raises the possibility that forestland owners may one day be able to toss a drone into the air and then sit down at the laptop with a cup of coffee to watch as the computer calculates the change in wood volumes on their woodlot. Joe Rankin

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 23 24 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 1,000 words

Photo by Roger Irwin A simple shot of a black bear nursing her cubs, right? Photographer Roger Irwin explains there’s more to the story. “I had put a dead cow out for the coyotes, bobcats, and fishers in March, but none touched it,” said Irwin, “probably due to medicine the cow had been treated with. In May, this sow starting coming to eat the maggots, and she brought her cubs a couple of times. One time I walked to my blind and the cubs were up this big pine. When she finished eating she called the cubs down and sat down to nurse them. She must have known I was in the blind but was used to me. Or the smell of the rotting cow covered my scent...some days it was so bad that I couldn’t stay, even wearing a mask.”

NorthernWoodlands / Spring 2015 25 The Great Forest Migration How New England’s Forests Arrived, Where They Came From, and

26 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 FRANCES BRANN

Present-day Labrador offers a glimpse at what the New England landscape would have looked like before trees took over.

Sometime around 12,000 years ago, the first human beings arrived in New England. We don’t know much about who they were. Evidence is limited to a few chipped stones and bits of What it Means for The Future charcoal, but we suppose that they arrived following mammoths and caribou herds. What’s remarkable to me is not just that humans trekked across thousands of miles of wilderness to get here, or that By Benjamin Lord they survived the harsh climate once they arrived. After all, ancient humans had proven to be hardy travelers and survivors.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 27 What I find particularly interesting is that these caribou which trees and plants had arrived first, which trees were rela- hunters arrived before the forests did. I am used to thinking of tive newcomers on the scene, and how various species rose to humans as the invasive species, the ones who arrive in a pristine prominence or fell on hard times. They had a timeline to put environment only to disrupt its equilibrium. The thought of a this story on – a sense of the pace of forest migration. The his- forest invading a land already inhabited by us is strange. Surely, tory of New England’s forests could finally be told. the story of those humans who eked out a living on this land Bryan Shuman, an associate professor of paleoecology at with primitive rock tools must be a remarkable one. But theirs the University of Wyoming who has worked extensively in the was not the only great journey going on. What of the forests? Northeast, helped me understand the big picture. And the book Where did they come from? And how did they get here? The Changing Nature of the Maine Woods, by Andrew Barton, Forest migration is not a terribly new idea – it’s been around Alan White, and Charles Cogbill, helped fill in some details. The since at least 1837, when Louis Agassiz first proposed that much story goes something like this. of the world had been covered by massive sheets of moving If you could turn back the clock on your favorite New ice – but it is a counterintuitive one. Outside of fantasy novels, England landscape by 14,000 years, chances are that place would individual trees do not get up and move about. And if trees did be covered with up to a mile of ice. Glaciers scoured everything migrate, it must have been a multigenerational process. Seeds but a few high hilltops. But 14,000 years was a turning point, the from one generation would have to disperse and grow large last great glacial advance. After that, if we could watch the scene enough to produce seeds of their own, in order to spread those in fast-forward, the frozen world would transform. seeds further still. Compared to the seasonal travels of birds or As the ice melted, parts of the raw landscape saw the sun butterflies, tree migrations must be ponderously slow. for the first time in 90,000 years. Some inland areas had been And just knowing that forest migration happened is a long so compressed by the weight of the ice that seawater flowed in, way from knowing how it happened, or from understanding what creating huge inland seas (this explains why, in 1849, workers adventures may have befallen the woody colonists along the way. in Charlotte, Vermont, happened upon a whale skeleton in a And that story, the how story, is difficult to piece together – espe- farm field). The Gulf of Maine extended inland as far as Baxter cially in New England, where ancient forests have left little trace State Park. But gradually, the Earth’s crust rebounded, rising and in the region’s acidic soils. It’s a story that we couldn’t begin to draining the land. wrap our minds around until the late 1930s, when a group of sci- The first plants to invade this scoured landscape were grasses, entists at Yale University pioneered a new method of looking into sedges, and mosses, typical of what’s in the tundra today. These the past – a method that basically consisted of collecting mud. were tiny plants that could survive in the sand and scree that lay atop the permafrost, and eventually they attracted the herds of caribou pursued by New England’s first humans. Stories in the Mud The first trees to arrive were spruces, firs, and pines. Jack This wasn’t just any mud. It was mud from the bottom of lakes pine and red pine came next, followed by balsam fir, larch, and ponds that had been deposited there over thousands of ash, and elm. At first it was not a forest, per se, but more of a years. The method worked like this: The scientists would make patchwork of trees. Pockets of ice remained here and there, but their way out onto a pond either on rafts or winter ice. Then they as it melted north into what is now Canada, the trees thickened would lower a tube-like drill down into the sediments below. into New England’s first post-glacial forests, a boreal forest that After boring into these sediments, they would pull everything would last for about 3,000 years. The landscape would have back up. Inside the bore would be a long cylinder of mud. resembled present-day Labrador. One of these scientists was Edward Deevey, whose gradu- But forest advancement was far from linear. About 12,900 ate work at Yale consisted of lots of mud-gazing. He subjected years ago, a remarkably abrupt interruption in the warming mud cores to a battery of chemical tests, compiled exhaustive trend plunged the land to the brink of a renewed ice age, where catalogs of every piece of algae, every dropped shell, and every it remained for another 1,300 years. Geologists call this period fragment of insect that he found. But the real scientific pay dirt the Younger Dryas, and the forests stalled in their northward (so to speak) was the pollen – microscopic grains of pollen that expansion. Maine went back to tundra conditions. Vermont, had fallen on the lake’s surface each year for thousands of years; New Hampshire, and parts of New York were relegated to open pollen that then sank to the bottom of the lake to be preserved spruce woodlands. in near-perfect chronological order. Deevey realized that what But the cold snap ended as abruptly as it began. After the he was looking at was the entire history of northeastern forests Younger Dryas, the climate grew hotter and drier. In a single since the retreat of the glaciers. For the first time ever, someone generation, the residents of New England saw the land’s most could peer into the forest’s past. dominant tree, the white spruce, nearly disappear from the By the early 1950s, Deevey was at the head of a whole landscape and the white pine take over and create forests new generation of mud scourers – ranks that included Estella unlike anything we see in New England today, but which bear Leopold (Aldo Leopold’s daughter) and Margaret Davis. And some similarity to the present forests of northern Minnesota. this new generation brought a new technology to bear on the Charcoal residues in the pollen cores suggest frequent fires. mud layers – radiocarbon dating. With it, scientists could tell Species that easily establish from seed after fire (like white pine

28 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 and birch) and those that resprout from roots or stumps (like aspen) proliferated. It is not until about 8,000 years ago, as the climate became cooler and moister, that the pines gave way to the deciduous invaders. The hemlock, beech, yellow birch, and maple that characterize today’s forests moved into northern New York and New England. Lakes rose. Oaks moved into southern regions. The forests took on a more familiar look. And while that basic pattern has remained the same since that time, the story of these forests is not without incident. About 5,000 years ago hemlocks mysteriously disappeared, not to return for more than a millen- nium. Chestnuts arrived late. Maples became much more abundant for several thousand years. A brief cool-down about 1,500 years ago allowed spruce to recolonize some of its lost land. It’s an interesting story – full of mysteries and changing fortunes. Still, the overall trend follows a pattern that seems logical ANDREW BARTON enough: as the glaciers retreated north, the plant communities followed them in an order that mirrors their current latitude. First comes tundra, then boreal forest, then mixed forest, then deciduous. But when scientists finally placed these changes on a timeline using radiocarbon dating, their results highlighted a problem: the timing just didn’t add up.

Reid’s Paradox The conundrum was first identified by an English geologist named Clement Reid. In the late nineteenth century, Reid worked for the Geological Survey of England, and his surveys brought him into regular contact with plant fossils and allowed him to observe a wide range of living plants, as well. These observations, coupled with his geologist’s understanding of glacial history, prompted him to ask an important question. How long had it taken for these plants to arrive in Britain from their refuges in continental Europe where they had waited out the last glaciation? To answer it, Reid spent much of his spare time studying how plants disperse their seeds – how abundant the seeds are, how far those seeds are dispersed from the parent, and how long it takes for the seeds to grow big enough to produce seeds of their own. In 1899, after 20 years of careful observation, Reid published what would become a definitive work on the subject of plant migration, The Origin of British Flora. One might think that using Reid’s data to determine how plants moved would be a simple task of arithmetic. Just determine how far seeds could spread in one generation, figure out how long a generation is on average, and that should be enough to determine the speed at which each species of tree or herb could move north to occupy the new frontier habitats left open by the retreating ice. And Reid did just that. But there was a problem. If plants did advance at the rate Reid had determined, From top: sediment core; pine pollen on puddle many of them would not yet be in Britain at all. “The oak,” Reid wrote, “to gain its present most northerly posi- tion . . . probably had to travel a full six hundred miles, and this without external aid would take something like a million years.” A million years! Now, Britain didn’t begin to peek out from under

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 29 JUSTIN MEISSEN

the last ice sheets until almost 10,000 years ago. According to Reid, their cousins from the southern latitudes. Such botanical arks, if the oaks shouldn’t have been a widespread British tree, but there they existed, must surely have been rare considering all the factors they are – dropping acorns all across the English countryside. that would need to have aligned in order for them to persist As you might imagine, this observation piqued the interest during the thousands of years that ice covered the land. of scientists all over the globe. And since Reid first raised the It seems like a long shot. point, it has been observed in plant after plant and in landscape But the other important hypothesis depends just as much on after landscape. Trees, herbs, many fungi, and other creatures uncommon fortunes. The idea here is that plants and trees occa- without legs or wings should migrate very slowly. But for some sionally experience rapid, long-distance migration. It’s not that reason, they have raced to fill up available habitats far faster than Reid’s calculations have been called into doubt. But when Reid standardized calculations would predict. Today, this is known crunched his numbers, he was basing his work not on what hap- as Reid’s Paradox, and it’s a dilemma that was faced by Edward pens to all seeds, just what happens to most of them. To explain, Deevey and the other paleoecologists of his era as they brought let’s follow Mr. Reid’s lead and consider an oak tree. Most of its radiocarbon dating to bear on their pollen-filled mud deposits. acorns will fall fairly close to the parent. But imagine you could Like the oaks of jolly old England, the forests of New England somehow keep track of every single acorn that the mother oak were way ahead of schedule. produced: chase down every buried squirrel cache, follow all the ones that rolled downhill or got washed down a stream. To my knowledge no one has actually tried this, but it seems logical Chance and Change to assume that as you traveled in concentric circles farther and Reid’s paradox still intrigues scientists today. Even with modern farther from the parent tree, you’d find fewer and fewer acorns. instruments, computer models, and advances in dispersal calcu- Michael Cain, an ecologist who has studied long distance seed lations, questions remain about the ways that plants get around. dispersal, explains that a graph of this data “would look roughly There are two important hypotheses, but both of them rely on like a classic bell curve cut in half. Most of the data would cluster some rather uncommon coincidences. near 0 and would drop off rapidly as you progressed. But there In the first instance, we have to imagine that somewhere would be a long tail on that graph, and that tail is important.” in the vast glaciated landscapes of the Ice Age, tiny pockets of Every once in a while, a few lucky acorns would beat the odds plant life were scattered across the icy emptiness. Perhaps a mild and travel some remarkable distances. valley or seep or some unusual combination of forces combined The stories behind far-wandering seeds would undoubtedly to allow a small patch of ground to escape the icy grip of the be fascinating – picked up by dramatic windstorms, washed advancing arctic sheets. And so we might have had little refuges, miles away by floods. H. N. Ridley collected such stories in where plants may have clung to life in such small number or in The Dispersal of Plants Around the World and describes some such low density that they left little trace. When the ice retreated, surprising examples. Wind-dispersed seeds have been carried these plants may have emerged like Noah after the flood to be off by birds for nesting materials. Some seeds have been fruitful, multiply, and found a new northern forest – well ahead of observed traveling long distances on the backs of snails. In one

30 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 JUSTIN MEISSEN ELI SAGOR

From left: A hike to the top of Mount Mansfield today offers a glimpse at a tundra-type landscape; During the Younger Dryas period, forests in Vermont, New Hampshire, and parts of New York were dominated by spruce; After the Younger Dryas, dry conditions helped create pine-dominated forests similar to what we see today in Minnesota; Many early forests have no modern analogue.

recent example, a shrike was found with the digested remains of ingly tiny and insignificant causes. It seems safe to predict that a lizard in its gut. The lizard had seeds in its own stomach. These our forests will change. But how? Forest communities do not seeds, even after being twice ingested, were still viable. migrate en masse. Each species moves at its own rate, governed What are the chances against such things happening? A by a unique set of environmental factors. And so we’re not neces- million to one? Tens of millions? Surely, such things must be sarily just looking ahead to forests that move, but to forests that improbably rare. The crux of the matter is, however, that plants change completely. Cain notes that in various places across North produce massive numbers of seeds. If you’re a gambler, a million America, we find the pollen fingerprints of forests that have no to one odds don’t seem all that favorable unless you are able to modern analog – incongruous mixtures of plants and trees that play ten million times. This is the strategy of most plants – just existed for some window of time in the past and are now gone. get lots of seeds in the game. If you’re lucky, one may even Also, just because change is complicated doesn’t mean that be swept dozens or hundreds of miles north to found a new it will be slow. As we learned long ago from pollen sediments, population in some far-flung, recently deglaciated habitat. forest change can happen at a dramatic pace. Bryan Shuman at No matter which of these hypotheses you consider more the University of Wyoming notes that the boreal forests of New logical (and they are by no means mutually exclusive), it seems England may have given way to their successors in as little as that the solution to Reid’s paradox lies in the power of unlikely 200 years – only a handful of human generations. And through coincidence. these changes, there’s evidence of dramatic resiliency, where some tree populations fall precipitously and then rebound. As the forests change, so will we. We’ve had to do it before, and A Changing Future there is evidence that we have navigated those changes with some In a world of rapidly changing climates, it is only natural to ask of the same resilience as the forests themselves. Coinciding with what might be in store for our forest’s future. If the changing rang- the boreal forest die-off 8,000 years ago is an abrupt change in es of plants do hinge on dramatic and fortuitous happenstance, the archaeological record. The few artifacts from that time, likely what hope do we have of predicting the future of New England’s left by the people who had preceded the forests themselves, show forests? It may be as difficult as predicting next month’s weather. a similarly dramatic change. Around that time, old tool types Like the formation of clouds or the movement of air masses, the disappeared and were replaced by new ones, without antecedent ranges of the trees in our forests are complex beyond the abil- in New England. Perhaps those early New Englanders weathered ity of our most powerful computer models to predict. Like the the dramatic changes in the land by changing how they lived. It’ll proverbial butterfly in China, whose flapping wing might change be up to us to muster a similar wisdom and ingenuity. the fate of a hurricane thousands of miles away, our forests and their distributions are sometimes changed profoundly by seem- Benjamin Lord is a science teacher, naturalist, and writer from Putney, Vermont.

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Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 33 Declining Moose Populations: What Does the Future Hold?

Story and Photos by Susan C. Morse

34 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 ineteenth century author Henry David Thoreau marveled at the huge beast he saw deep in the Maine woods. Hoof to withers, the bull stood nearly seven feet tall – taller than the biggest horse. Today, people are just as awed by their encounters with moose. An estimated 80,000 moose live in the Northeast, which practically guarantees an opportunity to see one. Moose imagery is ingrained in popular culture, from the moose festivals that pop up all around New England to the Rocky Mountain microbrew named Moose Drool. Countless cottage industries profit from moosey novelties like moose drop chocolates (which aren’t real) and moose turd necklaces, earrings, and Christmas ornaments (which are). Perhaps the weirdest moose mania happens at the Talkeetna, Alaska, “Moose Droppings Festival,” where enthusiasts in hot air balloons release thousands of moose pellets (real) upon a cheering crowd. Both majestic and whimsical, moose do indeed seem larger than life. And yet, after decades of recovery, moose populations have started to decline in some areas of the West, the upper- Midwest and the Northeast. Predators, including wolves, human hunters, cougars, bears, and even coyotes kill moose. Moose even kill each other upon occasion as rut-crazed bulls sometimes gore one another with their antlers. But even when confronted by their greatest enemy, the wolf, predation shouldn’t be enough to send an otherwise healthy moose population into decline. Healthy, prime- aged moose are quite capable of beating back canid attackers; deft kicks with heavy sharp hooves cause pack members to experience fractured skulls and debilitating broken ribs and legs. Renowned researcher Rolf Peterson has witnessed some 200 wolf-moose confrontations during his decades of research on Isle Royale, an island in Lake Superior. Only 10 moose were killed; the rest stood their ground and survived to watch their assailants retreat.

Wolves keep moose numbers in check, benefiting moose and moose habitat in the long run.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 35 So what is causing thousands of moose deaths each year, Minnesota Muddle in places as varied as Utah, Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, Minnesota’s disappearing moose have gotten a lot of press. Both Montana, Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont? of the state’s northern moose populations have precipitously Understandably, the answer is complex: there appears to be not declined, with the northwest population dropping from 4,000 to one, but a whole panoply of problems that are combining to less than 100 and the northeast population dropping more than stress and kill moose. There are some key commonalities, how- 50 percent in less than eight years. A multi-year moose mortality ever. Parasites, disease, and malnutrition appear to be interacting study was launched, and researchers have performed extensive in lethal ways, and warmer temperatures associated with climate field and laboratory necropsies. Biologists have discovered an change appear to be exacerbating the problem. impressive list of contributors to deaths, including a whole host of parasites, including meningeal worm, also called brainworm Rocky Mountain Lows (Parelaphostrogylus tenuis), winter tick (Dermacentor albipictus), For years, I relished the chance to observe and photograph and liver flukes (Fascioloides magna). Another parasite – a tape- moose in Wyoming’s Teton Mountains and Jackson Hole valley. worm of the echinococcosis type – is also compromising moose But by the late 1990s, things had changed. It was subtle at respiratory function and stamina, which can cause affected first, but by 2005 I was lucky to find moose, and when I did, animals to be more susceptible to wolf predation. This tape- they didn’t look well. September bulls should be visibly fat, worm is, ironically, carried by wolves and causes debilitating with newly polished antlers ready for the rut. Handsome cows hydatid cysts, which clog a moose’s lungs. should look sleek in their shiny new winter coats. Instead, bulls Many of the dead moose also show signs of exposure to a and cows alike appeared listless, thin, and disheveled. Oddly, variety of disease agents, including West Nile virus, malignant velvet still clung to the males’ antlers. Biologists were alarmed catarrhal fever, Lyme disease, and eastern equine encephalitis. to discover that herd pregnancy rates were reduced to roughly Most victims were malnourished and in poor condition, even half of normal. A cow’s ability to ovulate, conceive, and give during times of the year when food supplies are plentiful. Many birth is a vital measure of the herd’s productivity. Biologists sus- of the moose “tip overs” were thin and malnourished, yet they pected that a combination of environmental factors were at play. had full stomachs. Dr. Michelle Carstensen, Wildlife Health Extensive fires, coupled with the severe droughts of the 2000s, Program supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural harmed moose by destroying the forest’s thermal cover and dry- Resources, said that while volumes of data have been collected, ing up the wetland habitats favored by moose for mineral-rich “There is still no smoking gun at this time; there is not enough aquatic plants. In British Columbia’s Cariboo Mountains, pine data yet to answer with certainty why Minnesota’s moose popula- beetles have destroyed more than 33 million acres of pines, tion has dropped 52 percent since 2010.” Parasites, novel viruses, and scientists suspect that the loss of forest cover has led to an systemic infections, predation, contaminants, and nutritional increase in both human and animal predation. deficiencies – or likely some combination of these – may eventu- Finally, a parasite called carotid artery worm (Elaeophora ally prove to be the answer. In the meantime, Carstensen and her schneideri) has had an increasing and detrimental effect through- colleagues are invested in researching the possible relationship out the West. The nematode is transmitted from mule deer, via between global warming’s elevation of ambient temperatures horse flies, to moose or elk, where mature adult worms come and how heat stress at critical times of the year may compromise to occupy the carotid arteries. Blood flow is restricted, causing nutritional well-being and fitness, predisposing moose to greater fatal damage to the optic nerve and brain. risk of death from parasites, disease, or predators.

Left: counting winter ticks; Right: carotid artery worm.

36 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Kantar and team members perform a necropsy.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 37 Northern New England MAINE NEW HAMPSHIRE VERMONT Moose Down from 76,000 Down from 7,600 moose Down from a peak Decline moose in 2012 to 65,000 in 1996 to approximately of over 5,000 moose to to 70,000 moose today 4,400 today approximately 2,500 today

38 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Moose Declines in the Northeast Thirty-three parasite species are known to affect moose, but winter ticks are a particularly gruesome killer – a scourge that causes their victims unthinkable suffering. Last April, I participated in a field necropsy of a calf that had died in Maine. She was one of 60 cows and calves that had been radio-collared for a study conducted by moose biologist Lee Kantar and his colleagues at Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Half of the collared moose died this past winter, including 22 calves and 10 cows, in what was the worst winter tick epizootic anyone could remember. The loss prompted the state to reduce hunting permits by nearly 1,000 tags for the fall 2014 season. The calf’s radio telemetry mortality signal led us to her. She lay sprawled under the spruces where she had collapsed. She died mid-stride and never even attempted to lift her muzzle out of the snow, where it was driven when she fell. Amidst a sticky goo of blood, tick feces, and broken hairs, we found an estimated 40,000 ticks. Clusters of engorged female ticks were still attached to her skin, where in recent weeks they had collectively contributed to fatal blood loss. Kantar and his team members recorded a number of problems that contributed to the calf’s death. She was malnourished, her lungs and body cavity were filled with fluid, her kidneys were infected, and acute anemia triggered her body systems to break down. When the results of that winter’s (2013-2014) study were tallied, Kantar was disturbed by a higher-than-expected mortality of calves, as well as some adult cows. But this past winter, he and his colleagues were encouraged by “continued strong numbers” of moose observed during the first three aerial surveys conducted. “We still have lots of moose out there, and we hope that normal fall and winter weather can help break the pattern of such heavy tick loads in the coming years,” he said. “We continue to be optimistic, but at the same time cautious about what periodic winter tick infestations, coupled with other increased parasite loads (meningeal worm, lungworm, and hydatid cyst tapeworms) mean for moose in Maine. The frequency of these events and associated increased mortality will be a significant driver in population growth or decline.” Researchers Anthony Musante, Peter Pekins, and David Scarpitti, of the University of New Hampshire’s Department of Natural Resources, have estimated the metabolic effects of winter tick infestations on moose calves. They found that calves are more vulnerable because of their smaller size, proportionately smaller stores of body fat, and greater metabolic demands. Blood loss associated with moderate (30,000) to severe (70,000) tick infestation has a substantial effect on an afflicted calf’s energy and protein balance. During March and April, female ticks dramatically increase their blood consumption as they prepare to abandon their moose hosts and lay eggs. The researchers estimate that as much as 112 percent of a calf’s total blood volume may be drained over the eight-week engorgement period. The most critical metabolic impact is the loss Moose browsing has completely high-lined the balsam fir throughout this of protein that occurs as a result of such blood loss – as much as 50 area. Inset: Heavy moose brooming up close. to 100 percent of a calf’s daily requirements. “There is little or no digestible protein in winter browse that can enable a calf to recover such a loss,” said Pekins. If a calf can’t sustain the energy demands for blood replacement, weight loss, catabolization of muscle tissue,

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 39 and a host of other physical disorders, acute anemia, and mal- greater densities of moose. But more is not necessarily better. In nutrition will combine to cause death. some places, moose numbers have exceeded the carrying capac- Biologists throughout the Northeast agree that winter ticks ity of even the most browse-rich habitats. In northern Maine and are the major contributor to moose declines; however, other the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, I have been stunned by the stressors affect moose fitness. For example, within industrial for- totally wrecked “moose pastures” – acres upon acres of disfig- est lands in the northern portions of Vermont, New Hampshire, ured plant growth that will never become a healthy forest. and especially Maine, clear cuts have contributed to the produc- Cedric Alexander, Vermont’s moose biologist, is happy with tion of abundant foods favored by moose, which have supported his department’s past efforts to lower moose numbers in the

Clockwise from top: This marrow core indicates that the dead moose calf was extremely malnourished; snails and slugs serve as intermediary hosts for brainworm; engorged winter ticks; a healthy, tick-free moose in summer.

40 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Northeast Kingdom. Browse pressure on Vermont’s northern habitats has since been noticeably reduced, and less heavy herbivory has enabled trees and shrubs to recover. Healthy forests get to grow and provide cover and more nutritious foods for moose and other wildlife. Alexander believes that his department’s efforts may have spared them the worst of this past year’s tick epizootic. More moose support more ticks, which in warm fall and spring conditions successfully attach to more moose, feed, breed, and lay more eggs to start the cycle all over again. “We are also encouraged by the results of Vermont’s fall moose tick count. Overall, we had a 41 percent drop in tick numbers. What is best for moose is good old-fashioned winters with frosty autumn weather, a cold spring, and a lingering snowpack.” Biologist Kristine Rines, of New Hampshire’s Fish and Game Department, has been the state’s moose project leader for 28 years. She says that in New Hampshire the moose herd has declined approximately 40 percent during the past decade. “What we found in the 2001 to 2005 period was that a warmer fall and winter weather pattern was becoming the norm in New Hampshire,” said Rines. “As a result, our moose are carrying heavy tick loads almost every year, resulting in increased mortality and lower body weights with an associated drop in birth rates. To further complicate the picture, in the southern part of the state, where moose densities are low and winter ticks are not as abundant, brainworm is causing high mortality in moose. This parasite is carried by whitetail deer, and the more deer you have, the more brainworm. Meningeal worms cause no harm to deer, but when moose ingest the larvae the parasites migrate to their nervous system with devastating effect.” As temperatures become more moderate, increasing deer numbers could add to moose problems, even in what has been considered to be the best moose habitat in the Northeast. The connection between a warming climate and cold-adapted species decline goes beyond moose; something I’ve seen first- hand in my travels. Studies show that 34 of the world’s 43 major caribou herds are also in steep decline. Rines is outspoken in making this connection, saying, “We are faced with a changing climate, which in turn is changing the species composition of our wild world. Will we care enough to address the factors that are causing climate change? If we do not, we must be prepared for a New Hampshire with far fewer moose, shrimp, and purple finch, to name a few species that are currently in decline.” Population declines of moose and other cervids is nothing new, but this doesn’t make the current decline less worrisome. The biologists I spoke to expressed optimism in the abundance and diversity of moose research and monitoring efforts that have been launched in recent years. In-depth collaborative research projects are being conducted in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York’s Adirondack Park region. In addition, wildlife action plans for all northeastern states stress the critical importance of securing healthy and whole habitats for the benefit of wildlife.

Susan C. Morse is founder and program director of Keeping Track in Huntington, Vermont.

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Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 43 Conservation Easements: How Long Is Forever? And Can Anything Be Done in the Meantime?

By Chuck Wooster

More than 50 million acres across the United States – including 295 acres at the Smith Family Farm in New Haven, Vermont – are currently protected by conservation easements.

44 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 SMITH FAMILY FARM / WWW.SMITHFAMILYMEATS.COM 45 Spring 2015 Northern Woodlands Woodlands Northern / y wife and I own a 100-acre farm in The “forever” clause that makes conservation easements eastern Vermont, where we raise and so popular and powerful also means that every conceivable sell lambs, chickens, vegetables, honey, scenario under which they might be modified will some day maple syrup, firewood, and sawlogs. come to pass. Many such scenarios already have, and states and The land has been in commercial pro- land trusts across the country are wrestling with how to address duction for more than two centuries. them. The northeastern states are pursuing independent ver- The 1850 census of agriculture lists sions of a solution, while in Washington D.C. the Internal wool, butter, cheese, honey, and maple sugar (not syrup) as the Revenue Service is searching for a solution that would apply to main cash crops from our farm. In honor of this history, and all 50 states. with an eye to the next two centuries of production, my wife and Making modifications to something that is viewed as perma- I donated a conservation easement on the farm to our local land nent is a touchy subject. When proposed legislation to establish trust nearly a decade ago. a uniform amendment process in Vermont hit the state’s news- A conservation easement is a legally binding agreement that papers last year, the public’s response was a general astonish- protects land from future development. In our case, the easement that amendments were ever permissible. This despite ment allows the land to be used for farming and forestry by the fact that land trusts across the country have been granting ruling out future house lots and driveways. Easements like this amendments, if not routinely, then on an as-needed basis for have become increasingly popular in recent decades and more decades. Land trusts were trying to solve a problem that, it turns than 50 million acres across the United States are currently out, the public didn’t even know existed. protected by them, according to the nationwide Land Trust Alliance. Here in the Northeast, we’re leading the charge, with How Easements Work nearly six million acres protected. Maine has a million acres under a single easement. Conservation easements are public-private partnerships that The easement on our land clearly delineates where we can first came into general use in the 1980s as a way to compensate farm and where we can build barns and agricultural structures. landowners for protecting values that their lands provide to It talks about how our proximity to federal land increases the public, such as scenic beauty or wildlife habitat or clean the farm’s scenic value. It also focuses on wildlife habitat, the water. Previously, the public’s only option had been to purchase importance of open space, and the value of farming for the such land outright, creating a national forest or state park, for community. example. But purchasing land is expensive, governments move All of which is well and good, except for one thing: what slowly, and lots of landowners have no desire to sell. happens if these things change? What happens if the habitat Under a conservation easement, the public purchases only loses its value and the wildlife move on, perhaps pushed by a the values that they are interested in, while the landowner changing climate? What if, in order for the farm to be economi- retains the right to do everything else. cally viable in the twenty-second century, the rolling pastures Public benefits might include the preservation of wildlife need to be terraced and leveled out? habitat; the protection of lovely scenery; the opportunity for outdoor recreation and education (on easements that include public access to the land); the conservation of natural resources needed for farming and forestry; and a reduction in governmental services that would otherwise be needed to support developed land. All at much less cost than outright land ownership. There are private benefits for the landowner, as well, not the least of which is financial. Public funds can be used to purchase easements, or a landowner can donate an easement in exchange for an income tax deduction. There is the opportunity to help meet community goals without having to sell the land altogether, plus the ability to make investments for the long term – in a barn, perhaps, or in timber stand improvement – without hav- UPPER VALLEYLAND TRUST ing to fear that those investments will be worthless if the land gets developed. Landowners generally do not receive a property tax deduction for having an easement on their land, in part because such a deduction would be difficult to calculate and in part because current use programs already generally adjust land values to market conditions. The Cook family signs a conservation easement to their land in Bradford, Vermont. Regardless of how an easement is acquired, it is then held in Conservation easements are legally binding documents; their permanence makes perpetuity, either by a public agency or by a nonprofit charity set them popular and powerful, but also potentially problematic. up for just that purpose, called a land trust.

46 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Can An Easement Be Amended? the chance to weigh in. But for states not accustomed to this degree of local oversight, Massachusetts’ approach seems oner- “The regulations specifically allow for extinguishment [of an ous. Maine, for example, explicitly ruled out local government easement] when there’s impossibility or impracticality,” said participation for fear that requiring landowners to appear before Karin Gross, supervising attorney in the IRS Office of the their local selectboards would greatly diminish the appeal of Chief Counsel, speaking about conservation easements last conservation easements in the first place. November at the Vermont Law School. Extinguishment, which Maine and New Hampshire follow a more judicial approach. is to say getting rid of a conservation easement altogether, is only “The attorney general has standing to review easement amend- allowed in the rare event that the terms of an easement can no ments,” said Jane Arbuckle, director of stewardship for the longer be enforced, for example, if floodwaters washed a farm Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT). “At this point, there’s a field away or destroyed rare wildlife habitat along a riverbank. clear mandate for any land trust that’s considering an amend- In such a case, the courts would decide how to protect the ment that they feel might not maintain the intent or the con- public’s interest in the conserved property, similar to the way servation values of the easement to take it to court.” Added they’d decide what to do with a hypothetical university endow- Arbuckle, “If we have to run an amendment by the AG’s office, ment at a school that closed its doors. Conservation easements it’s a big deal for us. It puts our reputation on the line.” can also be extinguished through eminent domain, since what- Involving the court system has the advantage of meeting the ever governmental body is deciding to take over a parcel of land IRS’s desire for a clear judicial process. Questions about conserva- is, by definition at least, acting in the public’s interest. tion value, though, may require outside expertise, and Arbuckle “But there’s nothing at all in the federal statutes or regula- described a situation that occurred prior to Maine having its cur- tions that talks about amendments,” continued Gross. “So the rent review process in place. “We had an easement on a coastal question comes up: can you have an amendment?” Practically island, with a building envelope [reserved house site] on it. It was speaking, yes. Land trusts are already granting amendments, one of our older easements. Everything was fine until the bald typically to correct administrative mistakes (typos in the docu- eagles showed up. They nested right in the middle of the proposed ment, hand-drawn maps that misrepresented property lines) or building envelope, which the owners then wanted to develop.” to increase the strength of the original easement. The easement was clear that its primary purpose was to pro- Our farm in Vermont provides a potential example of the tect wildlife on the island. But suddenly, adherence to the letter latter. My wife and I reserved the right to build a seasonal cabin of the easement would have meant bulldozing the eagle nests. somewhere on our property at any time in the future. If we were “Working with Fish and Wildlife, we identified an alternative to decide to give up that right and never allow a cabin to be built building site. We amended the easement and put the enve- – a modification that would strengthen the protections that lope in a different place. It was smaller, it was agreeable to the our easement gives to wildlife and scenic value – our land trust landowner, and we added additional restrictions. Then we got would likely agree to such an amendment. an appraisal that showed that the amendment wasn’t creating But here’s where it starts to get sticky: who gets to decide private value for the landowner.” what constitutes ‘strengthening the protections?’ Who gets to decide what’s best for wildlife and what’s best for the scenery? Private vs Public Benefit My wife and I? Our land trust? Our state? The IRS? The question of private value is a big one. If landowners are tak- State-By-State Solutions ing tax deductions for donating an easement, or receiving public money for selling an easement, and then are turning around and Conservation easements are enabled by state statute, and since seeking amendments that allow them to develop the property laws vary from state to state, the northeastern states are pursu- anyway, the public is being defrauded. “Congress was worried ing amendments in different ways. The most comprehensive about abuse,” said Karin Gross of the IRS, noting that there process is in Massachusetts. “Amendments have to meet specific were 170 easement cases in tax court in 2013 alone. “A donated criteria,” said David Graham Wolf, deputy director of the Mount easement is not simply an agreement between the donor and the Grace Land Conservation Trust in the central part of the state, donee. The federal government is very heavily involved because “and there can’t be any loss in conservation value. Both the land it is subsidizing it.” trust and the Department of Environmental Protection need to But what happens in cases less clear than that of Maine’s eagles, sign off on any amendments.” Local conservation commissions where the landowner and land trust don’t agree, where expert and selectboards also review proposed amendments, because in testimony from biologists or other conservation experts might be Massachusetts, unlike any other state in the union, these local required, where a post-amendment appraisal is too expensive, or boards are signatories to the original conservation easement. where neither the landowner nor the land trust have the where- “The system works pretty well,” said Wolf. withal to pursue an expensive court decision? Gross recognized The Massachusetts approach ensures that interests beyond that the tax code may need clarification to reflect some of these those of the landowner and land trust are represented. Everyone scenarios. “We need suggestions for how we can make this work from a local conservation commissioner to a state biologist has within the framework of the statute,” said Gross. “I’ve heard

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 47 scenarios that sound very sympathetic for amendments, in which What About Economic amendments would clearly benefit conservation. And yet there’s Considerations? nothing that the IRS has – there’s no policy and nothing in writing The Vermont Land Trust (VLT) also allows more flexibility – that says that amendments are OK.” when it comes to working lands. “Protecting farms is a much bigger part of what we do than it is in some other places,” said What Are Easements Gil Livingston, president of VLT. “But it’s nuanced. We certainly Protecting, Exactly? take many easements whose primary goal is habitat protection, and we’re much less inclined to consider amending an easement The language that’s used to talk about conservation easements is whose primary purpose is natural resource protection, where part of the problem. We say that easements are about protecting there’s not an economic piece. Whereas the farm easements we land, but in actual fact they’re about protecting relationships that take, and the larger forest easements, recite specifically in their surround land. The easement on our farm in Vermont makes purposes that supporting the farm- and forest-based economy little mention of the land itself – the mineralogy of the soil, the is a driver of the easement.” depth to bedrock, the hydrological regime, or how the land came Livingston said that for VLT, one of the most frequently to be created when North America crashed into Eurasia a third- requested amendments is a reconfiguration of a farmstead com- of-a-billion years ago. But it talks at length about agriculture, plex. “The farm economy, the new enterprises, the innovation, about maintaining the possibility of a long-term, continuous flow the methods of production, the types of on-farm processing, the of forest products, about the beauty of the scenery around the scalability of that – all of that’s changing really quickly in the ag farm, about public recreation, and about the evolving needs of the sector.” Livingston added, “We don’t want to disadvantage farm- animals and plants in residence. In short, it talks about a bunch ers or foresters who conserve their land, who are in a competi- of relationships, some of which are economic, none of which are tive economic environment.” static, and all of which are subject to the eye of the beholder. The federal tax code says, “Conservation purposes means An amendment process that’s too subjective will allow … the preservation of open space (including farmland and opportunistic landowners (and land trusts) a feast of private forest land) where such preservation is pursuant to a clearly benefits, while one that’s too rigid to accommodate changing delineated federal, state, or local conservation policy, and will relationships, both natural and human, risks souring the public yield a significant public benefit.” Vermont’s state and local on conservation easements. Imagine the public’s reaction if a governments have numerous such policies, believing that judge or bureaucrat in a distant jurisdiction, perhaps one with keeping farmers on farms and loggers in the woods is the most no knowledge of conservation or the land in question, denied efficient way to conserve undeveloped land. This might seem an amendment that was widely desired by experts in a local odd from, say, a Midwestern perspective, where conserva- community. Easements could end up being seen as tools that tion easements are sometimes used to prevent farmers from discourage conservation, not promote it. plowing up sensitive areas, but it follows a long tradition in New York, like most states, takes a less centralized approach Vermont, where the landscape and economy are seen as insepa- rable. Said another way, if farming and forestry were to vanish to easement amendments than Massachusetts, New Hampshire, in Vermont, recreation, outdoor education, wildlife habitat, or Maine. It’s primarily up to the landowner and the land trust to and open space – the four values that the federal code intends work things out. “In New York State, we do not need to get attorney to protect – would be in big trouble. general approval,” said Heidi Block, conservation easement stew- Vermont is one of the states where the attorney general’s ardship manager for the Columbia Land Conservancy (CLC), a office has not historically been involved in land conservation land trust in the Hudson River valley. “We get board approval. We issues and where it lacks conservation expertise. Livingston have our own attorney review it, and we look at a whole series of looks to Montana as a possible model for Vermont. There, the considerations around any potential amendment. The idea that state’s land trusts formed a coalition, adopted the procedural easements are permanent is something that we adhere to very recommendations of the national Land Trust Alliance, created closely, and we work hard with landowners to find a way, so that a panel for reviewing amendments, and also set up a statewide an amendment doesn’t have to happen if possible.” registry (similar to Maine’s) where the general public can access “The process is working for us,” said Block. “If [a process] easement documents and related amendments. came up statewide, we would definitely participate, but New York is so huge, I’m not sure that what works here in Columbia Walking the Line County would work well in western New York.” CLC, for example, is focused on conserving active farmland, and they’ve To some extent, the solution to the amendment issue depends developed a different easement template for farmland than for upon which problem you’re most worried about. Fraud? If so, other types of projects. “We have our ag model and what we call the courts and the attorney general look good. Changing cir- our scenic resources model, and while a lot of things are similar cumstances, avian or entrepreneurial? Then natural resource between them, we do provide more flexibility in the farmland professionals seem like a logical choice. model for commercial ag structures and those sorts of things.” Jeanie McIntyre, president of the Upper Valley Land Trust

48 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 (UVLT), whose service territory straddles the Connecticut the amendment debate indicates just how successful and impor- River and includes two states, feels the lack of a solution acutely. tant conservation easements have become. If easements weren’t McIntyre was part of a coalition that helped formulate New popular, amendments wouldn’t be a major issue. Hampshire’s amendment procedures and has participated in Yet they are. As Vermont’s experience last year demonstrated, efforts to do so in Vermont. She sees the judicial approach as the public is taking notice. If there isn’t a process in place that’s being easier to harmonize with the IRS’s desires, but recognizes rigid enough to protect the public interest yet flexible enough that in order for the judicial approach to work, “the land trust to honor the easement’s original intent in the face of an ever- community needs to help develop the capacity of the judicial evolving world, conservation easements will cease to be useful. branch to be able to understand the kinds of issues we face and Public confidence and funding are what make conservation help us resolve them in a way that is cost effective.” She pointed possible in the first place. out that “this is much easier to do in small states, especially “There’s a reputation of integrity to uphold among the land small states with high densities of land that have already been trust community, and it’s really important for land trusts to do conserved.” New Hampshire and Vermont, for example. that on both sides. To be fair and honest with the donor and to McIntyre mentioned a 20-year-old easement held by UVLT be upholding forever whatever the restrictions are,” said Jane on forestland in Vermont that included a future house site right Arbuckle of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. “In the land trust in the middle of the property, on an old log landing with a view. community, there are really valid, completely different opinions. Both the owner and the land trust now recognize that, from a It’s hard that there’s not a common belief and understanding.” habitat perspective, the interior site was a poor choice, yet no What might such a common understanding look like? From other potential house site was outlined in the original easement. the states, a recognition that the IRS has jurisdiction and, unless The owner has subsequently purchased adjacent land, which donated and purchased easements are to be handled differently he proposes to add to the easement in exchange for allowing a from one another (a confusing outcome that nobody seems to new house site to be created in the previously protected area. want), there will need to be judicial review at some level. From Should this be allowed? “If there were some sort of third-party the IRS, clarification that amendments are both inevitable and review that was independent of the land trust and the donor, necessary, and a recognition that individual states have latitude that would be helpful,” said McIntyre. “Some level of science in how they approach the issue. As long as the public interest being involved wouldn’t be a bad thing. Perhaps the state agency is protected through some sort of third-party review, a variety of natural resources, or some authority where there’s something of approaches might work, be they executive and legislative objectively that could be measured, that would go a long way.” (Massachusetts), primarily judicial (Maine and New Hampshire), or review by subject-matter experts (Vermont and New York). It’s a Good Problem, Jeanie McIntyre, of the Upper Valley Land Trust, summed up But it’s Still a Problem the current state of affairs: “It’s a little bit unsettling to think of another five to seven years going by without knowing how this The amendment discussion is a sign that the land trust commu- issue is going to be resolved.” nity is coming of age, entering a new phase, in which caring for existing easements is just as significant as acquiring new ones. Chuck Wooster is a farmer and writer in Vermont, owner (with his wife) of a conserved With millions of acres already protected nationwide, and with farm, supporter of conservation organizations across the Northeast, and board member some land trusts now approaching a half-century of experience, of the Upper Valley Land Trust. UPPER VALLEYLAND TRUST

This article was supported by Northern Woodlands magazine’s Research and Reporting Fund, established by generous donors.

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Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 51 Prior to the advent of trucks in the woods in the mid-1930s, horse-drawn sleds transported pulpwood from the forest to the railroad or river. Loggers and teamsters loved to set records for the largest load. On March 4, 1925, The Coos County Democrat reported “another record breaker.” Slim Frank, “King of the Forest,” drove a load of 10 cords, 88 feet of pulp, with one pair of horses 4.5 miles from Groveton Paper’s Lyman Brook Valley Camp to George’s Siding, where it was loaded onto freight cars. This photo was taken in the Moosehead Lake region of Maine.

52 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 I Have Earned My Place

A LOGGER’S YEAR, 1936

By Jamie Sayen

In 1936, the United States was still struggling to escape the Great Depression. And things were especially bad in Groveton, New Hampshire – a paper mill town. Groveton’s mill fell two years in arrears on its property taxes beginning in 1932. That same year, lack of orders forced it to shut down the Number 3 Paper Machine. Throughout the 1930s, the mill operated sporadically. Every month a relief truck brought food and necessities to town. Shirley Brown, then a small child, recalled: “I saw my Mother and another woman rolling in the dirt fighting over [a] box of prunes.” The life of the loggers who supplied the paper mill with four-foot logs was tough even in prosperous times. Cyril (Cy) Hessenauer, a logger who worked in a variety of camps in Stark, Groveton, and Stratford Bog, New Hampshire, as well as Canaan, Vermont, from 1935 until he entered the army in 1942, was something of an anomaly amongst woodsmen. He faithfully kept a diary replete with keen observations of the loggers’ life: the weather, nature, wildlife, and day-to-day challenges. He did not drink; he wrote poetry; and he was a lay preacher and occasional philosopher. I stumbled upon Hessenauer’s journals from 1936 while conducting interviews for an oral history project on the Groveton Paper Mill. The document had been preserved by Arlene and Francis Roby; Francis occasionally cut pulpwood with Hessenauer after the war. The Robys kindly granted me permission to reprint the following passages that offer a rare view into that long gone era when loggers still relied on axes, buck-

MOOSEHEAD HISTORICAL saws, and horses. Note: entries in brackets indicate an editorial note or a summary, rather than a direct quote from the diary.

Jamie Sayen is putting the finishing touches to his history of the Groveton mill, You Had a Job for Life: An Oral and Pictorial History of a Northern New Hampshire Paper Mill. He is author of Einstein in America, and he published The SOCIETY Northern Forest Forum from 1992-2002. He lives in Stratford, New Hampshire.

COURTESY AND DEBORAH

HERB

MILES

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 53 3! JANUARY 1: Began the year with bad cold. Nearly all men in camp sick. 3! JANUARY 10: Real blizzard last night. Snowed most of day. Got to load five loads tonight. Do not feel good cannot get used to night shift. Found a louse again last night. Hard to get rid of I guess. 3! JANUARY 11: Barney told me tonight I was to look after night shift. Men discontented … Had rather not taken responsibility for that on down the road and see no reason why I should let them drive me. I have earned my place. 3! JANUARY 25: Stuck a pulphook in my knee last night and is very stiff and sore. 3! JANUARY 30: Shaved this PM. Face pretty badly windburned, chapped and peeling. 3! FEBRUARY 2: Weather changed in the night wind the worst yet, very very cold … Put on three pair pants over wool union suit, 2 top shirts and 2 jackets, a handkerchief over my ears, under my cap, and a scarf. Two pair of mittens. 3 FEBRUARY 12: Such a night. One load broke a rocker At right: A typical New England camp. pin. Tractor stuck. An empty dray had broken runner. Below: Pulpwood piles at Groveton Paper Discovered it way up mountain. Got morning at last. Company mill, 1936. Note the conveyor Got some wood down anyway … beats all how this ascending the left pile. It carried debarked job drags now. Can’t make any headway. wood to the top. Other conveyors carried 3! the wood into the mill’s woodroom, where FEBRUARY 15: Big joke. Got laid off at noon. it was chipped and then conveyed to the Boss came in said all of us were done. digesters to be cooked at high pressure. 3! The pulp was then bleached and piped to FEBRUARY 20: It is nice to be in town for a while the stock preparation room, where it was even if I don’t make as much. Can’t live in the mixed into a 4 percent solution of water, woods all of the time. additives, and pulp. The stock was then 3! pumped to the fine paper machines. FEBRUARY 25: Very wet today had a bad day pinched a finger, a toe, and fell off a truck. 3! FEBRUARY 29: (Saturday) Crew got laid off so am out of job again. Once more must trust the Lord for work and daily bread. Won’t mind a days [sic] rest if it don’t last too long. 3! MARCH 1: Am already tired of town and ready for woods again … Guess never can be satisfied anywhere else. 3! MARCH 9: Wet snow. 3! MARCH 11: Wet. Trucks laid off at the [Stratford] Bog. Wonder what will happen to me next. 3! MARCH 12: Rained all day. Snow disappeared like magic. No work. 3! MARCH 13: No work because wood had slid on railroad track … No wood allowed to come in.

54 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 3! MARCH 16: Hard rain all day. 3! MARCH 17: Was very warm. Getting muddy. Still lots of snow in the woods. 3! MARCH 18: No work. Went out and helped load a couple of trucks. Started to rain again. River coming up all the time. [This is the day the Connecticut River flooded the small tissue paper mill at Northumberland, three miles south of the Groveton mill. See picture on page 57.] 3! MARCH 19: We took pier out from under bridge. No chance for work in lumbering very soon, I guess. River came up all day bridge became unsafe toward evening at last. No one allowed on it. Much fear for dam above. Much pulp gone; roads under water. But nothing to what was farther downstream. 3! MARCH 20: River began falling here … No papers or mail now. We are cut off here from the world. 3! MARCH 21: Water going down slowly. No mail or papers yet. 3! APRIL 14: Sun shone some for a real change. Snow nearly gone again now. I feel little bad luck today. The last cut at night, Andy broke a bucksaw blade. He was too tired. I think must watch and not let him overdo. He has not the strength I have any more than most men have. 3! APRIL 15: Ran crosscut saw till little after noon. Got it filed and it started to storm rain then snow again. We soon gave it up and came home. Ground axe and tried to file bucksaw, but too cold. Snowed very hard. 3! APRIL 16: More storm. Still snowing hard. We went up in the hill and trimmed out tips for the house here. The boy hauled them in. Upset last load. A Philosophical Woodsman 3! Selections from Cyril Hessenauer’s later diary. APRIL 27: Tried to get out 4 foot wood for Miles. Worked hard fixing road. Got one load about ½ cord out by noon. Used cross tier dray. MAY 27, 1938: A day in peeling time is a brief interlude between sunrise and Wood kept sliding. Thought could fix it but after dinner on [level?] sunset. It contains 3 bites of food a million flies a series of bumps and bruises it still slid. Horses lost shoes so could do no more. a huge amount of work and a hope to do more tomorrow. 3! APRIL 29: Worked on road pounding stone all day. A woodsman is a 2-legged creature that lives mostly in the MAY 31, 1938: 3! woods. It is very active in the winter but it’s [sic] main value is in the summer MAY 1: First real warm day. Mosquitoes are coming out strong. as without it millions of flies might starve. 227 feet done. Peeling is not far off now. JUNE 1, 1938: A bark peeler is a very distinctive insect. It infests woodlands 3! MAY 5: in spring and summer destroying huge quantities of timber every year. They Peeled pulpwood. Flowers coming out spring is here. look very much like men till they are seen at close range. 3! MAY 10: Pulp coming downstream quite a jam at the mill now. JUNE 2, 1938: A day’s work in the woods is when you stumble into camp at 3! dark fall into bed and think you are in heaven. MAY 20: [Late start. He was ill, but peeled 43 trees. Snowed, JUNE 11, 1938: Tree squeak soup is a delicious concoction made of the audible cold wind.] 3! vibrations created in the atmosphere by two trees rubbing together. It is best MAY 26: 5 loads of pulp. Paul seems to think we can get to when flavored with a strong wind and an imaginative mind. work peeling on company lot the first of the month. Men DECEMBER 27, 1941: For my camp wood I am like a spider. I go out and pounce still in town waiting to be shipped out. Say the timber is on a piece of wood and lug it into my web (camp) and there I digest it. poor this year.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 55 3! 3! MAY 28: Cook had brakes, or fiddleheads, for supper that we brought last OCTOBER 16: Had splitting bee this PM. Powder sure does the trick. Had to night. Sure were good. learn how much and to get my plug in right but got big tree all blowed. 3 3! JUNE 20: Cut the biggest one yet a birch. I felt badly about having OCTOBER 19: Cant hook slipped and hit me in jaw and my lower teeth. Cut to cut it down. It probably was a tree when the Indians were here and gums some. it saw the spruce forest in which it grew cut and another forest grow in 3! its place and I had to cut it down. OCTOBER 21: Andy refuses to eat what I have cooked. Guess his stay will be 3 short unless he gets over it because I am not going to let him spend half JUNE 22: Dandy day to work cool all day. Not many flies. his time cooking now. 3 3! JUNE 23: Porkies woke me up trying to eat up camp. NOVEMBER 10: Had what appeared to be an earthquake shook last night very 3 peculiar sound and [illegible word] on shelf vibrated. JUNE 26: Our night prowler is a bobcat I guess. Andy got a glimpse 3! of him last night. He comes and digs in the ashes of the hearth to see NOVEMBER 11: Very windy cold night but wind blew itself out and the sun came what he can find. Andy puts the bones and so on in the stove. up clear over a world of marvelous beauty. The mountains seemed so high the 3! air very close and they all snow [sic] . . . Northern lights burn every night now. JULY 4: [A black team from Boston played Groveton in baseball on July 4.] 3! Game played very fair. No race feelings showed. Not much sign of drinking NOVEMBER 21: Andy got up mad again told him to pack up and get out which till toward night. he did . . . Ronnie came around and scaled. Gave good scale 26.70 pulp. 13 3! 3/8 cd.wd. 1 ft. rough pulp. Went to Groveton got supplies … Drew $20.00.! JULY 9: Some rain but not enough to do any good. Timber drying up very fast. 3! 3! NOVEMBER 27: Very cold some wind . . . Beautiful moonlight but getting very JULY 11: Our wildcat paid us a visit again last night. I tried to be quick cold. Timber popping like rifle shots. enough to see him. He upset our woodpile but I did not see him. 3! 3! NOVEMBER 28: Sounds like a war outside the timber pops so. JULY 13: Great day for flies worst we have had yet. Andy and I just black 3! with tar and a regular swarm of flies around us all the time trying to find a NOVEMBER 30: Had some fit of blues this A.M. tarless place. Once in a while biting through the tar. Kimballs got me over them. Life going to beat me again. 3! 3! JULY 27: Filed new saw at noon and it sure cuts. Hard to pull after the little DECEMBER 5: Went to Groveton. Walked in. one. It looks a foot wide . . . Have lost a lot of money because of that little saw. Big dog at company farm bit me in leg. 3 3! JULY 30: Camp Porcupine [Name of his logging camp]. Kitty evidentially DECEMBER 9: Been awful itchy since Jim came. caught some animal behind our stove and such a racket. I went out with Discovered was quite lousy this morning. Went after them. my flashlight and he was crunching bones just above the camp. He let me 3! get within 25 feet of him. I could see him, but my flashlight was too weak DECEMBER 13: Talked about Andy. Afraid he is dead up in woods in Nash to see him plainly. Stream. [Note: The Coos County Democrat on December 9, 1936, reported: 3! “Arthur Littlefield, 42-year-old resident of Amesbury, Massachusetts was AUGUST 6: Am going to try to help [Andy] learn to read.! killed Thursday [December 3] when he fell under a logging sled at Nash 3! Stream. Littlefield was instantly killed, and it is believed that he slipped and AUGUST 15: Real rain at last. Patched socks but did not get up till 8 o’clock. fell under the sled as he attempted to jump from it as it neared the foot of Just rested for once . . . After noon went out and picked raspberries for the hill. The sled was carrying about five cords of pulpwood and being drawn Kimballs. The berrys [sic] were good had not the bears not smashed them by a tractor at the time of the accident. He was employed by the Groveton down so and picked them so clean. Paper Co. at Camp 21.” Hessenauer’s “Andy” was Arthur Littlefield.] 3!! 3! AUGUST 24: Wind blowing hard. Leaves begin to show signs of DECEMBER 31: Been itching all the time and though could find coloring in the shrubs and some trees. no more lice here just know must be lousy. Last night found [some?]. 3! Top shirt just full. Boiled today. AUGUST 31: Such a day. Got scale at least 17 [cord] 3 ft. pulp. 15 cd 7 ft 3! cordwood. Comes to mighty $83.85. Only got docked one foot of pulp but EPILOGUE: After the War, Cyril Hessenauer worked in the woodroom of the could only get $25.00. Eats came to $17.50. Groveton paper mill. The Coos County Democrat reported that on August 1, 3! 1952, he was hospitalized after being overcome by heat exhaustion while OCTOBER 10: Andy got mad and left this AM. working in the chip loft in the mill. He died on September 9, 1971, at age 70 3! after a long illness. Two volumes of his diaries survive: 1936 and a five-year OCTOBER 11: [Visited by pair of coons – younger one is getting tame.] diary covering the years 1938-1942.

56 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015

MOOSEHEAD HISTORICAL SOCIETY PHOTO BY GUY SHOREY / COURTESY OF ROSA AND ROLAND ROBERGE ROLAND AND ROSA OF COURTESY / SHOREY GUY BY PHOTO

Top: New England loggers in camp, circa 1917. Bottom: The Wyoming Valley Mill in Northumberland, New Hampshire, during the flood of March 18, 1936. The overpass above Northumberland Village’s Main Street connected the paper machine building (left) to the finishing rooms (right). Joan Breault was a small girl at the time of the flood. She recalled: “The water was over part of the bridge, and they had a plank from the end of the bridge to one of the windows in by the paper machine because the whole village was flooded. I remember we stayed on the Guildhall side, and my dad went over to check on something in the mill, and he went across and went up that plank into the paper machine side, and they could go across the road and check [the finishing rooms] over there.”

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 57 58 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Back in Time Photos by Erin Paul Donovan

he history of agriculture is written all over the woods of southern and central New England. Old stone walls grid the landscape and seem to tie disparate stands of second-growth forest together; cellar holes and apple trees and tiger lilies still bloom throughout the forest. In northern New England, logging was the primary agricultural practice, and logging camps and logging camp culture the bedrock of the working landscape. And yet, unless you can read the story in the trees, this rich history is hard to see. Enter photographer Erin Paul Donovan, who hiked into what is today the Pemigewasset Wilderness in New Hampshire to shoot contemporary images of the past. The detritus you see pictured here is from logging railroads and camps associated with timber baron J.E. Henry; the railroad, part of the East Branch & Lincoln line, was in operation from 1893 to 1948. There’s a good chance that Cyril Hessenauer, the journal-keeper in the story on page 52, worked these woods.

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60 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 61 FIELD work

By Patrick White

At Work Logging (and Training) with John Adler

John Adler happens to be a logger, but more inherently he’s a thinker. Spend a little time with him and you quickly realize that whether he had chosen to be a banker, a builder, whatever, he would be constantly investigating ways to get the job done quick- er, faster, safer, better – just as he does working in the woods. Adler logs mostly within about a half-hour drive of his home in Chester, Vermont, but his reputation extends far beyond that radius, thanks to his work as a chainsaw safety trainer. For more than three decades, he’s been studying the safest, most efficient techniques for operating chainsaws, as well as felling and limb- ing trees – and then passing that information on to anyone else who runs a saw. Along with David Birdsall, he owns and operates Northeast Woodland Training, part of Game of Logging, a training curriculum developed by pioneering Swede Soren Eriksson. PATRICK WHITE

A New Way of Thinking Adler grew up in southern Maine, working on his family’s farm, as well as for the neighbors. “In the wintertime we cut wood, and in the summer we threw hay,” he recalled. “And I liked the Just learning how to properly set a seat up is something that future logger training may wood more than the hay.” That led him to Paul Smith’s College, need to incorporate, said Adler, who installed an after-market rear-view camera on his where he earned a forest technician degree in 1981. From there, windshield to reduce the amount of neck-pain-inducing turning around he has to do. Adler signed on with a sawmill in Andover, Vermont, and spent seven years working on the mill’s logging crew. – things that I was doing just because I’d seen other people do In 1983, he attended Soren’s logger safety workshop. “I had it that way.” never heard of him,” said Adler. “I figured, ‘What the heck, I’ll go Adler adopted other new techniques he learned from Eriksson, and see what this guy is all about.’” It was a decision that would like square-filing rather than round-filing his chain in order to change Adler’s approach to cutting wood and his career path. cut faster. He journeyed to watch Eriksson conduct other presen- After a morning regaling the crowd with stories of his tations, wanting to learn everything he could. “I started learning world travels (delivered in somewhat-difficult-to-understand to use wedges more efficiently, so I was laying the wood down “Swenglish”), Eriksson gave an afternoon cutting demonstra- better for the skidder. More wood, more money… and I’m feel- tion. “I was intrigued by what he was talking about. And there ing safer because I’m in better control of what’s happening. I just were a few basic things he did differently than we were used to. ate all this stuff up.” The Swede took notice and realized he had a So I started asking him why,” said Adler. In particular, when kindred spirit in Adler, someone not just taking a class mandated making his notch cut, Eriksson made the down-cut from the top by an employer or insurance company but someone who really before making the bottom cut. “That really caught my attention. wanted to understand things so he could do a better job. We were all used to making the bottom cut first. It was just the When Eriksson created the format for what would become way we had always done it around here.” Game of Logging, Adler was on his list of potential instructors. The two cuts need to meet precisely in order to get the full “Twenty years later, the rest is history,” said Adler. He has con- safety (steering) benefits of the hinge wood, and that’s a tricky ducted hundreds and hundreds of trainings, not only around thing to get right, even for experienced cutters. But if you make Vermont but throughout New York, New England, and in many the top cut first, Eriksson explained, then you can look down other parts of the country. through that narrow space when making the bottom cut to see All of that training kept Adler on the road almost constantly. exactly when the two cuts meet up. It was a simple tip – just In the late 1980s, he started his own logging business – Eagle changing the order of the cuts – but to Adler the larger concept Forest Improvement – but for long stretches of each year, espe- was profound: “It opened up a whole mindset of thinking about cially during the summer, he was training more than he was log- every single move you make in the woods. Is there a better way? ging. In the last few years, he’s scaled back and he and Birdsall Is there a safer way? Is there a more efficient way? I asked myself have hired two additional instructors – Allan Sands and John if there were other things I was doing that didn’t make sense Michalski – at Northeast Woodland Training. While he’s still on-

62 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 call as an instructor, Adler said he is enjoying the flexibility that wood being cut, operate the various controls and monitor all now frees up his weekends for trips to see his new grandchildren of the electronics in the cab, and ultimately try to optimize the in Massachusetts. And to think of new innovations for his own value of each log, they are processing information and making logging operation. decisions as quickly as fighter pilots. Today, in addition to traditional hazards related to working A Different Type of Training in the woods, loggers need to be aware of hazards like shoulder Adler has been using a cut-to-length approach from the time he and neck nerve damage, and stress. These problems are com- started his company, opting to use a forwarder to carry cut logs pounded when a mechanized logger has to occasionally grab out of the woods rather than a cable skidder to drag trees out. a saw and cut the old fashioned way. “You no longer have that He was one of the few loggers in this region using a forwarder muscle tone and balance that you just took for granted when 25 years ago, but many more have followed suit since then. A you were running a saw every day,” Adler said. “When you sit in few years ago, he took the approach one step further when he that cab for weeks on end, you’re no longer physically in shape.” purchased a used Rottne harvester to cut and limb the wood. As more loggers become mechanized, he said he’s heard stories (Not surprisingly, he’s since spent a lot of time thinking about from foresters about loggers who aren’t fit enough to keep up and making modifications that make the unit operate more effi- on walks in the woods. “These guys are sitting in machines, and ciently.) So not only is Adler conducting fewer chainsaw train- they’re getting really unhealthy and are developing long-term, ing classes these days, he’s also using the tool less himself. really serious medical problems.” Adler believes that as mechanization becomes more the norm Nutrition, cardiovascular health, stress relief – these are the in the industry, logger training will have to reflect how the job has types of training topics that Adler is thinking about these days. changed. “I spent 30 years on the ground logging with a chainsaw, He and his wife now work with a personal trainer, and Adler has and now transitioning to mechanized equipment, I’m spending a taken up biking in the summer. “That’s how I spend my time out lot of time in the cab of that machine,” he said. Both are hard on of work,” he said. “I need to keep my body in shape.” On the job, the body, just in different ways. Working with a chainsaw requires Adler said he now looks for opportunities to take breaks and a lot of physical exertion, which can take a toll. But running a get out of the cab. If the chain on the cutting head starts slow- complex piece of machinery all day can be just as taxing: combine ing down, he’ll stop for a while to sharpen it. “Or maybe I’ll just the sedentary dangers that all those sitting at desk jobs are warned take a walk in the woods,” he added. A good way to keep healthy about with the stress of making difficult decisions and focusing – and a chance to do some thinking. intensely on what the machine is doing for hours on end. Adler cites studies in Austria showing that as people running Wagner Forest Management, Ltd., is pleased to underwrite Northern Woodlands’ series harvesters juggle visual information about the terrain and the on forest entrepreneurs. www.wagnerforest.com PATRICK WHITE

Adler cuts and limbs trees with the harvester (background) while Mark Germain (who has worked for Adler for 18 years) loads the logs onto a forwarder to be brought to the landing.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 63 64 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Northern Forests – Timber, Recreation, Estates

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Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 65 DISCOVERIES

By Todd McLeish

Sugar and Seeds

Maple syrup producers no longer have to wait for spring weather to know if they are likely to have a good year. A postdoc- toral researcher at Tufts University has revealed that sugar maple seed production the previous fall is another valuable metric for predicting syrup production. “Weather affects how much sap will flow out of the tree, but sap volume is only one piece of the puzzle,” said BRIAN LASENBY/BIGSTOCK Josh Rapp, who combined studies of maple syrup production at 28 sites in Vermont with research on mast seeding events at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts. Sugar content is the other key variable, and “weather alone is a Degree days may determine when peepers start calling. surprisingly bad predictor of how much Peeper Keeper sugar comes out of the taps.” the following spring. That means the According to Rapp, trees need resourc- sugar content in its sap goes down. For nearly 20 years, Gary Lovett has kept a es to make seeds, just as they do to make “So if you go out in the fall and you journal with notes about a variety of natu- sugar, and they build up those resources look up in the trees at the seeds, you’ll ral events taking place in his backyard through photosynthesis and the storage have an idea of whether it’s going to be in southeastern New York, including the of carbohydrates. Seed production uses a particularly good or bad year in terms date that spring peepers begin peeping in up those stores of carbohydrates, and it of sugar content,” Rapp said. “Weather his vernal pool each year. He noticed that takes more than a year to build them back during the tapping season is still going to the date that the tiny frogs start calling has up again. When a tree produces a lot of affect how much syrup is produced, but often varied by a month from one year to seeds in the fall, it doesn’t have enough seeing if it’s a big year for seeds explains the next, sometimes beginning in early carbohydrates left to produce much sugar the sugar content, which is about half of March and other years not until early the variation in syrup production. April. So the forest ecologist at the Cary Based on the small seed crop among Institute of Ecosystem Studies decided sugar maples in Harvard Forest last fall, to figure out what environmental factors Rapp predicts that the 2015 maple syrup influenced the date of first calling. harvest should be a good one. He examined several weather vari- Since seeds develop about half-a-year ables, including average temperatures, before the syrup harvest, Rapp hopes his the amount of precipitation, and degree study will enable maple syrup producers days (a scientific way of charting how to plan ahead. “Maple syrup is a compli- much temperatures deviate from a base cated natural resource,” he said. “I hope figure over time), to identify what trig- this research can give producers a win- gers the peepers to begin calling. After dow into the upcoming season.” conducting many calculations, he con- Rapp said he is particularly inter- cluded that the best predictor is what he

CLARISSE HART/HARVARD FOREST ested in understanding the physiological described as “a thermal sum beginning mechanisms that drive sugar production, the first of February with a base of three so his next studies will involve manipu- degrees Celsius.” In layman’s terms, that’s lating individual trees to see how sugar a calculation that adds the number of content changes. He is also studying sap degrees the average daily temperature quality in sugar maples from Virginia to goes above three each day, from February Quebec to better understand the chemi- 1 until the peepers start calling. cal compounds that give maple sap its “The average date that peepers started Josh Rapp measures sugar content in sugar maple sap. distinctive flavor. peeping in my backyard was March 22,”

66 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 he said. “But on years that accumulate According to Tanentzap, forest debris carbon is more nutritious, organic carbon degree days faster, they’ll start peeping is an important contributor to freshwater from trees washed into lakes is a hugely earlier. And if it’s cooler and you don’t food chains, supplementing the diets of important food source for freshwater fish, accumulate those degree days fast, it will microscopic zooplankton and the fish bolstering their diets to ensure good size be later.” He speculates that the physi- that feed upon them. His research was and strength.” ological reason for the onset of calling published last year in the journal Nature Tanentzap said that when detritus has to do with the chemical “antifreeze” Communications. from forest foliage travels from fast- the frogs produce that allows them to go Tanentzap studied young yellow perch moving streams into the slow-moving dormant in winter without freezing to at several sites around the lake with vary- lake, it sinks and forms layers of sedi- death. As the temperature warms, Lovett ing degrees of forest coverage, includ- ment. “Where you have more dissolved believes the antifreeze may degrade, ing an area denuded of forest from an forest matter you have more bacteria. prompting the frogs to awaken and begin old nickel smelting operation. Carbon More bacteria equals more zooplankton. moving toward their breeding ponds. from forest debris has a different elemen- And areas with the most zooplankton The one anomaly in Lovett’s data, tal mass than carbon from algae in the had the largest fattest fish,” he said. however, was a drought year when his aquatic food chain, so he was able to The research was conducted in a boreal pond was dry. Although it was a warm determine that at least 34 percent of the ecosystem where ancient forests are vital February that should have triggered the fish biomass came from forest vegetation, to the Earth’s carbon cycle. Tanentzap peepers to start calling in early March, increasing to 66 percent in areas sur- warned that the loss of forest debris they didn’t begin calling until late in the rounded by healthy forest. due to the erosion of these forests from month, one day after the first rain storm He said that the more forest around human activity is likely to have a negative of the season. “There must be an interac- the edge of the lake, the fatter the fish effect on the health of aquatic organisms. tion between precipitation and tempera- were. Fish in areas of scant forest cover He noted that more than 60 percent of ture in determining when they call,” he were considerably smaller and less likely the world’s fresh water is in boreal areas. said. “If the pond is dry, they’re not going to survive and breed. The young fish near These areas are suffering from human to call.” the smelting operation were the smallest disturbance, such as logging and mining, That combination of factors worries of them all, due to a shortage of food. and from an increase in forest fires which Lovett, particularly if a decent snowpack They were also more susceptible to poor many scientists believe are caused by becomes less reliable in coming years: health and predation. climate change – all occurrences that are “Without the snowpack, what determines “We found fish that had almost 70 predicted to intensify in coming years. if the pond is full is whether you have a percent of their biomass made from car- “While we’ve only studied boreal dry spell in late winter,” he said. “Pond bon that came from trees and leaves regions, our results are likely to bear out water levels could get more variable if instead of aquatic food chain sources,” globally,” he concluded. “Forest loss is winters warm up and we don’t have the he said. “While plankton raised on algal damaging aquatic food chains.” snowpack as a ready source of water to fill them. You would think that the date of first calling would get earlier due to climate change, but it could actually be more variable because the pond would be less certain to be full.”

Forest Fish Food

We don’t typically think of forest debris as a food source for freshwater fish and other aquatic organisms, but a study by researchers at the University of Cambridge in England suggests that it plays a key role in their diets. The research team, ANDREW TANENTZAP led by plant scientist Andrew Tanentzap, studied the ecosystem at Daisy Lake in Sudbury, Ontario, and found that fish in areas where leaves and other forest debris drained into the lake were fatter than fish The study at Daisy Lake in Ontario showed that fish in areas lacking forest cover were smaller and less likely to in areas receiving no forest debris. survive and breed than those in areas receiving forest debris.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 67 68 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 69 THE OVERSTORY

Story by Virginia Barlow Illustrations by Adelaide Tyrol

Red Pine Pinus resinosa

Before Europeans arrived on this continent, magnificent pure stands of red pine were found in the Midwest on the light, acid, sandy, or gravelly soils that were just a bit too poor for white pine and just a bit too fertile for jack pine. Mixed stands of white and red pine or of jack and red pine occurred on the in-between sites. Over time, as fire and intensive logging degraded these soils, the pines shifted sites. Now red pine occupies sites that were once white pine stands, and jack pine has moved in where red pine once grew. It’s easy to develop a disrespectful attitude toward red pine in our area. Almost all the red pine hereabouts has been planted on sites that are less than perfect for it, and more often than not the trees are too closely spaced. They are growing, but you can sense a little reluctance. When they are in nice, straight military rows they look artifi- cial; when they wander off course, foresters complain that they are difficult to thin. But trees planted on sites with exactly the right soil and trees occurring naturally in New England and the Adirondacks are as handsome as any. Even better are red pines growing in the upper Great Lakes region, in the heart of their range, where they truly belong; here they are an inspiration. You can distinguish red pine from the other pines by its tidy, symmetrical crown and straight, flexible needles that are four to six-and-a-half inches long, in bundles of two; the needles will snap if bent too far. The orange-red, scaly bark of younger trees turns reddish-brown on older trees and breaks into long, irregular, diamond-shaped plates. Scotch pine also has its needles in twos, but they are shorter and twisted, and Scotch pine bark is distinctly orange rather than reddish orange. Austrian pine, the other two-needled pine in the Northeast, is usually planted as an ornamental and, fortunately, is rarely found in the woods. Fire plays a large role in maintaining red pine, and in the Northeast only pitch pine and chestnut oak are considered to be more fire-resistant. In New England, naturally established red pine stands are mostly restricted to fire-prone habitats such as south- facing rocky ridges and sand plains. Thick bark protects mature red pines from fire, and its habit of self-pruning keeps surface fire from spreading into the crown, where the cones stand ready to drop their seeds on the bare soil needed for germination. Fire also helps control infestations of the red cone beetle, which can ruin seed crops. These beetles spend much of the year in the soil and are almost all killed during a surface fire. The conditions that are just right for surface fires are estimated to occur naturally every 75 to 100 years in north-central Minnesota, where red pine is the state tree. Red pine is the most extensively planted tree in the northern U.S. and Canada, and for good reason. When grown under reasonable conditions it has fewer serious enemies than most pines. White pine, though its wood is more valuable than red pine, is often deformed by the white pine weevil or killed by white pine blister rust, neither of which affects red pine. In the wild, it’s a northern tree, ranging from the Maritimes west to southeastern Manitoba and south to Minnesota, east to northern Massachusetts, and on some higher elevation sites a bit farther south. Despite this relatively large range, the species has very low genetic diversity. Perhaps red pine was greatly diminished during the most recent glaciation, as most of its range is in or next to the

70 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 region that was covered by ice during the late-Pleistocene era. Young trees grow rapidly and open-grown trees will begin to flower and produce seed cones when they are about 20 years old. Flowers appear from April to June and pollination, mostly by wind, occurs when cones are less than a quarter-of-an-inch long. The egg-shaped cones grow almost to full size (about two inches long) before fertilization takes place the following July, a full 13 months after pollination. The chestnut brown cones ripen and shed their seeds in autumn. The seeds may remain viable for three years, but most germinate the following spring. Moisture and shade improve germination, but seedlings need full sunlight. Some seeds are produced each year, with good seed crops every three to five years and bumper crops every 10 to 12 years. Most cones open on hot, still autumn days, and most seeds land close to the parent tree. Even though the understory in unthinned planted red pine stands may be quite empty, with little to offer wildlife species seeking cover, the seeds don’t go to waste. They are eaten by birds such as the pine grosbeak, red crossbill, and pine siskin. Mammals, including red squirrels, chipmunks, meadow voles, and mice also like them. Red pine offers food to others, too. The seedlings and twigs are browsed, sometimes heavily, by snowshoe hare, cottontails, porcupines, and even deer if they get hungry enough. Over 200 insects are known to feed on various parts of a red pine, an unusually high number. Though we sometimes think of the six-legged tribe as destructive, it’s good to remember that they’re the ones who convert vegetable matter into the little protein packages that are essential for bird and small mammal survival. Red pine’s growth is uniform, and on a good site the tree will grow 10 inches a year for the first 60 or so years. For good lumber, thinning is critical and usually needs to begin before you think it is necessary. The rule of thumb for most other softwood species is that they should be thinned when the live part of the crown occupies less than a third of the height of the tree, but red pine responds best when thinned even earlier. The stems are straight, with very little taper, which makes them ideal for telephone poles. Red pine is not rot resistant, but it takes preservatives very well, so pilings, railroad ties, mine timbers, and telephone poles are often made from red pine. Though plantation- grown red pine will never have the true majesty of the tree in its best natural habitat, keep an open mind about it. When you find a site where soil and spacing exactly meet its needs, you may get a glimpse of its true grandeur.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 71 Ad Index A. Johnson Co...... 60 Allard Lumber Company ...... 10 Bay State Forestry Services ...... 24 Berry, Dunn, McNeil, & Parker ...... 43 Britton Lumber Co., Inc...... 74 Cersosimo Lumber Co., Inc...... 51 Cersosimo Lumber Mill ...... 43 Champlain Hardwoods ...... 68 Champlain Valley Equipment ...... 51 Chief River Nursery ...... 50 Classifieds ...... 32 Colligan Law ...... 41 Columbia Forest Products ...... 33 Consulting Foresters ...... 42 Econoburn ...... back cover F&W Forestry ...... 64 Farm Credit ...... 68 Fountains Forestry...... 74 Fountains Real Estate ...... 65 Gagnon Lumber, Inc...... 72 Garland Mill Timberframes ...... 74 Greenleaf Forestry ...... 68 Hollow Hill Forestry, LLC ...... 61 Hull Forest Products...... 50 Itasca Greenhouse ...... 65 Land & Mowing Solutions, LLC ...... 64 LandVest ...... 72 LandVest Realty ...... inside back cover Lyme Timber ...... 12 Maine Forest Service...... 10 McNeil Generating...... 10 Meadowsend ...... 43 N.E.W.T.: Northeast Woodland Training ..... 43 NE Forestry Consultants, Inc...... 41 NE Wood Pellet ...... 68 New England Forest Products ...... 60 Newcomb, NY ...... 24 Northern Timber ...... 69 Northland Forest Products ...... 61 Oesco, Inc...... 10 Plum Creek ...... 78 Scotland Hardwoods...... 23 Sustainable Forestry Initiative ...... 12 SWOAM ...... 74 Scythe Supply, Inc...... 61 Tarm USA, Inc...... 60 The Taylor-Palmer Agency, Inc...... 50 Timberhomes, LLC ...... 23 Vermont Agricultural Credit Corporation ....12 Vermont Coverts...... 61 Vermont Woodlands Association ...... 65 VWACCF...... 64 Wells River Savings Bank ...... 51 Winterwood Timber Frames ...... 61 Woodwise Land, Inc...... 24

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72 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 TRICKS of the trade

Story and Photos by Brett R. McLeod 1

The $5 Froe

The froe, sometimes called a shake axe, is a tool used to split a bolt of wood along the grain. While its traditional purpose was making shakes, I find it to be among the fastest, and certainly the safest, ways to split kindling. Unfortunately, froes are now highly sought-after by antique tool collectors and command high prices that are out of reach for many. Fortunately, a froe is among the easiest of tools to 2 3 make, requiring only an orphan strap hinge, which can be had at flea markets for $5 or less. I began with a hinge that was 20 inches long and 1.5 inches wide. While the overall blade length should ultimately be only 12-14 inches, I left the hinge untrimmed until the last step, so that I had a longer piece of metal to work with; this allowed me to hold it further from the hot forge. Heat the eye of the hinge; the goal is to rework it into a larger, tapered eye. While I used a small blacksmith’s forge for this project, an acetylene torch would work equally well for heating the hinge. Use both the top of the anvil and the horn to create a 1.5- to 2-inch-diameter eye. Shaping the eye around the horn will create a slight taper, allowing the handle to slide in from the bottom. Once you’ve made the eye of the froe, heat the opposite end and trim to the appropriate length. 4 With the froe blade complete (minus sharpening), select a straight hardwood branch to be whittled into a 14- to 16-inch handle. Use the natural taper of the branch to your advantage, testing the fit of the froe head. You won’t need to wedge the head since it will be driven tight with use, similar to a pickaxe handle. Finally, with the head fitted, clamp the handle in a bench vice and sharpen the froe with an angle grinder. Like many hewing axes, you’ll only want to bevel one side of the froe. Grind the froe at a 40-degree angle, maintaining consistency from end to end. The final edge can be finished with a whetstone. Before you can begin making shakes or kindling you’ll need 5 a froe club, which is essentially a short length of log with one 1. An orphan strap hinge is ideal end narrowed to make a handle. Shakes are made by placing for making an inexpensive froe. the froe across a bolt of wood and pounding the froe evenly, causing the log to split. The handle of the froe can be used as 2. Once the eye of the hinge a lever to help break a shake once it has begun to cleave. For is cherry-red you can begin making kindling with a froe, wrap a bungee cord around the reshaping it as a larger froe eye. bolt and use the froe to split it in opposite directions (a checker- 3. Cutting the end of the hinge board pattern). The bungee cord will help hold the kindling with a chisel. together until it’s released. 4. Create a single-beveled edge Brett R. McLeod is an associate professor of Forestry & Natural Resources at Paul using an angle grinder. Smith’s College and the author of The Woodland Homestead (Storey Publishing), 5. Using the froe and club. available summer 2015.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 73 74 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 up COUNTRY

By Robert Kimber

Citizen Scientists

In 2011, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, into the middle and paddle around. With the likelihood of find- Trout Unlimited, and Maine Audubon put their collective heads ing a boat stashed away on one of these back-of-beyond ponds together and launched a program just made for my friend Steve at about zero, you have to take a belly boat along, a device and me. Called the Brook Trout Pond Survey, this program’s descended from an inner tube but now, in its present, more goal is to identify previously undocumented wild and native highly evolved form, an ungainly rig that looks like a legless, brook trout populations in remote Maine ponds. inflatable easy chair. You also need a small pump to inflate your Our state contains 97 percent of the known native brook belly boat and, once you’re launched in the thing, a pair of swim trout lakes and ponds left in these United States. Maine’s fisher- fins to propel yourself around. And, finally, if the water is cold ies biologists are understandably determined to protect those enough, which it almost always is, you need your stocking-foot waters already identified as clear, cold, and unsullied enough waders on to avoid hypothermia. Carrying all this gear calls for to support native trout populations; but they are determined, a huge pack that just loves getting caught in the alders or the as well, to find out which of Maine’s lakes and ponds not yet spiky branches of a fir thicket. We bushwhack, we wallow, we surveyed also contain wild native trout. thrash, we stumble uphill, we tumble down, we’ve been known Maine has about 5,800 lakes and ponds greater than one acre to mutter mild oaths. The trials we have to endure in the interest in size, hundreds upon hundreds of which the fisheries biolo- of citizen science are by no means trivial. gists, given all their other duties, would need at least half a cen- But the rewards are not trivial either. We have the satisfaction tury to get around to surveying. The solution? Enlist fishermen of performing a socially valuable service; we see on every trip and fisherwomen to go to these ponds and see if they find any one more corner of this delicious world of ours; and if I come evidence of trout, and perhaps even catch a trout. If they do, the home skunked and Rita asks me where the fish for our supper department’s biologists can follow up with a bonafide scientific are, I don’t have to say, “I didn’t catch any.” I can say instead, survey, the results of which can be used to write management “Making all due allowance for the limitations of my scientific plans governing these waters. competence, I am sorry to report to you that there are no trout This program provides Steve and me and others of our ilk in Unnamed Pond No. 2,648.” with benefits of no small importance. First, we gain the honor- I mean to get a book out of these expeditions, too: Bob and ific title of citizen scientists. Second, and far more important: Steve’s Guide to Fifty Barely Accessible Troutless Ponds in Maine, a Now, when we go off for a day or two of searching for remote surefire bestseller. And the best part of it is that we have at least little pockets of water, we are not indulging some prepubescent 30 more ponds to go. hankering to just mess about in the woods. No, we are responsible adults on a noble mission. We are venturing out to find Robert Kimber has written often for outdoor and environmental magazines. He lives creatures not only of great beauty but also of iconic value to in Temple, Maine. humankind. Native brook trout have come down to us from a pure, primal, unpolluted world. They are holdovers from Eden. To lose them here in Maine – their last stronghold in our country and in a time that is already, on so many fronts, an age of extinctions – would be a failure of will and foresight no self- respecting Maine angler would want to be guilty of. So what we are talking about is a sacred duty and no less so because it’s great, though often strenuous, fun. Steve and I sift through the list of ponds that the survey offers up each spring to find those farthest from any road, in the deepest swamps, and in the highest, ruggedest hill country. Equipped for foul weather and the possibility of spending an unplanned night in the woods, we carry an ungodly amount of stuff: rain gear, a change of clothes, matches, tinder, headlamp, maps, compass, pocket knife, food, fly rod, reel, fishing vest. Then, because it is all but impossible to cast flies from the shore of most woods ponds, and because you can’t cover the water of even a fairly small pond from shore anyhow, you need some way to get out

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 75 wood LIT

Bumble Bees of North America: authors clearly explain in their introduction, identi- Out on a Limb: What Black Bears fying bumble bees to the species is not something An Identification Guide that can always be accomplished in the field. Have Taught Me about Intelligence Paul Williams, Robbin Thorp, Given that the castes (queens and workers) – as and Intuition Leif Richardson, and Sheila Colla well as the males – of each species can potentially By Benjamin Kilham Princeton University Press, 2014 appear in a variety of different color patterns, there Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013 is only so much that can be done in the field, even Whenever one hears about bees these days, it with a hand lens, to arrive at a reliable species- Readers interested in animal behavior are likely is almost invariably to the European honey bee, level identification. familiar with books such as Mind of the Raven, Apis mellifera, that the reference is being made. However, this is not to in any way discourage Geese of Beaver Bog, and Of Wolves and Men Indeed, the health of this species is of justifiably the casual amateur naturalist. For those not (the first two by Bernd Heinrich, the last by Barry great concern, but it is by no means the only interested in collecting individual specimens, Holstun Lopez). They teach us about communica- species of bee on the planet. Among the approxi- the species accounts – each complete with tion, social structure, and mating behavior of the mately 20,000 species of bees known to science, range maps and yearly activity graphs as well wildlife around us, and often shed new light on there are mason bees, digger bees, sweat bees, as textual information describing such pertinent interactions between these animals and humans. polyester bees, carpenter bees, mining bees, and, items as range, habitat, and behavior – provide Out on a Limb, by Benjamin Kilham, does all of course, bumble bees. a wealth of information that can lead the reader the same for American black bears, and now sits Of all these, this last is perhaps the most popu- to a better understanding of which species might on my bookshelf among the aforementioned titles. larly known and readily identifiable – or at least be found in a particular area. And thanks to a Kilham writes from the unique perspective of a many might think so. In truth, the friendly, fuzzy very cleverly designed scheme of diagrammatic wildlife rehabilitator who has contracted with the bumble bee so commonly known to backyard color pattern icons, it is often possible to reach at New Hampshire Fish and Game Department for gardeners is actually a member of a genus com- least a general idea of an individual bee’s identity several decades to raise and release orphaned prising some 250 distinct species, 46 of which are without collecting it and examining it under a bear cubs. found in North America north of Mexico. And it is microscope. The book explores, among other things, the these very 46 (well, 45 actually, as one may now Of course, for those interested in going deeper complex social interactions involved when female be extinct) that are the subject of Bumble Bees of and securing species identifications, each spe- bears establish their feeding territories. In many North America: An Identification Guide. cies account includes detailed information for cases, this is done through physical altercations. Very much to the credit of its authors, Bumble examination of the specimen under a microscope. But in other cases, witnessed by Kilham, female Bees of North America is far more than just a A section of comprehensive identification keys for bears appear to share their territories, thereby guidebook. Before the individual species accounts both female and male bumble bees – with photos expanding their access to food, as was the case even begin, there is a 50-page introduction that – is also included following the species accounts. between two female bears who shared access to covers how to observe and attract bumble bees, Because of their importance as a pollinator, their beech and red oak stands in times of respec- their ecology and general life history, threats their ubiquity (in various species, of course) tive abundance. to their well-being, bumble bee mimicry (both across the continent, and simply because the lives I especially appreciated Kilham’s insights about Batesian and Müllerian), how they are scientifically and behaviors of bumble bees are so fascinating, human-bear interactions. For example, he advo- classified, and how the book itself should be used Bumble Bees of North America should be con- cates for a thoughtful approach when loggers as a tool in identifying them. Indeed, so clearly sidered a must-read by all amateur naturalists. return in the winter to job sites that they worked written and well organized are these introductory Professionals – entomologists, ecologists, general in the summer, as this often disrupts bear dens, sections that they serve very well as both a first biologists, and most especially teachers of life which can lead to mothers abandoning cubs. He lesson to the absolute newcomer to the natural science subjects at all levels – would also do well suggests that dogs be used to determine whether history of bumble bees and as an overview to the to add it to their reading lists for both its superb bears are denning in log piles and that loggers experienced naturalist and even the professional introduction to the genus as well as its value as a postpone returning to those sites inhabited by entomologist, ecologist, or general biologist. reference guide. bears until the following spring, after mothers and Then there are the species accounts. As the John E. Riutta cubs have emerged from hibernation.

76 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 What I found most interesting about the book single male. By the time scientists determined that didn’t have anything to do with bears; it was, the mysterious frog killer was a chytrid fungus, rather, Kilham’s suggestion that we approach the undoubtedly spread by humans, it was too late for science of animal behavior differently. The title of the golden toad and many other frog species. the book reflects not only bears climbing trees, In the first chapter of The Sixth Extinction, but also the author’s proposition that we “go out Elizabeth Kolbert describes the global decline of on a limb” and broaden our approach. amphibians to set the stage for this important The book asks whether we are being too rigid book about the loss of biodiversity, past and in science by not including alternate ways of present. Through fossil records, scientists have thinking and conducting research. Kilham uses pieced together compelling evidence about five Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin as examples of mass-extinction events when the diversity of life researchers whose field methods were qualitative on earth dropped suddenly and dramatically. The rather than designed experiments, yet Darwin’s last of these occurred about 75 million years ago theories serve as some of our most important sci- when an asteroid crashed into earth, wiping out entific foundations. He also notes the great contri- the dinosaurs. Many scientists now believe we Concord Spring 1845 butions of Temple Grandin, an animal behaviorist are in the midst of the sixth extinction, but instead who has autism. Kilham even cites himself as an of an asteroid, the driving force is “one weedy As sweet a mystery example: he is clearly making important observa- species,” ourselves. as ever was, tions and capturing valuable data about bears, yet In this fascinating and highly informative book, what this world is couldn’t pass the entry examinations for graduate Kolbert, who is a staff writer for New Yorker in spring bud. school due to severe dyslexia and so does not magazine, deftly describes how we have altered have access to university research funds or pub- the planet’s biodiversity as no other species has Awakening woods lishing in scientific journals. before. She takes us into the field with an array of and glazed river, Kilham proposes that we also broaden our scientists – including geologists in Italy, paleon- songs of mating birds interpretation of animal behavior. He points to the tologists in New Jersey, botanists in the Amazon and swelling waters. common belief, for example, that animals com- Basin, marine biologists studying the Great Barrier municate only with emotion, not with intention. Yet Reef, and biologists tracking the decline of bats in The oven-bird thrums he has found, and gives examples of, communi- New York and Vermont – each providing compelling his sawyer’s strain. cation among bears that clearly includes intention, and moving accounts of species that we have lost The chewink upturns such as the negotiation between two females for or are in the midst of losing. volumes of dross. the adoption of a struggling cub whose biological Kolbert also tracks how our understanding of mother was unable to care for it. mass extinctions has evolved over the centuries, Plethora of urges, Overall, Out on a Limb was an easy read yet from Lyell’s and Darwin’s view that, like evolution, intoxication of scents, very thought-provoking. It questions the common extinction occurs “at a very slow pace – so slow spice of buried mint, approach to animal behavior science – and sci- that, at any given time, in any given place, it would bark-bruise of birch. ence in general. At the same time, the book leaves not be surprising were it to go unnoticed.” She also the reader with a deeper appreciation for the describes a growing movement to recognize that Heartleap, heartleap— society of bears that are feeding, mating, commu- we are in a new geological epoch, one in which the ache of the hickory’s nicating, and negotiating in our own backyards. humans have affected many geological-scale sallow young leaves, Sarah Galbraith changes. Currently, the International Commission the white oak’s sage fuse. on Stratigraphy (the group responsible for maintaining the official timetable of earth’s history) is Bold life, the hymn The Sixth Extinction: formally considering a proposal to name the new of change, epoch the Anthropocene. surges through his An Unnatural History The Sixth Extinction is a powerful, thought- quivering spirit, By Elizabeth Kolbert provoking book that shines a light on much of Henry Holt and Company, 2014 what we have to lose, whether it be amphibians as he enters the woods – which have been around in their current form strung with pearls In the late 1980s, while in graduate school, I for about 250 million years and yet today are of pendant rain learned of mysterious mass die-offs (and even- considered to be the world’s most endangered on its rose-nippled buds. tual extinctions) of many frog species worldwide class of animals – or humanity itself. Near the – events that played a big role in guiding me to a end of the book, Kolbert poses the question, “In career in wildlife conservation. Perhaps the most an extinction event of our own making, what hap- JANICE MILLER POTTER well-known of these events was the disappear- pens to us?” A quote from ecologist Paul Ehrlich ance of the golden toad, which during the rainy offers a fitting response: “In pushing other species season could be found mating by the hundreds to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb in Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve on which it perches.” – until 1989, when researchers could only locate a Steve Faccio

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 77 78 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 the outdoor PALETTE

By Adelaide Tyrol

Inara Summer Cycle / Inara Winter Cycle. Watercolor on paper, each 52 inches in diameter. 2008-2009

“Perhaps the passage of time is a kind of healing, or a kind of salvation granted equally to all people.”—Mizuki Nomura

Inari, Finland, is the cultural center of the Sami – the indig- viewer (and the artist) looking at the world truly around them enous people of northern Scandinavia and Russia. At 68.9050 – a fundamentally different experience than looking at a tradi- degrees N, 27.0303 degrees E, it lies 225 miles north of the tional rectangular landscape with a horizon line. Leslie’s Arctic Arctic Circle, in a region where the sun can remain above or Cycle paintings are set to a circadian rhythm, a 24-hour cycle below the horizon for 24 continuous hours during the solstices. that continues regardless of conditions, including the constant Inari is one of seven sites Ken Leslie chose for his Arctic Cycle light of mid-summer and the constant darkness of mid-winter. series. With an award in hand for independent research from Leslie’s artistic expression of the landscape in the Arctic is born the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Leslie set out to spend of a love of the place. Of the dark days, he said, “What the Arctic the summer of 2008 and winter of 2009 interpreting what he in winter loses in direct sunlight it gains in twilight – the most saw. The result was a pair of large, circular watercolor paintings amazing range of rich indigos and French ultramarines and that simultaneously reflect time and space. Each wheel repre- cobalts. The intensity of this blue seems greatest when there’s sents the cycle of two days, one at the summer solstice and one, cloud cover, and what little light there is reverberates back and six months later, at the winter solstice. The paintings on paper forth between sky above and snow bed below. The filtered light are each folded into 24 sections, accordion style. When open, seems to multiply in saturation, and you feel as if you’re walking the piece is an unbroken circle, and when folded up it forms a through blue – not merely below it or in front of it. You breathe book that can be held in the hand and read page-by-page, day it in, bathe in it, become a part of it.” -by-day. Leslie painted one section an hour for 24 consecutive hours, pivoting in the exact same spot to record the 360-degree Ken Leslie is a professor of Fine Arts in Johnson, Vermont. He has been awarded panorama. fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Arts Council, and As you look at these landscapes, you are watching the day the Vermont Community Foundation. His next exhibition is scheduled for December pass in a place where the shape and tilt of the earth seems par- 2015 at the Ilulissat Art Museum in Ilulissat, Greenland, followed by a solo exhibition ticularly evident. The nontraditional “doughnut” shape helps in December 2015 at the Julian Scott Gallery in Johnson, Vermont. He can be reached to focus the attention on the point of view. The center is the through his website: www.kenleslie.net.

Call for entries: Send us your Outdoor Palette submissions. Contact Adelaide Tyrol at (802) 454-7841 or [email protected] for details.

Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015 79 A PLACE in mind

Tanya Sousa

My first memory of “The Farm” was looking into a spring at the from lunch. I stalked through the grasses and reeds and was corner of the gravel road and driveway. I was four years old and surprised how easy it was to catch them this way. Before long I new to the countryside, coming recently from a suburban area had an impressive number of two-for-ones loaded into the baby full of concrete, traffic, and tied-up barking dogs. When I gazed carriage and began the free carriage tour of the front yard. The into the spring, I saw that it bubbled from a dark, mysterious seemingly happy passengers didn’t even try to hop out. hole in a sandy bottom – and the water I stared into was clearer Before long my mother came out from the dark of the house than window glass. It was as if I was seeing for the first time, and into the bright sunshine. I was in the shade of a cedar hedge and in a way, I was. so the frogs wouldn’t get too hot or dry – not far from the spring The spring fed a thin but persistent stream, which in turn fed and its persistent stream. Mom squinted her eyes and, seeing a small pond by the old farmhouse. I loved the pond instantly. her little girl’s beaming face, couldn’t help but walk over. It was surrounded by marshy ground on one side that was “What do you have in there today?” she asked. punctuated with cattails, their velvet-soft spears, even their Finally, I was able to deliver my line. “Look Mom! A two- name, delighting me. There were some rocks and a gently sloping for-one sale!” grass bank on the other side where frogs and turtles and My mother scrunched her face with confusion, leaned over dragonflies would sun themselves. The shallow water at the the carriage and gasped. “You need to let them go right away!” edge was rich with life, too: dragonfly nymphs, tadpoles in Now it was my turn to be confused. “Why?” various stages of development, minnows, and water bugs that “They…they’re… they’re busy.” She stammered. “Put them skated flirtatiously on the surface. The water warmed where it back right now!” pooled, far from the cold spring that fed it. Although I never saw Not to worry, my mother explained the biology of it later any creatures in the spring itself, I knew, even at that young age, when she wasn’t so shocked, and from then on I knew better it was the spring that allowed the pond to “be.” than to bother the frogs when they were creating future Once we settled in on the defunct farm, there was no place tadpoles. I secretly thought that honeymooning frog couples I’d rather be than outside, often by the pond with a jar or a sieve would enjoy the carriage tours I offered, but I respected my or sometimes a little plastic bucket meant for more civilized mother’s wishes. places like a public beach. I emptied my bin of doll clothes and It’s been over 40 years since I was a child living on that farm filled it instead with water and temporarily with the creatures with my pond. I heard the current homeowners filled it in. I was I’d catch at the pond’s watery edge. After watching them swim beyond sad the day the news reached my ears. They didn’t want around awhile, I’d let them go. I never wanted to hurt the beings the stream cutting through the neat yard they’d created, so it was I caught. Over the course of a couple of years they became like redirected to drain into a culvert. Now, instead of supporting sisters and brothers – no different from me except in the outer habitat, the clear spring water runs and mixes in with mud and shell. I saw that they ate, that they rested and moved, that they grime from passing cars. It’s what we do far too often – for matters could seem afraid or angry or enjoy a gentle touch. of convenience or vanity we take actions and don’t think of the My dolls languished in the closet, but the doll carriage came ripple effects. outside so I could push it around the yard, offering free thrill rides The spring keeps bubbling, though. I imagine that when the to frogs, turtles, or sometimes snakes I found under sun-baked house changes hands again, as it surely will, someone will look rocks. The frogs were my biggest challenge. I kept tabs on how into the glass-clear water, consider the pond site, and undo the many I would catch on a given day, constantly trying to best my damage. Life will spring back, pardon the pun, because there is own record. nothing more persistent than nature itself. Then a day came that nearly made me feverish with joy. The frogs were out as usual, but now each had another frog Tanya Sousa is an award-winning author of environmentally oriented children’s books, clinging tightly to its back. “Mom! Look! A two-for-one-sale!” essays, and novels. Her environmental novel, The Starling God, was published in 2014 I hollered, but sadly my mother was in the house doing dishes by Forestry Press.

80 Northern Woodlands / Spring 2015

Northern Woodlands SPRING 2015