Walking The Berkshires

Spring is Sprung

Last night we had frost in the bottomlands of the Litchfield Hills.  Today the air is clean, the sky clear, and the nascent Spring is revealed in every flower and twig.  The rich, moist woodlands boast trillium and starflower, hepatica and bloodroot, while trout lily and ramps drift beneath the greening trees.  Marsh marigolds are a burst of yellow in dark woodland pools.  Ostrich ferns push their fiddleheads out of the ooze.

The invasives are emerging in force, too.  Barberry leafed out before all but the first Spring ephemerals, and Norway Maple blossoms fall in sickly green.  Garlic Mustard is in flower and the Japanese Knotweed is over a foot high, soon to surpass the height where it can be cut and served as ersatz rhubarb for those with a taste for it.  Coltsfoot blooms by the roadside and also deeper in the forest.  Bittersweet twines anew.  The early leaf gets the sun.

When I was in Virginia a week ago, the redbuds cast their ethereal sprays of color beneath the forest canopy.  In these latitudes, flowering shadblow hovers in the understory.  Named for the anadromous fish that often appear in our rivers when the tree is in flower, shad trees are among my favorite harbingers of Spring.  To walk in our forests in late April is a pure delight, with warm sunlight still reaching through the leafless trees and wildflowers unfurling at every step.  In a few short weeks, foliage closes in and vistas contract, but now the woodlands are airy and light. 

I have a wildflower garden at home with nursery grown spring ephemerals predominating.  Dutchman's britches and maidenhair fern sway beside many of the species previously mentioned.  There are even two clumps of large yellow ladylippers Cypripedium pubescens and another of little white ones Cypripedium x andrewsii, laboratory grown and divided by the New England Wildflower Society  without the need for the mycorrhizal associations that natural propagation requires.   Rare plant gardens are a bit like zoos - moving and satisfying at some levels but no substitute for the real thing in the wild.  Still, I spend hours in this garden as spring progressing, noting how the plants rearrange themselves over time and form their own associations.  The trout lilies and wild leeks are delightfully intermingled, now.

"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
An eternity in an hour."

-  William Blake

"Chemicals, Chemicals, I Need Chemicals!"

The title for this post comes from George W. Hayduke, the paranoid, redneck eco-warrior character in Edward Abbey's The Monkeywrench Gang.  Hayduke measures highway miles in six-packs - "every freeway a free-for-all"- and the chemicals he craves (coffee, cigarettes and Schlitz) fuel his campaign of sabotage against the rampant development and destruction of the desert southwest.  For Hayduke and an intrepid band of proto-Earth Firsters, the ends justify the means, so turning the tools of modern society against itself while consuming some of its most addictive products is not a contradiction that troubles them terribly much.  The value of the wilderness they are fighting to save is much greater than the minor subsidizing of big tobacco and the like that comes from fueling Hayduke's addictions.

Environmentalists make compromises with modernity.  Even the most self sufficient "back to nature" adherent will favor modern matches over tinder and flint.  The Amish sometimes lease land for cell towers and farm in their shadow without telephones in their houses.  Our tools and taboos reflect our values, an ethical cost/benefit analysis we negotiate throughout our lives.  Sometimes we make different choices and modify our behaviors when presented with new information that casts our customary practices in a negative light.  Recycling is one such example.  The old practice of disposing recyclable waste in landfills has proved economically as well as ethically unsustainable and a combination of incentives and environmental education has modified how we treat our household trash and product packaging.

Even so, there are many environmental dilemmas with imperfect solutions, and whether or not these are adopted depends greatly on what we as individuals and society value.  I was recently asked by friends at Whorled Leaves about the costs and benefits of using herbicide to combat invasive plants, an ethical quandary of the first order.  They, along with many environmentalists and environmental organizations, recognize the significant threat to our landscapes and natural diversity posed by introduced, invasive plants and animals, but are also quite rightly cautious about the impacts of using of chemicals to combat them.  When a globally engaged conservation organization of the size and complexity of The Nature Conservancy tackles invasive species with the full range of tools at its disposal, including, where it deems appropriate, the use of herbicides, it makes these choices based on values that we need to understand in order to either increase our level of comfort with its practices or to better challenge the assumptions that underlie them.

I have considerable experience both with invasive plants and TNC, having been involved as an employee of one with combating the other for seven years.  I used to start my presentations on invasives with a discussion of values.  "Good and bad are not attributes of species", I'd say, "they are value statements we make about their behaviors."  The horticultural industry, which has come a significant way on the issue of invasives in the last decade, emphasizes "the right plant in the right place."  Those plants, animals, and pathogens that evolved elsewhere and can out-compete or even cause the extirpation of naturally occurring species when introduced to new regions can have far reaching impacts on things we value - biodiversity, historic landscapes, outdoor recreation, farms and forestry, to name but a few.  Invasive species are dramatically altering the ecology of habitats both common and rare, and are the second leading cause of biodiversity decline after habitat destruction worldwide.

With impacts like these, it is no wonder that The Nature Conservancy, a biodiversity-driven conservation organization, would prioritize reducing threats to native species posed by invasives.  The ethical as well as practical problem arises when it comes to invasive species prevention and control.  Invasive species are so successful because they have a host of attributes that make them very hard to eradicate once they become established.  There is an exponential and diminishing rate of return on investment in invasive plant control the larger the invaded area and the longer the invasives have been established.  Some invasive plants are so overwhelming that even  when they form a very small percentage of the overall plant diversity in an area, they are poised to dominate native habitats in a very short time.  Garlic Mustard in the Northeast reaches the threshold where it starts to out-compete native plants at less than 2% cover.  Old World climbing fern, spread by airborne spores, has smothered the Everglades and is advancing with astounding speed upstate through Florida's wetlands.

Invasions of these magnitudes can only be addressed at the scale of the threat through management that includes herbicides.  A minor percentage of invasive plants currently in this country has these system altering attributes and the capacity to expand explosively in a few short years.  A decision to manage these species will be based on the values of the individual or entity that contemplates the management.  For The Nature Conservancy, the native diversity it values is directly threatened by invasive species -admittedly some far more so than others- and it has made an accommodation with the selective use of herbicides to manage invasives. 

TNC's Global Invasive Species Initiative, formerly the Wildland Invasive Species Program, provides detailed Element Stewardship Abstracts for invasives and control methods on its website.  The abstract for Phragmities australis, or common reed, describes a host of management options, some more successful than others, including chemical control.  Aerial spraying with Glyphostate, the active ingredient in Roundup and its wetlands approved counterpart, Rodeo, is used on Phragmites where the non-target impacts on native diversity of using a broad spectrum herbicide are minimal.  In sensitive habitats or areas where aerial spraying is either impractical or politically and culturally unfeasible, TNC uses hand application with backpack sprayers, stem swipes or cut stem application directly into the plant using eyedroppers.

Glyphosate has been around for several decades and there has been a good deal of research on its behavior in natural systems and impacts on wildlife and human health.  It bonds with soil on contact, breaking down into naturally occurring compounds including nitrogen and phosphorus.  When applied correctly -targeted application without toxic surfactants in wetlands, on days with low wind, temperatures below 90 degrees and when rain is not expected within 8 hours of treatment, it has few non-target impacts on plants and animals and stays out of the water supply.  It works on some species better than others - you will need something stronger for bittersweet.  TNC has a high level of comfort with its management protocols and with the evidence supporting the use of this herbicide and its known, largely controllable non-target impacts.  That is not to say that people living in communities where TNC uses herbicide feel the same way.  There is far more in the prevailing electronic media stream about concerns with Glyphosate in general than countervailing data about its appropriate use for ecological objectives.

Part of the problem is also an organizational strength of The Nature Conservancy.  Folks who work for TNC really believe in its mission.  A poll taken in 2000 by incoming President Steve McCormick showed that 97% of us fully supported the mission "to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive."  With that kind of mission buy-in, decisions made by TNC favor doing what is consistent with its values.  It tries to be science-based, pragmatic, and non-confrontational in its approach, but the issue of herbicide use is controversial and it sometimes surprises TNC employees to find that others -even environmentalists- who do not have the same mission add up the ethical question differently.

Another problem is that once you accept that invasive species are a real threat to what you value, and especially if you have struggled with little to show for it using manual or mechanical control methods, you make accommodations with the tools that offer better hope of gaining ground.   You drop a blanket policy against biological introductions to control invasives and develop a protocol for assessing whether and how to use this strategy.  You evaluate the available data on chemical control techniques based on effectiveness and non-target impacts and try and use what will get the job done without unacceptable impacts.  In some communities where I have worked, there is such opposition to herbicide use that it defies logical argument and is driven by pure, values-based emotion.  I made the decision not to spray barberry in one community in the Berkshires, even though I had permits to control it over 2,000 acres of state land using a Congressional earmark, because it cost us too much in community goodwill and in my estimation compromised our ability to do further conservation work there.  It helped that as I weighed the costs and benefits of controlling barberry in that community, I believed that we could still meet our management goals by working in other communities that shared that large forest system and that barberry did not pose the same sort of threat this far into its invasion that other rapidly expanding plant invaders might have.

Whenever one is contemplating land management of any kind, the first and most important question to answer is what are you managing for.  Management that is just about killing weeds is unsound. The desired outcome should be a healthier natural system, an unobstructed waterbody, a healthy rare species population, a regenerating forest.  Invasives may impact all of these objectives, but rarely as the only causal factor and the solution is usually not eradication.  If loosestrife is shading out bog turtle basking habitat and that is what you are managing for, cutting the stems at less than 1' high is a more practical and ethically appropriate solution than using herbicide or pulling up the loosestrife.  The natural community may be degraded but can still be managed for its value as bog turtle habitat.  Some land managers, in their zeal to address a known threat, overlook this primary rule of land management and too readily assume that herbicide use is the most practical and appropriate solution to a problem they may not have fully analyzed.

Where do I fall out in this values based discussion?   I manage for clear outcomes.  I strongly advocate invasive species prevention before they become established.  Because I manage a very small piece of property where I live, I can accomplish most of the invasive control I require through mechanical means.  I use Roundup as a cut stem application on buckthorn and winged euonymus, both of which have extensive root systems that stay green and, in the case of buckthorn, resprout vigorously.  I hand pull garlic mustard and will be doing so for at least 5 years because its seed bank is prolific and remains viable for at least that long.  If I were managing a larger property, I'd consider spraying garlic mustard.  Now that I no longer work for TNC, I am even more convinced that while controlling some invasions at large scales with herbicide is possible, those places where we make that investment and accommodation with chemicals need to be broadly vetted and among the most significant and irreplaceable of our natural resources. 

Sometimes one lives with Loosestrife.

Fen Ways

Ask most folks in these parts what is special about this landscape and you'll get a rich discussion of scenic beauty, rugged mountains, quaint villages and dark forests.  You will hear discussion of working landscapes, family farms, cultural and recreational opportunities.  Not surprisingly, the lands we have set aside for protection have many of these attributes.  We have been particularly attentive to our highest elevations and lands we can see from our cars. 

What you will likely not hear, unless you are speaking with an ecologist, is any talk about our most ecologically rich and globally significant habitats: our fens and calcareous seepage wetlands.  Most people do not have direct experience of these extraordinary natural communities and the patterns and processes which sustain them.  Yet here in the northern Litchfield Hills, the broad river valleys of the Berkshires, and west of the Taconics in New York, are wetlands of remarkable rarity and importance for conserving regional biodiversity.

Fens, like bogs, are moist peat lands where anaerobic conditions prevent decay, sometimes creating a perched mat of vegetation that quakes underfoot.  Unlike bogs they tend toward pH readings in the alkaline spectrum and are dominated by sedges.  While bogs rely largely on surface water and precipitation, groundwater hydrology maintains a fen.  Seeps and springs providing nutrient poor, calcium rich groundwater create ideal conditions for many regionally restricted plants and animals which prefer these habitats.

Like virtually every natural community found on this landscape today, this area's calcareous fens and seepage swamps are products of climate, geology, and past land use patterns.  The marble valleys and limestone bedrock geology of our region is unique in the rest of New England.  Glacial scouring left kettle holes and lakebeds fed by springs and slowly filling with peat.  Lake basin fens may develop on the shore such as at Snyder Pond in Copake, NY, or far out on the water as happened at the misnamed Kampoosa Bog in Stockbridge, MA.  Calcareous Sloping Fens emerge where two layers of bedrock, one more porous than the other, allow groundwater to break surface, while upslope vast areas of gravel, the shorelines of glacial lakes, provide a steady supply of water to the springs even in times of drought.

Natural Communities are not static systems, and fens are no exception.  Without periodic disturbance - beaver ponding and abandonment, wind events, fire, herbivory by large (possibly including extinct) ungulates -  woody vegetation tends to increase over time in open fens, eventually creating shrub fens with alder, dogwood and willow species predominating, and finally red maple tamarack peat swamps and other calcareous seepage wetlands with closed canopies.  Historically, open fen habitat would have occurred where conditions were too harsh to support the growth of woody vegetation or where disturbance created openings in a mosaic of seepage wetlands in different successional stages.  Natural fire is rare in this part of the northeast, rarer still in wetlands, but a soil core taken in Sheffield MA by the Nature Conservancy shows regular charcoal layers in one seepage wetland on average every 75 years over a period of two millennia.  Native Americans managing wetlands for food and forage and rare lightning ignited wildfires could account for these episodes.

Since European settlement, the seepage wetlands of our region have been managed for wet pasture and woodlots.  With the extirpation of beaver and the widespread clearing of land for Agriculture in the early 1800s, there may well have been more open fen habitat in that period than exists today. The federally threatened bog turtle, the rarest of our pond turtles that likes to wade in rivulets but seldom cares to swim, would likely have found more available habitat in this period than before or since.  Since the return of the beaver and the abandonment of farmland, our seepage wetlands have relatively little early successional habitat and may require active management to maintain their open, sedge-dominated condition.

There are all sorts of fascinating plants and animals in our fens and calcareous seepage swamps.  Carnivorous pitcher plants and sundews may occur on open sedge mats, while bog ants make black mounds among the tussocks.  Calcareous Sloping Fens may host a wide range of species, including small yellow and showy lady slippers.  They are also good places to encounter poison sumac, which I can attest itches just as bad as poison ivy and seems to be the thing one grasps for a handhold when negotiating ones way across a sedge mat.  Rare Northern Spring Amphipods and a host of uncommon or threatened waterfowl may occur in these wetlands.  Many of the plants found in fens are rare and vulnerable to collection; hence an understandable reluctance of conservation entities to provide specific locations and public access to these places.

Because they are out of the public eye, however, fens are not always a community's first conservation priority in its open space and development plan.   Entities with biodiversity mandates such as state wildlife agencies or The Nature Conservancy may be able to conserve core fen habitat, but the wider basin of groundwater influence and adjacent human land use can have far-reaching impacts on these rare natural communities.  Invasive exotic plant species often thrive in calcium rich systems, and many fens and seepage swamps are under intense threat from giant reed, reed canary crass, purple loosestrife, buckthorn, and rosa multiflora, among others.  Prescribed fire may have a limited role to play in maintaining open fen habitat but it is very difficult - believe me, I know firsthand-  to achieve good burning conditions and apply with wetland and rare species regulations in these systems.

In the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills, our calcareous fens and seepage swamps are among our most significant natural resources, proving habitat for some of our rarest species and emblematic of our region's biodiversity.  Those making open space conservation and development decisions in our area need to consider how to ensure that these habitats remain viable parts of this landscape.  The first step is to recognize what we have.

Community Character

Connecticut Windows on the Natural World, Brendan Hanrahan's highly informative blog about Connecticut's natural history and its environmental resources, has been posting a series of conservation-focused articles entitled "The Search for the Magic Bullet."  The sixth in this series is  "Preserving the Spirit of Place" and well worth a read. 

Defining community character is one of the more difficult tasks facing those involved with open space and development planning.  Hanrahan observes this challenge when writing about one Connecticut town's inspiring effort to maintain what it most values;

Like many in Connecticut, Granby is a town where residents share a strong "spirit of place," one that has developed over the past two centuries, since colonial days. It isn't something that towns usually put into words or write into official documents, at least before people such as the residents of Granby saw it as essential in their effort to preserve what is special about their town well into the future.

...Last year, the Granby Planning and Zoning Commission appointed a subcommittee to draft a new Plan of Conservation and Development for the town. (The state requires towns update plans every ten years.) The subcommittee reviewed Granby's 1993 plan, held public workshops and facilitated an agreement about things that made Granby special and reasons residents chose to live there. The result was a statement of the Town's Fundamental Values, a new 10 Year Vision for conservation, preservation and development, and recommendations for implementation.

...The plan begins with a "Statement of Granby’s Fundamental Values" that is refreshingly easy to read and understand and highly evocative: "Agricultural: Our Town’s rural character has its roots in…the small farm...Viewing the livestock, smelling manure, experiencing the changing scenery of the fields…is a treasure that will be missed if it is allowed to disappear. Residents: The residents of Granby apply a broad definition to the term “neighbor.” They show concern and offer help to one another during times of sickness, grief, unemployment or other difficulty…Granby residents cherish the natural environment and are willing to work for its preservation. Wildlife: We look to the sky when we hear the chatter of the geese and we quickly spot the familiar V pattern of their flight. We stop and listen to the chant of the morning dove, the hoot of the owl and the melodies of the songbirds…We catch and release, turn rocks in search of salamanders and shriek at the sudden movement of a snake. We choose to make our home among the wildlife and we are the better for it."

Granby, Connecticut lies in an area of rapidly expanding growth pushing out from Hartford and nearby Bradley International Airport.  I drive through Granby along Rte 20 on my way to the airport, through farmland with centuries old stone houses as well as shopping centers.  There is extensive forest to the west of Granby where the Litchfield Hills rise beyond the open lands of the Connecticut Valley. A thumb of Massachusetts juts down from Southwick to the north.  Old New-gate Prison, a colonial mineshaft and hellhole for Tory sympathizers during the Revolution, lies in East Granby on the way to the airport.

There is no question that growth and change are coming to this area.  The difference may be that in Granby, a participatory process of community visioning has identified those key qualities that are essential to the character of this place and which residents and their municipal leaders have the opportunity to work to maintain over time.  If Granby uses the plan to guide development, incorporates its values in local zoning and municipal regulations, and makes a commitment to investing in land protection to preserve its "Spirit of Place", it will be well served by the efforts that it has already made to define its community character.

The Ballad of William Race (to the tune of "Willy 'O Winsbury")

For Livingston was a proud Patroon, the Laird of Ancramdale,

And William Race a settler was, on lands beyond the pale.

How come ye there, upon my land, to build and there abide?

I've patent claim to all that lies from the hills to Hudsonside.

And will you be a tenant there, and adhere to my decree,

Or will I send my overseers to take what is due to me?

I will not be your tenant there, nor adhere to thy decree,

You may be a lord in the bottom land, but the mountainside is free.

Ride up, ride up, my agents true, take musket, powder and ball,

And shoot this rebel William Race, this night when shadows fall.

O William stood by his cabin door as they came with torches in hand,

And flames lit up the mountainside that were seen throughout the land.

Stand up, stand up, you freemen all, on Taghconic stake your claim,

Well heed the words of William Race, nor yet forget his name.

Farewell, Farewell, you proud Patroon, thy manor is no more

And William's name the mountain has, and shall forever more."

It makes a grand ballad and was fun to write.  A tip 'o the tam o shanter to Richard Thompson for the original ballad.  The truth of the matter is a bit more complex.

The Livingston Manor was a vast landholding of over 175,000 acres in much of what is today Columbia County, NY.  Robert Livingston the 1st Lord extended his holdings with the Patent of Westenhook in 1705 which laid claim to lands over and beyond the Taconic Range.  There were as many as six Dutch families living as tenants of the Livingstons in what is now Mt. Washington, MA by the end of the 17th century, well before Massachusetts started awarding patents to freely settle towns in the southern Berkshires.

Willem Rees was of Dutch ancestry and part of a family which settled on the mountain in the 1730s in accordance with the customs of free settlement in Massachusetts.  The 3rd Lord Robert Livingston aggressively defended his rights as patent holder, rights along the fluid frontier of two colonies with very different populations and histories of land tenure.  At dawn on April 15, 1755, Willem Rees was at the home of his brother Andries on the mountain and was killed by Livingston's overseers while resisting their efforts to evict the family. 

This event sparked what amounted to a low intensity shooting war between Livingston and those he considered rebellious tenants.  Andries Rees and a large body of men descended on the Livingston Manor's Iron works on Roeliff Jansen Kill and held the workers hostage, removing some for imprisonment in Springfield MA in retaliation for the death of Willem Rees.  In 1756 Andries Rees and other rival claimants secured their own patent from the Stockbridge Indians in Massachusetts to form the Township of Taughkinnuk in present day Mt. Washington.  He signed the document "Andrew Race",  an Anglicization that shows where his loyalties lay.   Livingston's overseers evicted him and burned several houses on the Mountain late in 1756.  The dispute lingered on until the Revolution, when in 1779 Mt. Washington was formerly incorporated as a Massachusetts Town.

Mt. Race is one of the loveliest and wildest mountains on the Taconic Plateau.  Descendants of the original Dutch settlers (Spoors, Van Deusens, and Whitbecks) still live on Mt. Washington and in surrounding towns. The Race Cemetery in Egremont MA contains many old family graves. 

As for the Livingstons, they remained prominent in New York and in the formation of the early United States.  Phillip Livingston was a signer of the Declaration  of Independence and his brother Robert was actively involved in the small group that drafted the document with Jefferson's leadership.  My grandmother was Clara Leanor Livingston, a forward facing woman of great determination who only shared detailed stories of her past in her final years.  Her branch of the family had come far down in the world when she was born and didn't put much stock in its pedigree.  Phillip Livingston is supposed to be our direct ancestor, a link someday I may be able to prove.

"Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home!" (cue ominous music)

A sure sign of Spring in these parts is the layer of ladybug shells one inevitably encounters the first time it gets warm enough to open a window.  These are not the sweet, friendly ladybugs of childhood memory: benign foe of aphids, farmer's friend.  They are aliens, an introduced species with rusty orange shells intentionally released as a biological control for crop and landscape pests. Multicolored Asian lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis) are indeed very effective predators, but they also display the disconcerting ability to rapidly expand and naturalize in varied environments, an attribute that they share with invasive species.    They are partial to ripening fruit, especially wine grapes.

The USDA made multiple introductions of this species in the Southeast beginning in 1979, and the lady beetle was well established in four southern states within 15 years.  It is now widespread across the country, and most often encountered when it invades human space, congregating en masse to overwinter in our houses.  It emits a pheromone that alerts other beetles to congregate at favorable overwintering sites - attics, windowsills and other living areas.  Older homes are particularly susceptible to lady beetles seeking shelter from the storm, clustering around window panes like flies on sunny days.  Swatting them produces a foul, yellow liquid that stains, and there is no insecticide currently listed to control them on fruit.

So are they invasive, or just an introduced species with certain admirable qualities but annoying habits?  A quick search of the web shows a number of sites expressing concern about this species as a nuisance for people.  It clearly has the ability to naturalize in native (and built) habitats, including agricultural areas, disturbed areas, natural forests, planted forests, riparian zones, scrub/shrublands, urban areas, and wetlands.  It is not a restrictive predator but rather enjoys a wide variety of food sources, from garden pests to peaches - Asian lady beetles have been observed swarming spills at picnics.  But to be considered invasive, it should also displace native species.

The Wisconsin Council on Invasive Species says they do.

"Multicolored Asian lady beetles have negative impacts on human health and aesthetics, on the fruit industry, and on native lady beetle populations."

Those are fighting words.  The impact on human health is a surprise, but apparently there is growing concern that all those dead lady beetle shells in our homes constitute a significant allergen, comparable to cockroaches and cat hair for people with allergic sensitivities. Not surprisingly, people with Asian lady bird allergies more frequently live in rural areas.  Symptoms of Asian lady beetle sensitive include cough, rhinitis, conjunctivitis and acute asthma.

As for displacing native species, the Global Invasive Species Database has this to say:

"Intraguild predation by H. axyridis is seen as a potential mechanism leading to displacement of native coccinellid species. H. axyridis appears to be a top predator in the guild of aphidophagous insects. Many studies indicate that H. axyridis uses other members of the aphidophagous guild as a food source (Koch, 2003). The intensity of predation by H. axyridis on other guild members appears to be inversely related to aphid density (Burgio et al. 2002).
In a study conducted by Koch et al. (2003) the authors found that H. axyridis can act as a potential stressor to populations of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus)."

So when there aren't enough aphids to go around, the Asian lady bird beetle goes after the competition.  It preys on eggs of Coleoptera and Lepidoptera species, including Monarch butterflies.  What preys on it, and are there sufficient natural checks on its populations in North America?  Thus far, the species is rapidly expanding and now the most widespread lady bird in North America. 

Whether they become as ubiquitous as dandelions but as ecologically benign, or turn out to be a major stressor on native diversity as well as a nuisance, is an answer that will likely unfold in the next decade or so.  We can always look to Europe for its experience with H. axyridis.  It is now widespread across much of Europe and recently invaded the British Isles.

"Wicked Big Puddles"

A friend of mine called me at the office the other day having discovered a six inch long, yellow spotted salamander in her garage.  Those vernal urges must be increasing with the warmer nights.  There can still be ice in the vernal pools, but when warmer ambient air temperature combines with rain, the wood frogs and salamanders start to move. Today there is a steady, cold rain and the temperature is in the low 40s.  By tonight, the spring amphibian migration could be well underway.

My friend Shep Evans of Stockbridge, MA has an annual contest for the first spring peeper heard in our area.  Each evening as I drive home from work, I pause at Robbin's Swamp in South Canaan and listen for the croaking chorus.  It is the surest and most exuberant sign of Spring and one I remember fondly from my childhood.

There are several waves of spring Amphibian migrations.  Those dependent on vernal pools -Wood frogs, Jeffersons, Blue-spotted, Yellow-spotted and Four-toed salamanders- head through the woods to their accustomed ephemeral wetlands very early in the season.  Spring peepers are also out early but can reproduce in other kinds of wetlands. Many frog species in our area migrate throughout April, joined by toads and newts in early May and Bullfrogs in June.  On rainy nights there are sections of road that are littered with hopping, skittering and -regrettably - squashed amphibians.  Local volunteer networks sometimes monitor heavily traveled migratory crossings and assist the frogs and salamanders on their journey to the opposite side of the road.

Vernal pools are those temporary bodies of freshwater that support breeding populations of dependent species such as wood frogs or fairy shrimp. They seldom hold water year round and often dry completely as the season progresses.  As a rule they do not support fish species, thus removing a major class of egg predator from the system.   These temporal wetlands are highly significant for maintaining amphibian populations, many species of which are listed as threatened by state wildlife agencies.  The Jefferson's salamander hybridizes with the equally uncommon Blue-spotted salamander in this region, while the Northern spring and Four-toed salamanders are on many rare species lists in the Northeast.

Different states afford varying degrees of protection to vernal pools.  In Massachusetts, those vernal pools that are certified enjoy a modest buffer, and human activities within that zone receive deeper scrutiny.  Some Berkshire foresters have found approval of their cutting plans subject to substantial restrictions when logging in the vicinity of vernal pools.  In Connecticut, vernal pools do not enjoy specific state-wide protection, as regulated wetlands are delineated in this state based on hydric soils.  Some studies indicate that clearing around vernal pools or drilling residential wells nearby can increase evaporation of vernal pools or lower the water table to levels that impact reproductive success of larval frogs and salamanders.  There is a vernal pool in Wareham MA where my grandmother lives that sometimes dries before tadpoles are fully developed.  An entire brood year is lost when that happens, an impact that some species can ill afford.

Students and faculty in Reading, MA, have gotten into vernal pool conservation in a big way.  The publication "Wicked Big Puddles" that Leo P Kenney and these students developed is a manual for certification of vernal pools and a terrific environmental outreach tool for young and old.  I'll be out in the woods in the coming weeks using it with my children, looking for egg masses clumped around submerged branches or streaming up from sunken logs in the dark water.  If we find reporducing wood frogs or fairy shrimp, we'll know we've found a vernal pool.

"Don't it Always Seem to Go..."

I got the jump on my drive to Delaware last weekend by leaving several hours before the dawn.  I had the Taconic, the Sawmill, and the Palisades Parkways virtually to myself, driving beneath stars I usually associate with summer evenings but rarely am awake to see in the wee hours of Spring.  The sun came up in dusty rose over the phragmites saltmarsh of East Jersey.  Multiflora thickets in vernal green made a living abatis along the turnpike embankments.  Over the years I have become accustomed to this part of New Jersey looking as it does.  The only dramatic change in this heavily industrialized landscape is the skyline of lower Manhattan, the absence of its two towers still jarring in ways that the massive destruction of the former Meadowlands ecosystem, sadly, is not anymore.

To drive south in early Spring is to view the season in time elapse.  Red maples bud and swell, pushing forth flowers as the miles tick by.  Daffodils rise and bloom beneath cascades of Magnolia petals, weeping cherry boughs, brazen azaleas.  South of Wilmington, Delaware, I rolled down my window and tried to catch the smell of newly furrowed earth on the wind.

Instead, my senses were assaulted by row after row of subdivisions.  The transformation of the northern Delaware landscape has happened at a ferocious scale and explosive pace.  It took little more than a decade for Middletown, Delaware to double in size from a town of less than 5,000 to a population well on its way to becoming a small city by 2010.  The huge, new highway lying athwart old Rte 13 swerves around Odessa and disgorges traffic at the gateway to Middletown: a park 'n ride lot next to behemoth subdivisions.  I immediately stalled into a 15 minute traffic jam, the only such slow down on my entire, early a.m. drive through the Mid-Atlantic megalopolis, and saw just one structure built before 1985 as I crept forward.   It was an early 20th century farmhouse, wedged between a shopping center and a new High School - the source of the gridlock - where it seems there were 30 cars for every bus and the school now rents overflow parking from an adjacent Catholic church to accommodate excess student vehicles.

I bet that to some folks in Middletown, this looks like progress.  The sharecropper shacks and sagging barns that used to lie out in the flats East of Town back in my day betrayed an agricultural economy on a downward slide.  Some of the finest farmland soils in the country lie beneath the new development, but for many years these produced just three row crops with little diversification.  The loss of farmland in turn lead to loss of market edge.  Middletown has only one remaining grain elevator full of two-year-old seed that hasn't found a buyer.  The handful of farmers left now must drive their corn and soy deep into Maryland.

If you were to design a model that would guarantee massive in-migration of suburbanites, unchecked development , and rapid transformation of community character, Middletown has all the key indicators.  The construction of one, fast highway down the spine of the state made Philadelphia a more rapid commute from upper Delaware than from the wealthy suburbs of the Main Line less than 10 miles from Center City.  The land was already level and cleared, with a deep aquifer and few zoning impediments.  The farm economy was on the wane and aging farmers had few successors in the next generation.  Developers like Toll Brothers, whose luxury community subdivisions are ubiquitous and sprout archetypal McMansions across much of the nation, could acquire huge amounts of ground in Delaware to reconfigure to their consumer demographic.  The value of land increased so exponentially that agricultural easements, funded at just 50% of farm value, still routinely command $35,000/acre.  Yet an urban buyer looking for a 1/2 acre of space and a luxury home can find one tailor-made in Delaware for a fraction of the cost in the old, moneyed communities of the inner suburbs. Meanwhile, there is no local land trust, those few conservation organizations working in Delaware have limited resources, and state and federal money for conservation has dropped precipitously in the Bush years.

The results seem obvious, now.  Delaware's suburbanization and rapidly vanishing open space  alarm some residents, but so many newcomers embrace the new infrastructure and do not know what they have lost, and so many of the businesses owned by local and countywide power brokers profit from the surge of building and the attendant services development requires, that little has been done to stem the tide.  Middletown's 2005 Comprehensive Plan, drafted by outside consultants, has all the warning signs, but does not appear to have prompted a course correction.  The aquifer will not supply enough water to meet the demands of anticipated growth by 2020.  The Town should approach 35,000 residents in the next two decades.  An entire suburb of Middletown called West Town, with its own High school and demand for municipal services, is slated for development "west of town".  25% of open land identified as green space is owned by my former secondary school and has no permanent protection.

I circled the perimeter of St. Andrew's School before turning into the drive.  It had been many years since I last visited back in the winter of 1992 and I was early for my appointment with the headmaster.  In some ways, the school seemed a tranquil oasis.  It owns all but two or three tiny in-holdings surrounding Noxontown Pond, more than two miles long with banks fringed with beech and oak and farmland beyond.  As I rounded Rodney Point, where there is limited public access on Sundays, I tried to guess how much of the existing farmland was either owned by the school, subject to a conservation easement, or enrolled in a 10-year agricultural abatement program.  Later, consulting a land use map at the school, I saw I had hit the nail on the head every time. Anything with a field and a farm was subsidized or in St. Andrew's ownership.

The school has been in these Delaware farm fields since its founding in 1929.  During the last decade it has embraced a more progressive, counter-cultural approach to education while retaining an extraordinary commitment to academic, athletic and artistic excellence. Its Gothic architecture is reminiscent of Princeton's or Bryn Mawr's, yet to contemporary students with different cultural references it has been compared to the Hogwarts of Harry Potter.   I can attest to nocturnal activities while a student here that would have benefited from an invisibility cloak and Marauder's Map, and made a point of learning every nook, cranny and alcove of the enormous Founder's Hall with its original NC Wyeths and collection of antique firearms on the walls.  This weekend I was gratified to see these museum pieces sharing space with student art.

St. Andrew's is blessed with an endowment that would be the envy of many small liberal arts colleges, and used some of its resources to buy adjacent lands as the came available on the leading edge of the development boom.  The ability to buy land in order to save it has been a hallmark of the conservation movement since the early 20th century and has its roots in the visionary work of patrician conservationists like Maine's Governor Baxter and Theodore Roosevelt.  It is a strategy that served the more than 1,200 land trusts across the country remarkably well for most of their existence.  Ownership conveys a high degree of control over what can occur on a piece of land, but it does not guarantee that the land is managed for conservation outcomes, nor that it is of sufficient size and quality to withstand outside threats and pressures.  For all its gorgeous setting, St. Andrews is a fragment of green in a patchwork of development.  It cannot pull up a drawbridge, withdraw behind the mists, or retreat to an island like Axel Heyst, a character in Joseph Conrad's Victory, which I read while at St. Andrews, and expect to stay removed from the larger, threatening world.

Neither the school nor the surrounding community is static.  Someday Rodney Point might look like a good candidate for open space acquisition via eminent domain.  The divisions of Town and Gown need not remain an absolute barrier to working more closely together on smart growth and open space planning.  My conversations with faculty and students at St. Andrew's last weekend explored numerous ways the School could engage with local decision makers and influence the land use choices made beyond its borders.  Without some thoughtful investment in meaningful amounts of protected open space, newly suburban Middletown will become less and less desirable to higher end residents with time.  The front of sprawl will pass on to the south and what remains will be a built environment with enormous taxes and declining property values. 

St. Andrew's is making a significant investment in sustainability, making it a cornerstone of its educational mission and institutional culture.   I got out on the lake in a crew launch equipped with a 4 stroke outboard and watched immature bald eagles perched above the water.  The school has an organic garden and students who elect to grow produce for the community instead of taking a spring sport.  The one piece of this picture where they can invest more thoroughly is in the overall conservation plan for the lands they hold and the way in which they use the tremendous assets they have to leverage smarter growth and conservation in the surrounding landscape.

Something still remains of rural Delaware, if you know where to look for it.  I got down to Bombay Hook NWR late in the day and watched the shorebirds flying over that vast saltwater wetland.  Tree frogs sang in exultant chorus and the tide vied with the wind in mid-channel.  I ate crab cakes at Sambo's, a storied local institution down in Leipsic, Kent County, where there are a handful of watermen still lingering on.  All that buffers these communities from what happened upstate is a 15 minute longer commute, and developers are already busy.

On the way home I stayed with a dear college friend who has been an urban pioneer for going on 15 years in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia.  In the early 1990's this was one of the bleakest, blighted landscapes in the city.  She and her neighbors bought and created a community park on reclaimed brown-fields that has transformed their neighborhood.  Because of Liberty Lands, land values have soared.  Children play beneath flowering trees and parents kneel in community gardens.  Something magic, and wild, and hard to define, has happened in these few blocks with new-found green.  There has been gentrification, too, of a funky, urban variety, but still for now the Northern Liberties are a mixed, vibrant neighborhood with an active community association and engaged neighbors.  The growth that is coming will not come unheralded, or unchallenged where it exceeds the thresholds of livability.  If there is hope for conservation in the brick walk-ups of Philadelphia, there must be hope for Delaware.