tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72052627390613815232024-02-20T22:15:50.246-05:00Wilderness & WaterslidesPeople and Nature in New York's Adirondack ParkUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-62026282790789242322008-11-03T11:14:00.022-05:002008-11-07T10:36:39.334-05:00Protecting Nature in the Adirondacks and the Amazon: Common ThreadsThere is no doubt that nature is in trouble in the modern world, and our growing economic and social problems are certain to increase threats to nature while decreasing the amount of resources available to address those threats. A way around this dilemma is to use pragmatic, market-based approaches to conservation to serve the needs of both people and nature. Since the circumstances of people and nature vary greatly throughout the world, specific applications of this concept must vary as well. Two examples from opposite ends of the world development spectrum are Thirteenth Lake in New York's Adirondack Park, and the town of Sinop in Brazil's Amazon Rainforest.<br /><br />The public and private lands surrounding Thirteenth Lake represent a pragmatic solution to the negative environmental effects of sprawl. Here, members of the Thirteenth Lake Property Owners Association voluntarily give up some of the rights commonly enjoyed by property owners in the U.S. to enhance the public goods of nature protection and aesthetic quality through deed covenants. These covenants require that homes be set well back from the lake and well apart from each other, and to conform to design standards governing screening vegetation, utilities, paint color and building materials, etc. Recreational use of the lake is controlled by limiting access to a common beach area where amenities such as parking, a sandy beach, a floating dock for deep water swimming and diving, chairs and picnic tables, chemical toilets, canoe and kayak storage racks, and an emergency phone are provided, and use of the beach area is governed by a set of rules designed to protect the natural ecosystem and the aesthetic quality of the development. The overall impact is reduced fragmentation of habitat, increased protection of wildlife, and noticeably enhanced aesthetic quality compared to similar lake-shore developments in the Adirondacks and elsewhere.<br /><br />The rest of the land surrounding the lake is in public ownership as part of the New York State Forest Preserve where it is governed by Adirondack Park regulations for land designated as "Wilderness" under the park's Land Use Master Plan. As such, permanent structures and the use of motorized vehicles are prohibited on the lakes public shoreline. All camping on the public land bordering the lake must take place 150 feet from trails or lake shore except at a handful of designated spots where shoreline camping is allowed. At the northern end of the lake there is a public parking area close by chemical toilets, four handicapped access campsites, and a boat launch. Although the lake itself is not designated as "Wilderness," the design of the boat launch effectively limits the size of boats that can use the lake to small craft such as kayaks, canoes, and rowboats, and there is a 5 hp limit for motorized boats (and signs suggest that only electric motors may be allowed on the lake at some point in the future).<br /><br />One of the key factors in the successful marriage of public and private land at Thirteenth Lake is the use of science and technology to monitor the health of its ecosystem. An example of this is the loon monitoring program that was conducted at the lake this summer. Loons are often used as indicator species for environmental quality in Adirondack lakes, and the information gleaned from this study can be used to guide future policies pertaining to the public and private lands at Thirteenth Lake.<br /><br />The threats to nature in wealthy nations are often very different from the threats to nature in the developing world, so it is interesting to find some similarities between Thirteenth Lake and an environmental success story taking place in the Amazon rainforest. In their 2007 book <em>The Last Forest </em>Mark London and Brian Kelly describe the town of Sinop in the Brazilian Amazon as "a failed experiment that somehow managed to succeed (p. 109)." Sinop was founded in 1972 as a "private colonization project owned by a single individual...(who used) a manioc-to-ethanol factory...as the catalyst for real estate development (p.104)." The manioc-to-ethanol scheme was an abject failure, but the town prospered nonetheless. "Sinop now has 120,000 citizens living along paved streets in neat sub-divisions, waiting patiently for the completion of the new airport terminal and the forty-six store shopping mall (p. 105)." London and Kelley find one key to Sinop's success in the fact that it started with a "private governing authority, selling off clearly demarcated plots of land. (This gave) ...settlers who then had a vested interest in the enhanced value of the land (the)...incentive to stay and prosper rather than slash and burn the land and move on (p.104)."<br /><br /><p>They find a second key to Sinop's success in the story of Jaime Demarchi, a farmer and machine shop owner, about whom they write: "It took years for Jaime and his neighbors to understand the soil: what crops worked, what rotation they needed, what fertilizer worked best. 'We now have rotations that go through soy, corn, wheat, and rice,' he said. 'And each of those plantings may need a different seed, depending on where they are, what the soil is like, what the rotation is going to be. We can figure those things out because we have the most modern technology in the world. Right here in Amazonia.' In his machine shop, Demarchi has a computer with broadband access, which allows him to share information about see varieties with research organizations, to download weather information, to buy and sell equipment, and to keep up with commodities markets. He has a cell phone. The advantage that American and European farmers once had over Demarchi--access to information and technology--is gone. The competitive matrix now tilts in his favor because he also has a year-round warm climate, abundant rainfall, and plenty of land (pp. 110-111)."<br /></p><p>The common threads that run through the Thirteenth Lake and Sinop examples provide practical guidelines for new development programs that make effective use of the increasingly scarce resources available for environmental protection. One such thread is that both examples rely on sub-divisions of clearly-titled private property to tap into landowners' self-interest as a means of creating and sustaining development that will simultaneously protect the environment and their investment. The implication of this finding for conservation organizations seeking to make maximum use of scare resources is this; where self-interest leads to successful developments, recovered investments and profits can be channeled into new developments. This creates self-expanding funding sources for nature protection at a time when new resources are likely to be increasingly difficult to come by, and adds an interesting new dimension to the idea of "sustainable" development.</p><p>Another common thread running through both examples is that they take a pragmatic approach to protecting nature through their emphasis on creativity and adaptability. This is important because, as Louis Menand writes in his 2001 history of pragmatism <em>The Metaphysical Club</em>, "ideas are tools...(that) are provisional responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances (whose) survival depends not on their immutability but on their adaptability (pp. xi and xii)." They also illustrate the importance of employing science and technology to guide and enhance creativity and adaptability when dealing with the natural world.<br /><br />Thirteenth Lake provides a specific example of how public and private land can be combined to protect nature, an idea that mirrors the basic concept embodied in the Adirondack Park on a smaller scale. While London and Kelly do not specifically discuss what role, if any, publicly-owned nature reserves played in Sinop's success, they note with apparent approval the efforts of Brazil's Minster of the Environment, Marina Silva, to set aside forest reserves along newly-created road (BR-163) that joins Sinop to the world's markets (p.114). Employing the expanded definition of sustainable development described above within the framework of regional land use planning promises to yield an effective foundation for future efforts to protect nature in the modern world.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-84933142135613379812008-10-21T14:25:00.003-04:002008-11-07T09:44:46.506-05:00The First Modern ForestAs I discussed in my post titled "Pragmatism and Nature" treating nature as a pristine condition that is separate from human activities usually results in policies that are destined to fail. The pragmatic view of the modern world, on the other hand, suggests that nature is best seen as an idea that embodies many different values and concepts. In this context it is interesting to note that the Adirondacks seem to be the place the concepts that make up the modern idea of nature first came together.<br /><br />One of the ideas that helped shape our modern concept of nature was the belief that nature was the physical manifestation of spiritual truth and beauty. This idea was embraced by transcendentalist authors like Thoreau and Emerson and brought to the forefront of the visual arts by the painters of the Hudson River School. Emerson linked transcendental thought to Adirondacks in his long poem "Adirondac" (see Steve's post of 10/2/08), and the prevalence of Adirondack landscapes in paintings produced by members of the Hudson River School makes the importance of the region to that movement unmistakable (need link to Hudson River site).<br /><br />As the Transcendental movement and the Hudson River School were entering the American consciousness, authors like Joel Tyler Headley and Charles (Adirondack) Murray were busily promoting the recreational and health benefits of the Adirondack forest to the growing ranks of city dwellers in the 19th century U.S. quotes from both. Eventually this led people to attribute special healing properties to the Adirondack forests. This idea reached what was perhaps its zenith with the establishment of Dr. Edward Trudeau's Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium in 1884. There tuberculosis victims spent many hours each day (even in winter) on the porches of cure cottages breathing healthful "vapors" until the Sanatorium closed in 1954 after the discovery of drugs such as streptomycin that were effective in treating the disease.<br /><br />While the abundant beauty and recreational opportunities of the Adirondack forests were helping change how people thought about nature, people with a utilitarian view of nature were transforming the Adirondack forest and the U.S. economy. Most of the forests close to the industrial centers of the Northeaster United States had been cleared for agriculture by the mid-1800's, but the Adirondack forest, with its rugged terrain, poor soils, and short growing season, had been spared. As the U.S. economy changed from being predominantly agricultural to being predominantly industrial in the latter half of the 19th century, timber products occupied a place equivalent to oil <em>and</em> the internet in our modern economy. Forests were the main source of fuel, construction material, and chemicals during the industrial revolution in the U.S., and they provided the paper that was the essential means for storing and transmitting information in this increasingly mass-market economy. The most accessible source of large amounts of timber products was the Adirondack forest, and it was soon filled with the sounds of axes and saws.<br /><p>Clear cutting and the enormous forest fires that followed in its wake stripped much of the Adirondacks of trees and wildlife before the turn of the century. The resulting erosion carried away much of the already thin layer of Adirondack topsoil, which ended up in lakes, ponds and streams and choked out aquatic life. Eventually, even relentlessly utilitarian Progressive-era politicians began to fear that the destruction of the Adirondack forest posed a threat to many important New York watersheds that were essential to commerce.<br /><br />Watersheds were another example of the new ideas that were coming together in the Adirondack forest to create the modern concept of nature. In 1865 George Perkins Marsh published <em>Man and Nature, </em>an exhaustive inventory of the ways humans had altered the natural world. His work laid the foundation for the concept of ecosystems that is an essential component of modern environmental science. In 1872 the New York State Assembly appointed a Commission of State Parks to make recommendations for protecting the Adirondack forest, and Phil Terrie points out in his 1998 Adirondack history <em>Contested Terrain</em> that the Commissioners invoked "language and examples found in Marsh's <em>Man and Nature</em> although that important book was not specifically cited (when) the Commissioners argued that...the chief reason for establishing an Adirondack Park was to protect watershed (p. 93)". </p><p>Over the next 22 years these ideas were gradually drawn together to create the Adirondack Park. Anglers and hunters, journalists, wealth landholders, nascent conservationists, and utilitarian downstate business interests concerned about the effect changes to the Adirondack watershed would have on New York's canal system created one of the earliest successful environmental coalitions. In responding to this coalition the New York State Legislature never resolved the issue of what to do about the people who lived within the park's boundaries. In effect, this decision to "create first, resolve later" established a pragmatic approach to park policy, and it is no accident that major changes to the original structure of the park such as the establishment of the "Forever Wild" clause in 1894, and the creation of the Adirondack Park Land Use Plan in 1973 are some of the most useful applications for those seeking to protect nature in the modern world.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-62116225790281452202008-10-16T16:37:00.005-04:002008-11-17T12:34:28.959-05:00Pragmatism and NaturePeople who care about nature have reason to be concerned about its fate in the modern world. Deforestation continues at a staggering rate in developing nations, and sprawling development takes a toll on nature in both rich and poor nations. Wild plant and animal populations throughout the world are depleted for folk medicine and fashion, and wild animals are increasingly hunted for "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">bushmeat</span>," or hunted, trapped, or poisoned when they have an adverse effect on domestic animals or crops. Finally, marine ecosystems are ravaged by over-harvesting and pollution, and global warming threatens species everywhere (see Steve's post on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Bicknell's</span> Thrush, for example). Anyone who cares about the fate of nature must advocate for effective policies to address these problems.<br /><br /><p>In his 2001 book <em>The Metaphysical Club</em> Louis <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Menand</span> quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes as stating "all the pleasure in life is in general ideas, but all the use of life is in specific solutions (p. 342)." We seek, through our study of the Adirondack Park, to produce both general ideas and specific solutions about how we might best protect what remains of nature. One general idea that has emerged from our study to date is that there is great benefit in taking a pragmatic view of nature when considering environmental policy. It is important to note that in this context "pragmatic" is not simply a synonym for "compromise." Instead, it expresses the belief that ideas, including the idea of nature, "should never become ideologies--either justifying the the status <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">quo</span>, or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Menand</span>, p. xii)." Sometimes useful ideas will emerge from compromise, and at other times from the application of just principles. </p><p>Unfortunately, environmental policy is often decided in a political arena where nature is defined in ideological terms by anti-environmentalist seeking to justify the status <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">quo</span>, or radical environmentalists seeking transcendent change. The result is often conflict, gridlock and policy failure. The Adirondack Park is one of the world's oldest and largest attempts to protect nature through public policy, and our research suggests that this experiment has usually worked best when it has taken a pragmatic and democratic view of nature, and often failed when it has not. Some specific solutions that have worked in the Adirondack Park and promise to be useful elsewhere are: land use planning, affording nature extra protection in the political process through delay and referendum as mandated by the "Forever Wild Clause", stewardship and citizen science, and paying local government taxes on state land. The failure of the Commission on the Adirondack Park in the Twenty-first Century, on the other hand, confirms that effective policies for protecting nature must be forged in the crucible of democratic politics, no matter how frustrating or imperfect that route may sometimes seem. </p><p>Elsewhere in <em>The Metaphysical Club </em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Menand</span> explains that the usefulness of pragmatism in the modern world rests on "a kind of skepticism that (helps) people cope with life in a heterogeneous, industrialized, mass-market society (p, xii)." It is no accident that pragmatic skepticism emerged on the scene at the same time as modern scientific methods since science, democracy, and capitalism are the three pillars of the modern world. It is also important to recognize that those pillars are sometimes at odds with each other. Democracy and capitalism, as Robert <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Dahl</span> demonstrates in his 1998 treatise <em>On Democracy,</em> " are locked in a persistent conflict in which each modifies and limits the other (p. 173)." Similarly, recent events in the field of biomedical research have demonstrated that capitalism is fully capable of distorting the scientific process in its quest for profit. It is, however, the conflicts that sometimes emerge between science and democracy that are most important for those who are concerned with the fate of nature in the modern world.</p><p>Where the environment is concerned, the mismatched language and time-frames of science and democratic politics present a serious barrier to effective policy making. The language of science is modest and probabilistic, characteristics that allow political partisans to create illusions of doubt when scientific findings are cited in public discourse. Further, the painstaking methodology and redundancy of results required by science creates a slow-moving process that is at odds with the election-driven time frame of democratic politics. Recognizing the mismatch between the language and time frames of science and democracy is essential to creating environmental policies that eschew ideology in favor of weighing and assessing the full-range of empirical evidence. </p><p>A general theme that emerges from the study of Adirondack Park history is that its policies work best when they embrace the pragmatism embodied in the park's founding (see my post titled "The First Modern Forest). Both of the recent comprehensive histories of the park reached similar conclusions. In his 1978 book <em>The Adirondack Park: A Political History</em> Frank Graham writes of the Adirondack Park Agency: "There were public relations blunders that ought to serve as <em>warnings for regional planning groups in the future </em>{my emphasis}.To its capable staff of planners, lawyers, and ecologists, the agency might have added a community relations expert--and even a psychologist--who could have bridged the gap by interpreting goals and techniques of the planning effort for local government officials, the press, the business community, and the public at large (p. 261)." Phil Terrie expands on this theme in his 1997 <em>Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks </em>when he concludes that "..the difficulties involved in protecting both human and natural values reflect the continuing value of narratives to define the land and influence people's understandings of the land's meaning. (The) failure of the legislature to resolve the dilemma posed by private land in the Park (represents)...a great opportunity to...find just the unifying narrative we need forge a hopeful story for the future (p. 183)".</p><p>Adirondack Park history strongly suggests that defining nature in ideological terms yields policies that are controversial and counter productive, whereas taking a pragmatic view of nature results in policies that are flexible and effective. For pragmatists, ideas are "tools that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Menand</span>: p. xi)." Examining the Adirondack Park from a pragmatic perspective yields a "tool kit" that can be adapted to the task of nature conservation in a wide range of circumstances. This kit includes: land use planning, delay and referendum, deed covenants, landscape design, tax payments on public land, variable tax assessment, stewardship, and conservation easements.</p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-60107400424209374882008-10-02T10:35:00.003-04:002008-10-02T10:39:01.437-04:00THE ADIRONDACS<br />(this poem in its entirity was taken from The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson at <a href="http://www.rwe.org/">www.rwe.org</a>)<br />A JOURNAL DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858<br />Wise and polite,--and if I drew<br />Their several portraits, you would own<br />Chaucer had no such worthy crew,<br />Nor Boccace in Decameron.<br />We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends,<br />Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks<br />Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach<br />The Adirondac lakes. At Martin's Beach<br />We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,<br />--Ten men, ten guides, our company all told.<br />Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac,<br />With skies of benediction, to Round Lake,<br />Where all the sacred mountains drew around us,<br />Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead,<br />And other Titans without muse or name.<br />Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on,<br />Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills.<br />We made our distance wider, boat from boat,<br />As each would hear the oracle alone.<br />By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid<br />Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets,<br />Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower,<br />Through scented banks of lilies white and gold,<br />Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day,<br />On through the Upper Saranac, and upPere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass<br />Winding through grassy shallows in and out,<br />Two creeping miles of rushes, pads and sponge,<br />To Follansbee Water and the Lake of Loons.<br />Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed,<br />Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge<br />Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore.<br />A pause and council: then, where near the head<br />Due east a bay makes inward to the land<br />Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank,<br />And in the twilight of the forest noon<br />Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard.<br />We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts,<br />Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof,<br />Then struck a light and kindled the camp-fire.<br />The wood was sovran with centennial trees,<br />--Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir,<br />Linden and spruce. In strict society<br />Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine,<br />Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby,<br />Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth,<br />The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower.<br />'Welcome!' the wood-god murmured through the leaves,<br />--'Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.<br />'Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs,<br />Which o'erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire.<br />Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks,<br />Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor.<br />Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft<br />In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed,<br />Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux,<br />And greet unanimous the joyful change.<br />So fast will Nature acclimate her sons,<br />Though late returning to her pristine ways.<br />Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold;<br />And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned,<br />Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds.<br />Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air<br />That circled freshly in their forest dress<br />Made them to boys again. Happier that they<br />Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind,<br />At the first mounting of the giant stairs.<br />No placard on these rocks warned to the polls,<br />No door-bell heralded a visitor,<br />No courier waits, no letter came or went,<br />Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold;<br />The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop,<br />The falling rain will spoil no holiday.<br />We were made freemen of the forest laws,<br />All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends,<br />Essaying nothing she cannot perform.<br />In Adirondac lakes<br />At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded:<br />Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make<br />His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain,<br />He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn:<br />A paddle in the right hand, or an oar,<br />And in the left, a gun, his needful arms.<br />By turns we praised the stature of our guides,<br />Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill<br />To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp,<br />To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs<br />Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down:<br />Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount,<br />And wit to trap or take him in his lair.<br />Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent,<br />In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides;<br />Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired<br />Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve.<br />Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!<br />No city airs or arts pass current here.<br />Your rank is all reversed; let men or cloth<br />Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:<br />_They_ are the doctors of the wilderness,<br />And we the low-prized laymen.<br />In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test<br />Which few can put on with impunity.<br />What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?<br />Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here.<br />The sallow knows the basket-maker's thumb;<br />The oar, the guide's. Dare you accept the tasks<br />He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,<br />Tell the sun's time, determine the true north,<br />Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods<br />To thread by night the nearest way to camp?<br />Ask you, how went the hours?<br />All day we swept the lake, searched every cove,<br />North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay,<br />Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer,<br />Or whipping its rough surface for a trout;<br />Or, bathers, diving from the rock at noon;<br />Challenging Echo by our guns and cries;<br />Or listening to the laughter of the loon;<br />Or, in the evening twilight's latest red,<br />Beholding the procession of the pines;<br />Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack,<br />In the boat's bows, a silent night-hunter<br />Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds<br />Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist.<br />Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods<br />Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck<br />Who stands astonished at the meteor light,<br />Then turns to bound away,--is it too late?<br />Our heroes tried their rifles at a mark,<br />Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five;<br />Sometimes their wits at sally and retort,<br />With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle;<br />Or parties scaled the near acclivities<br />Competing seekers of a rumored lake,<br />Whose unauthenticated waves we named<br />Lake Probability,--our carbuncle,Long sought, not found.<br />Two Doctors in the camp<br />Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout's brain,<br />Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew,<br />Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow and moth;<br />Insatiate skill in water or in air<br />Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss;<br />The while, one leaden got of alcohol<br />Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds.<br />Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants,<br />Orchis and gentian, fern and long whip-scirpus,<br />Rosy polygonum, lake-margin's pride,<br />Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge and moss,<br />Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls.<br />Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed,<br />The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker<br />Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp.<br />As water poured through hollows of the hills<br />To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets,<br />So Nature shed all beauty lavishly<br />From her redundant horn.<br />Lords of this realm,<br />Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day<br />Rounded by hours where each outdid the last<br />In miracles of pomp, we must be proud,<br />As if associates of the sylvan gods.<br />We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac,<br />So pure the Alpine element we breathed,<br />So light, so lofty pictures came and went.<br />We trode on air, contemned the distant town,<br />Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned<br />That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge<br />And how we should come hither with our sons,<br />Hereafter,--willing they, and more adroit.<br />Hard fare, hard bed and comic misery,<br />--The midge, the blue-fly and the mosquito<br />Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands:<br />But, on the second day, we heed them not,<br />Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries,<br />Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names.<br />For who defends our leafy tabernacle<br />From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,<br />--Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly,<br />Which past endurance sting the tender cit,<br />But which we learn to scatter with a smudge,<br />Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn?<br />Our foaming ale we drank from hunters' pans,<br />Ale, and a sup of wine.<br />Our steward gaveVenison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread;<br />All ate like abbots, and, if any missed<br />Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss<br />With hunters' appetite and peals of mirth.<br />And Stillman, our guides' guide, and<br />Commodore,Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Aeneas, said aloud,<br />"Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating<br />Food indigestible":--then murmured some,<br />Others applauded him who spoke the truth.<br />Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought<br />Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday<br />'Mid all the hints and glories of the home.<br />For who can tell what sudden privacies<br />Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry<br />Of scholars furloughed from their tasks and let<br />Into this Oreads' fended Paradise,<br />As chapels in the city's thoroughfares,<br />Whither gaunt Labor slips to wipe his brow<br />And meditate a moment on Heaven's rest.<br />Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke<br />To each apart, lifting her lovely shows<br />To spiritual lessons pointed home,<br />And as through dreams in watches of the night,<br />So through all creatures in their form and ways<br />Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,<br />Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense<br />Inviting to new knowledge, one with old.<br />Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler?<br />Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye.<br />Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird,<br />Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light,<br />Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky?<br />And presently the sky is changed;<br />O world!What pictures and what harmonies are thine!<br />The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene,<br />So like the soul of me, what if 't were me?<br />A melancholy better than all mirth.<br />Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect,<br />Or at the foresight of obscurer years?<br />Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory<br />Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty<br />Superior to all its gaudy skirts.<br />And, that no day of life may lack romance,<br />The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down<br />A private beam into each several heart.<br />Daily the bending skies solicit man,<br />The seasons chariot him from this exile,<br />The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair,<br />The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along,<br />Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights<br />Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home.<br />With a vermilion pencil mark the day<br />When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs<br />Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming<br />FallsOf loud Bog River, suddenly confront<br />Two of our mates returning with swift oars.<br />One held a printed journal waving high<br />Caught from a late-arriving traveller,<br />Big with great news, and shouted the report<br />For which the world had waited, now firm fact,<br />Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea,<br />And landed on our coast, and pulsating<br />With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries<br />From boat to boat, and to the echoes round,<br />Greet the glad miracle. Thought's new-found path<br />Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways,<br />Match God's equator with a zone of art,<br />And lift man's public action to a height<br />Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses,<br />When linked hemispheres attest his deed.<br />We have few moments in the longest life<br />Of such delight and wonder as there grew,<br />--Nor yet unsuited to that solitude:<br />A burst of joy, as if we told the fact<br />To ears intelligent; as if gray rock<br />And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know<br />This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind;<br />As if we men were talking in a vein<br />Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs,<br />And a prime end of the most subtle element<br />Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves!<br />Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops,<br />Let them hear well! 'tis theirs as much as ours.<br />A spasm throbbing through the pedestals<br />Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent,<br />Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill<br />To be a brain, or serve the brain of man.<br />The lightning has run masterless too long;<br />He must to school and learn his verb and noun<br />And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage,<br />Spelling with guided tongue man's messages<br />Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea.<br />And yet I marked, even in the manly joy<br />Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat<br />(Perchance I erred), a shade of discontent;<br />Or was it for mankind a generous shame,<br />As of a luck not quite legitimate,<br />Since fortune snatched from wit the lion's part?<br />Was it a college pique of town and gown,<br />As one within whose memory it burned<br />That not academicians, but some lout,<br />Found ten years since the Californian gold?<br />And now, again, a hungry company<br />Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade,<br />Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools<br />Of science, not from the philosophers,<br />Had won the brightest laurel of all time.<br />'Twas always thus, and will be; hand and head<br />Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift,<br />The other slow,--this the Prometheus,<br />And that the Jove,--yet, howsoever hid,<br />It was from Jove the other stole his fire,<br />And, without Jove, the good had never been.<br />It is not Iroquois or cannibals,<br />But ever the free race with front sublime,<br />And these instructed by their wisest too,<br />Who do the feat, and lift humanity.<br />Let not him mourn who best entitled was,<br />Nay, mourn not one: let him exult,<br />Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant,<br />And water it with wine, nor watch askance<br />Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit:<br />Enough that mankind eat and are refreshed.<br />We flee away from cities, but we bring<br />The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers,<br />Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts.<br />We praise the guide, we praise the forest life:<br />But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore<br />Of books and arts and trained experiment,<br />Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz?O no, not we!<br />Witness the shout that shook<br />Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail<br />The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge<br />Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears<br />From a log cabin stream Beethoven's notes<br />On the piano, played with master's hand.<br />'Well done!' he cries; 'the bear is kept at bay,<br />The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire;<br />All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold,<br />This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall,<br />This wild plantation will suffice to chase.<br />Now speed the gay celerities of art,<br />What in the desert was impossible<br />Within four walls is possible again,<br />--Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill,<br />Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife<br />Of keen competing youths, joined or alone<br />To outdo each other and extort applause.<br />Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep.<br />Twirl the old wheels! Time takes fresh start again,<br />On for a thousand years of genius more.'<br />The holidays were fruitful, but must end;<br />One August evening had a cooler breath;<br />Into each mind intruding duties crept;<br />Under the cinders burned the fires of home;<br />Nay, letters found us in our paradise:<br />So in the gladness of the new event<br />We struck our camp and left the happy hills.<br />The fortunate star that rose on us sank not;<br />The prodigal sunshine rested on the land,<br />The rivers gambolled onward to the sea,<br />And Nature, the inscrutable and mute,<br />Permitted on her infinite repose<br />Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons,<br />As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-88762309087710935082008-10-02T10:27:00.007-04:002008-11-07T10:23:38.932-05:00Bandit with a Chain SawThe 10/6/08 issue of <em>The New Yorker</em> contains an interesting article by Raffi Khatchadourian that describes how illegal foresting is responsible for much of the deforestation that is happening in the world today. He closes the article with a tense account of a Russian "special officer" chasing an illegal forester through the woods. The officer fires several shots at the fleeing poacher before finally capturing him, but I was struck by the fact that the "middle-aged, visibly out of shape" bandit did not drop his chainsaw during the chase. Given the context of the article it seems unlikely that Khatchadourian's readers will see the poacher as a sympathetic figure, but he was to me. The sympathy I felt for this "bandit with a chainsaw" has its roots in a presentation I attended at the World Wilderness Congress in Tromso, Norway several years ago.<br /><br />I was part of a large U.S. delegation to the Congress, and for the first few days my pride in being part of the this group grew day by day as I attended session after session where members of our delegation described marvelous GIS and GPS applications for wilderness protection, successful noise abatement policies in the Grand Canyon, etc. It grew even more after my colleagues and I made a very well-received presentation about lessons for protecting natural areas that might be learned by studying New York's Adironcack Park. But my reverie came to a screeching halt when I chanced upon a session presented by a forest ranger from a national park in India. I can't remember the name of the park or the ranger, but I've never forgotten his message.<br /><br />His presentation started with wide-angle photgraphs of forest framed by the Himalayan Mountains in the background. This, he told us, was his park. He then began to show closer shots of the park, and it became apparent that his park was experiencing severe deforestation and errosion. He explained that the damage was initially caused by local people who entered the park to harvest branches for cooking and heating, and leaves for browse for their animals. He and his fellow rangers had responded by enforcing a strict ban on such activity. Soon, representatives from the local villages visited park headquarters and explained that their children were suffering from the cold and their animals were dying of starvation. Might it be possible, they wondered, for the local people to enter the park and take only leaves and branches that had fallen to the ground? The rangers felt sympathy for their plight and agreed to their request. That, he explained, was when the real damage started, since people literally came to park with brooms and swept the forest floor clean of fallen leaves and branches. Stripped of ground cover and seeds, the forest was dying, and the topsoil was washing away. He closed by asking us what, short of shooting the people who would inevitably continue to come to the park is search of leaves and wood, should he do? We had no answers.<br /><br />Upon returning home I decided that I had to refocus my Adirondack research in a way that addressed the underlying factors exposed by the Indian forest ranger's presentation. It has not been an easy process, but I believe that answer lies in adopting a pragmatic philosophy when it comes to devising and implementing policies to protect nature. In this context pragmatic does not simply mean "practical," and it is not just an excuse to compromise, althoug compromise is often the result. It means instead that ideas, as Louis Menand explains in his 2001 book <em>The Metaphysical Club</em>, are not "'out there' waiting to be discovered, but are tools--like forks and knives and microchips--that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves (p. xi)." Since, in this formulation, ideas are "provisional responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances, their survival depends not on their immutablity but on their adaptability (and they)...should never become idelogies--either justifying the status quo or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it (p. xii)."<br /><br />I seems to me that failure to adopt a pragmatic view of nature has too often led to policy debates being dominated by those determined to justify the environmental status quo at any cost (anti-environmentalists) and those wedded to a transcendent imperative for renouncing it (radical environmentalists). In the Adirondack Park the failure to adopt a pragmatic view of nature was responsible for the failure of the Governor's Commission on the Adirondack Park in the Twenty-first Century, while the success of subsequent efforts to protect important natural areas through land acquisition and conservation easements is the result of politicians and policymakers taking a pragmatic approach. This recent history illustrates a larger theme: the Adirondack Park has succeeded in protecting nature in one of the most heavily developed parts of the world (60 million people live within a days drive of the Adirondack Park) because it has generally taken a pragmatic view of nature. Looking back at the successes and failures of the world's oldest and largest attempt to marry public and private land to protect nature may yield the answers the park ranger from India, and the rest of us who care about nature, need.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-62080756374992300602008-09-26T12:42:00.010-04:002008-11-23T08:48:39.027-05:00Land Use Planning in the Adirondack ParkIn 1967 a stretch of Interstate Rte. 87 linking Albany and Montreal was completed. This stretch of highway, known as the Northway, runs along and through the Eastern side of the Adirondack Park. When the Northway was completed the Adirondack Park was within a day's drive of sixty million people. Conservationsists feared that this easy access would spark new development on private land in the park that would destroy its environmental itegrity. In response to this concern then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller's brother Laurance spearheaded a drive to create a national park in the Adirondacks. His proposal met with almost universal resistance from New Yorkers, but it eventually led to the creation of the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks. This, in turn, led to the creation of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) in 1971. The APA was charged with creating a State Land Master Plan to guide the Department of Environmental Conservation in managing state lands in the Adirondack Park, and a Private Land Use and Development Plan.<br /><br /><br />Using a process that was, in effect, the analog predecessor of modern GIS techniques, early Adirondack Park Land Use Maps were created by stacking translucent overlays each of which represented a particular environmental condition such as proximity to roads and shorelines, soil type, elevation and slope, scenic overlooks, associated with corresponding areas on a map of the park. Light shining through the layers produced varying shades of gray on the map such that darker shades indicated land that needed greater need for protection from development and other human activities. APA planners then converted the shades of gray into colors that designated different public and private land use categories. Governor Rockefeller accepted the first State Land Master Plan in 1972 and, after a great deal of debate and compromise, the state legislature approved the first Private Land Use and Development Plan in 1973.<br /><br /><br />Today both land use plans are periodically revised using digital mapping technology and information provided by APA scientists and planners. Final decisions about those revisions rests with the eleven Adirondack Park Agency Board Members. Eight of the members are appointed at the descretion of the Governor (by convention five of these seats are held by park residents and three are held by out-of park residents). The three remaining members are the Secretary of State, the head of the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the head of the Department of Economic Development. The Board makes park policy decisions and acts on permit applications during its monthly open meetings. While the Governor obviously has enormous influence over the Board, the diversity of interests represented by its members and its open meetings generally encourages it to make pragmatic decisions.<br /><br /><br />Evidence of pragmatic decision making can be found in the two main land use categories and managment strategies that comprise the constitutionally-protected Adirondack Forest Preserve. About 50% of the Forest Preserve is categorized as Wild Forest, a wilderness designation that allows some permanent man-made structures (e.g bridges) and use of motorized vehicles on designated trails and roads. The other 50% is categorized as Wilderness, a designation that prohibits use of motorized vehicles and permits only primitive structures for trail maintenance. Maintaining a consistent balance between these land use categories over time has helped to create a broad-based, if sometimes uneasy, coalition among recreational users, park businesses, and preservationists where park politics are concerned.<br /><br />The Private Land Use and Development Plan embodies pragmatic view of nature by inserting environmental concerns into the private market for Adirondack Park real estate. Under the plan private land is divided into six categories: Hamlets, Industrial Use Areas, Moderate Intensity Use Areas, Low Intensity Use Areas, Rural Use Areas, and Resource Management Areas. For each category "overall intensity guidelines" prescribe the approximate number of principle buildings that are allowed in a square mile area. Each category is defined by a "character description" and a statement of "purposes, policies, and objectives." In addition, "development considerations" are listed to point out possible adverse impacts of development, and "compatible uses" are listed as a positive guide to acceptable development for each category. Finally, the plan defines projects within each category that require APA approval due to their regional impact. In the case of subdivisions, for example, "regional projects" range from 100-lot projects in Hamlet Areas to two-lot projects in Resource Management Areas.<br /><br /><br />Together, the State Land Master Plan and the Private Land Use and Development Plan continue the pragmatic tradition that has marked the Adirondack Park since its founding. Take, for example, the issue of shoreline protection. Since the majority of Adirondack Park homes and businesses are located on or near the park's 11,000 lakes and ponds and 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, regulation of shoreline development is one of the most controversial aspects of the Private Land Use and Development Plan. The 1973 Land Use Plan was approved by the legislature only after regulations for development along shorelines were rendered less restrictive than regulations for other areas of the park. Since that time, environmentalists have continually lobbied for stricter regulations on shoreline development in the park, but it took 35 years for the APA to require shoreline property owners to obtain permits for rebuilding or expanding exisiting buildings. For most radical environmentalists the APA's action is meaningless gesture that fails to address the root cause of the problem (capitalism). For most anti-environmentalists it is needless restriction of private property rights. For most pragmatic environmentalists, it is a step in the right direction that improves environmental quality without dramatically altering economic and social conditions in the park.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-76649754690758638042008-09-25T15:51:00.005-04:002008-09-25T16:01:02.285-04:00How to Define Big---Adirondack Park is Massive<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHh5hzBAoxKz9x-yhmGhSCLU6BGqTcBGou1-381uARCdojPfLzNbNZKEWFdlABnhjQl6Ywm-JNe7zaPLEEN8VXIX8doeDy8I0K8Aox8xk6xsVhSvIeELXg8Td7I6k1WeJI8lNz_MM6VY0/s1600-h/ADK-google-earth.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250051289444313186" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHh5hzBAoxKz9x-yhmGhSCLU6BGqTcBGou1-381uARCdojPfLzNbNZKEWFdlABnhjQl6Ywm-JNe7zaPLEEN8VXIX8doeDy8I0K8Aox8xk6xsVhSvIeELXg8Td7I6k1WeJI8lNz_MM6VY0/s400/ADK-google-earth.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><div><div><div>Although New York history represents a major portion of the New York State third grade curriculum, many New York college bound students fail to recognize the Adirondacks as a major state park. Adirondack Park is larger than all other state and national parks in the 48 contiguous United States. In fact, only three national parks/preserves in Alaska out rank the Adirondacks in absolute size. Gates of the Arctic, Noatak National Preserve, and Wrangell St. Elias National Park and National Preserve are bigger at 7.5, 6.6, and 13.2 million acres, respectively. The Adirondack Park weighs in at a tad more than 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares or 24,281 square kilometers). Adirondack Park is bigger than Yellowstone N.P, Death Valley N.P, Rocky Mountain N.P., and the Grand Canyon. Adirondack Park is as large as the neighboring state of Vermont.<br /></div><br /><div>Adirondack Park sticks out like a large green blot on the Google Earth Map of New England. From space, its jagged border separates the green forests within to the non-park lands on the outside. There are 86 countries with less land area than the Adirondacks. This includes several developed countries with a large human presence. These include Luxemburg, Jamaica, Belize, El Salvador, Kuwait and Puerto Rico. The island country of Sicily is nearly the same size at 25,708 square kilometers. Costa Rica with its rich biodiversity is only twice the size at 51,000 square kilometers.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFTFs73sZ5LxPM7A93lJW6Zj0ZQtame0VZXyy-8_PMXusjnizG5-Zt-hIxSP8kyvMEePWs6eYVFkRp5VG5xjE3EPNfqZ8Hb1z6RfqaEQpcqjP-fPgNjAc0HidqerkSpwTMdttbBmvitCY/s1600-h/Tsuga-canadensis-leaves-bark-Edited.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250050127537033314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFTFs73sZ5LxPM7A93lJW6Zj0ZQtame0VZXyy-8_PMXusjnizG5-Zt-hIxSP8kyvMEePWs6eYVFkRp5VG5xjE3EPNfqZ8Hb1z6RfqaEQpcqjP-fPgNjAc0HidqerkSpwTMdttbBmvitCY/s200/Tsuga-canadensis-leaves-bark-Edited.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />A few years ago, my field biology students measured and counted trees on 200 square meter plots on Long Point at Raquette Lake. We learned that on average, a typical hectare of this Adirondack forest ha<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgveAZKAh5URGuLHmRd6SU2c07HJZGktrx0WQz4omEjeEvOzWw3xbZOnUuIoWGVJjoMny6d_20-k8HrR88pRAE2eLMViBT7u0oRPqc3mwJ8jx_nQENaNexQ63eaatM_0erpYuCUy-BdFgo/s1600-h/Tsuga-canadensis-leaves-bark-2.jpg"></a>s 638 trees of various sizes. Hemlock was the most abundant and accounted for 50% of the trees. Yellow birch and American beech were dead even at 13% each in the forest. If these values are typical, and we have no reason to suspect otherwise, then we predict that there are about 793 million eastern hemlock trees in Adirondack Park. Of the 1.6 billion trees, 207 million are yellow birch and another 207 million are American beech. We also determined that a hectare of Adirondack forest contained 280000 kg of dry biomass in living trees for a total of 1.8 x 1012 kg in the park. This mass is the same as 165 million yellow school buses. </div><br /><div><br />Hidden within this great forest are large numbers of uncountable animal species. Anyone who has driven Adirondack roads on rainy summer nights is aware of the great numbers of American toads plopping across wet roadways. Much of the animal diversity and volume is unaccounted because we rarely see it. Take for example the eastern red-backed salamander. This species is very common across New York State. It leads a totally terrestrial lifestyle and one is very likely to encounter dozens of these in a short period of time, just b<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTjjBjghUL8ufDB4JaHyqdzkDCOJzwn8VmVcObzfAOxzw70jJA-EGqkf8k0ifXJ5IlGvDCRxQIIKdK60agH9tl8qAEpfdETvEhgMmKsGpeaaszITf3gMOhLEWi_XiSm2y4FS0L3qhzJJg/s1600-h/plethodon-cinereus-slide.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250049481338995234" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTjjBjghUL8ufDB4JaHyqdzkDCOJzwn8VmVcObzfAOxzw70jJA-EGqkf8k0ifXJ5IlGvDCRxQIIKdK60agH9tl8qAEpfdETvEhgMmKsGpeaaszITf3gMOhLEWi_XiSm2y4FS0L3qhzJJg/s200/plethodon-cinereus-slide.jpg" border="0" /></a>y gently lifting rocks, logs, and humus in the forest. Ducey and Breisch in “The Amphibians and Reptiles of New York State” (Gibbs et al., 2007) estimate that the average forest has 1,660 eastern red-backed salamanders per acre. This translates into an astounding 10 billion eastern red-backed salamanders in the Adirondacks and places them near the top as the nation’s most abundant vertebrate. </div><br /><div><br />These comparisons illustrate the Adirondack Park is easily the greenest place in the 48 contiguous states. More than 85% of the wilderness east of the Rocky Mountains is located in the Adirondack Park. The trees are protected by the New York State Constitution. Their presence and protection makes them a valuable environmental sponge by removing large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. Do you suspect that my numbers and calculations are a little overzealous? After all, the Adirondacks have a significant surface are of water. On the other hand, the 6 million acres are flat terrestrial quantities, but the Adirondacks are anything but flat. If anything, my numbers are a complete underestimate of forest biomass as the vertical rises in the ADK add significantly to the total tree count.</div></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-17811699972530545272008-09-23T12:20:00.018-04:002008-09-25T13:29:36.672-04:00Blow Down Natural History Part 2<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-P2yZYFTSDaU0XM9yxFgp5EP8nX2jU8xLmKgOxqWyCEU_BL8ywSE0X_QolU-n9MYFfmKbogYB4f1oEjrLpu4N8Utzqx0G0acyRYxH_j4NkJHeRwXxmiZUDKs0Xvr8-MLz-vJ_8b4EJeM/s1600-h/steve-blow-1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250011940396862530" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-P2yZYFTSDaU0XM9yxFgp5EP8nX2jU8xLmKgOxqWyCEU_BL8ywSE0X_QolU-n9MYFfmKbogYB4f1oEjrLpu4N8Utzqx0G0acyRYxH_j4NkJHeRwXxmiZUDKs0Xvr8-MLz-vJ_8b4EJeM/s320/steve-blow-1.jpg" border="0" /></a> Any visitor to a New England or Adirondack forest will note the pock-marked surface of the forest floor. The boils and depressions of the forest floor are grave markers where the past giants of the eastern forests once stood. Trees die of old age in the forest. They reach a point in their life where wood rots from within, insects and parasites rob the tree of energy, and even the stress of maintaining tissues on a giant tree decreases their vigor. Many trees fall on their own, but more often than not, they receive a nudge from occasional winds. <div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><br />The winds of July 15, 1995 were anything but occasional. The blow delivered to the forest toppled healthy trees along with the diseased trees. The canopy of leaves acted like a sailboat spinnaker capturing the wind and bending to inflate. Yes, some trun<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjqvLS_gDMBX8WhOpfqw2zIh93kXY3tYrSLXvQW7YgZun1RwAn83ufEzmtDF7qyoqdO_hK0RnF5wvDP2mZl6PL7Zp2OHY_Zc9C2yRIW4J8tHjv6yWjpCR3rsGn2CyL0OdVsfelYQjLVYE/s1600-h/steve-blow-1.jpg"></a>ks buckled, stretched and snapped. Roots cracked from the strain and where the wood held tough, the roots were pried from the sandy Adirondack soils. The legacy of the great blow was recorded in tree trunks laying in an easterly direction, shallow root profiles erected 90º from the horizon, and divots left where the roots once lay. Smaller sub canopy trees still stand and smaller saplings still dotted the forest floor. </div><br /><div>Although the woods must have looked like a war zone, they remained healthy over the coming weeks, months and years after the mighty blow down. Leaves slowly died and fell to the forest floor. The greenness of the leaves represents the tree tissue of the highest nutrient content. Leaves are loaded with nitrogen rich photosynthetic pigments and proteins. Foliage also contains essential elemental nutrition of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium. The leaves softly buffer the forest floor and protect it from excessive dryness and intense sunlight. The salamanders, wood beetles, bacteria, and fungi all profit from the added protection as the woodlands suddenly were more exposed to life outside of the forest. As the leaves decompose, the nutrients are quickly capture by bacteria and fungi and transferred to forms utilized by the saplings. The forest babes grow quickly with the added sunlight and flush of life supporting nutrients. </div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMrZGdc-SXXDRgKTTGSPKUitChqpy-7QHfPU9tLy46WppkopmA-sYHCzzXianKwjnEIbMT5iSuGRu7Fjc8u7Ut-9wHNFp2zVEb7TkLMnVfoVMiCmX5KqYlMEK5aoL_J9rcnJzdm5LN-yk/s1600-h/Russula.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250011743300340466" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMrZGdc-SXXDRgKTTGSPKUitChqpy-7QHfPU9tLy46WppkopmA-sYHCzzXianKwjnEIbMT5iSuGRu7Fjc8u7Ut-9wHNFp2zVEb7TkLMnVfoVMiCmX5KqYlMEK5aoL_J9rcnJzdm5LN-yk/s320/Russula.jpg" border="0" /></a>Wood takes longer to decay. Wood beetles assist by tunneling under the bark and through the wood. This activity introduces bacteria and fungal spores to the tree’s interior and channels oxygen rich air in to support the decomposition. Armed with the right stuff in terms of enzymes and metabolic machinery, the fungi dismantle the hardened lignin and cellulose of the tree. Wood Decomposition takes time. Over several years, the bark loosens, the wood softens and splits and fungal threads infiltrate deeper into the wood. The tree cadaver becomes a sponge and water is slowly wicked from the soil upward and held in place by the pits, cells, and capillary fractures in the wood. Wood is not the most nutrient rich tissue, but it does add vital elements of calcium and potassium to the soil as it decomposes. By now, the tender saplings have grown into vigorous adolescents and shade the trunk. New organisms colonize the exposed surface of the bark. Moss and fern spores, land and germinate on this optimal bed of wet organic matter. The fragile filaments of moss branch, take root, and begin their assault on the new territory. Without surprise, red-backed salamanders have found the understory beneath the tree trunk as an ideal place to find invertebrate food and to mate, lay eggs, and bring forth young. New tree life springs forth from the mossy surface. Hemlock and yellow birch have a crazy itch to grow only atop mossy logs, tree stumps, and rocks with thin moist soil. This unique behavior ultimately produces hemlocks and birches with stilted roots in the woodland.<br /><br /><div><br />Every bit of the dead tree provides life and new opportunities in the Adirondack woodland. The empty divot where the roots once laid creates an interesting microhabitat of shade and moisture. Herbaceous wildflowers and ferns may utilize the more protected facets of the wind throw. The newly excavated underground caverns provide dens for weasels, fox, and skunk. Black bears may use larger excavations for winter dens. Owls seek winter refuge in the hollows of tree snags from the giants that snapped leaving a partial trunk in place. </div><br /><br /><div>So, what if the state/NYS DEC elected to harvest wood from the 1995 blow down? What impact would the harvest have on the land? Clear cut practices have a definite detrimental impact on the future recovery of the forest. Clearing wood from the blow down is far from clear-cutting, but some of the land would be negatively affected. First, machinery used to drag, load, and process the wood will rake and aerate some soil. Tire ruts and truck paths will compact the soil in other areas. Both disturbances will negatively impact the soil flora and fauna. Higher aeration leads to more rapid decomposition and drying of the soil. Mycorrhizal fungi that worked diligently with the forest die, retreat, or hide as spores. Rapid decomposition floods the environment with nutrients faster than the remaining seeds and saplings can use. Some of the more soluble elements such as nitrogen and phosphorus may leach from the soil throughout the watershed. Without the mycorrhizal fungi and the elemental nutrition, a new forest will recover more slowly and less vigorously. Without a quick recovery of juvenile trees, the slash and remaining wood dry and fail to support the microcosm of invertebrates, moss, salamanders, and young birch/hemlock seedlings. Without a rapid recovery, the ecological impact is felt in local streams that choke with increased erosion and mineral enriched waters.<br /></div><br /><div>Over the period of hundreds and thousands of years, the impact of a single wood harvest would be negligible. The most destructive force in the Adirondacks during the past 25,000 years hasn’t been wood harvests. Glaciers after all scoured all terrestrial life from the Adirondacks. The greatest threat from blow down harvest is a recession of ecological recovery. If timber harvests were allowed very time a blow down occurs, then the great AMerican forest may loose species diversity, and its rugged aesthetic appeal. Harvesting wood without ecological thinking will diminish the natural process of recovery that our state constitution guarantees for the Adirondack wilderness.</div><br /><div>Our camping excursion to Spruce Island in Lake Lila on September 17, 2008 placed Tom and I near the heart of the 1995 blow down. The island is about 400 meters in length and no more than 100 meters at its widest point. For the most part, the island contains vegetation representative of the surrounding forest. Red spruce and balsam fir dominated the narrow north end of the island with paper birch, white pine, and hemlock on the wider southern end. It is within the later area that the impact of the 1995 blow down was observed. Former trees with heights of 75 meters lay in an easterly direction with root mass upturned and facing westward. The trunks were in various stages of decay. The bark was intact on most of trees from the blow down, although it was loosened and could easily be broken or lifted from the trunk. Shards of paper birch from the blow down provide the ignition matrix for our evening fires.</div><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNtdO977LXFilKDywuHGaCpiOR1GOu0rqp2B4mxeOYgJvnD2CXgUI-mVihR_YMxO0mxO4ktBPRPEFCaRiS7CGACczEU-XTltI4J_tY8eCPIzHPh_R47_W9ZuZCfORiTrgxWKtFL3XS9Qc/s1600-h/root-wash.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249994676885460834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNtdO977LXFilKDywuHGaCpiOR1GOu0rqp2B4mxeOYgJvnD2CXgUI-mVihR_YMxO0mxO4ktBPRPEFCaRiS7CGACczEU-XTltI4J_tY8eCPIzHPh_R47_W9ZuZCfORiTrgxWKtFL3XS9Qc/s320/root-wash.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><div>It was easily to distinguish trees from the 1995 blow down from older falls. The island was full of decaying logs where moss had colonized the trunk surface and rain and wind had deteriorated exposed root masses. The older trunks laid at angles much different from those that fell in 1995. The island has numerous craters, divots, and pock-marks of various stages of weathering. Much of the forest floor looked as if artillery explosives had once battered the island. The abundance of fallen trunks and overhanging limbs made island exploration a gymnastic adventure. Magnificent white pine trunks were still solid enough to permit the combined mass of Pasquarello and Broyles. Our greatest fear from trekking across blow down timber was the potential to impale our body part from half broken limbs.<br /></div><br /><div>We were impressed with the destructive power of blow down winds. Not only had massive trees with thousands of pounds of biomass tumbled, but incredible root systems with hundreds of pounds of soil had been uplifted like the light end of a school yard teeter-totter. Any rock with roots wrapped around it had also been uplifted and reoriented. Some of the craters were nearly a meter deep although most were significantly less than 0.5 meters. Adirondack soils, after all, are sandy and thin.<br /></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRcM9J_O0God5vBXfrUnwjUDmA2BCdHpm0_XzilqQ7H7F6HEGW2PxoymekyFwXfhlzu29rycPsdjipqbISxQrATWc4hD0N9Kfj_cDW6uuR4Y_fYKb3_FGbD8dvaNeEgMabDe73wLa7BO4/s1600-h/birch-saplings.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249994493346462034" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRcM9J_O0God5vBXfrUnwjUDmA2BCdHpm0_XzilqQ7H7F6HEGW2PxoymekyFwXfhlzu29rycPsdjipqbISxQrATWc4hD0N9Kfj_cDW6uuR4Y_fYKb3_FGbD8dvaNeEgMabDe73wLa7BO4/s320/birch-saplings.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>The blow down trees created light gaps in the forest and several species of tree took advantage of the sudden increase in sunlight. Several root masses provided a suitable site for new paper birch seedlings to colonize and grow. Straight vigorous paper birch saplings burst forth from the vertically oriented root masses. Red maple had colonized another light gap, and fire cherry was quick to invade two other sites. The presence of fire cherry is interesting on Spruce Island. No other large fire cherries occurred here and there was no indication that it existed on the island before the blow down. These plants were most likely new recruits from the surrounding forest. Their seeds probably traveled by blue jay, hermit thrush, or grosbeak from the surrounding Lake Lila forest. After passage through the avian intestinal pathway, the seeds of this pioneer species landed in these new light gaps with intent to grow.</div><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwmf3B2vXbGIZBQTvqsxLgnokDg45WU5B8bKdulUDJiAnkwS1fm3WlbgzIjWvMrTjFwcDIS-hMDtfAxxjstDz0SOSiIJl45pxrBzbwkaeJ0OYJn4OBHaWOE0UWM8Ao94np2D9PY6tdpNs/s1600-h/holes-in-pine-forest.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249993917321661250" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwmf3B2vXbGIZBQTvqsxLgnokDg45WU5B8bKdulUDJiAnkwS1fm3WlbgzIjWvMrTjFwcDIS-hMDtfAxxjstDz0SOSiIJl45pxrBzbwkaeJ0OYJn4OBHaWOE0UWM8Ao94np2D9PY6tdpNs/s320/holes-in-pine-forest.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Fallen trees from the 1995 blow down were evident elsewhere in the Lake Lila Wilderness. In all but a few locations, the damage was well-hidden within the forest. Three-hundred year old yellow birch still stood tall in upland areas, and wind-shaped white pine lined the lake. On the north end of Lake Lila, two campsites (#4 & 5), free exploration of the surrounding woods was limited by large fallen trees and tangles of dead branches. ALthough I didn't observe these campsites before the 95 event, I can imagine that the effective area of these camp sites had significantly decreased. A small pennisula just south of camp sites 4 & 5 bore the most glaring woodland scar. Here a large notch had been carved out of the pine forest. The site was impenetrable with downed logs. Nevertheless, recovery was evident here as well as seedlings and saplings had begun their assault on the freshly contested terrain. Nature wields the pain or destruction and the cures of ecological recovery in the Adirondacks.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-67678130317618550522008-09-15T09:16:00.032-04:002008-10-06T21:44:10.302-04:00Doctors of Philosophy Camp at Lake Lila<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254048960403932514" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKUoj2d3PW6iZ6s68nCFXLQsM_Hh9QalZl4cC3lgb20lWXqVj2u2Rd8QCAvE9sBoo0HLaM56PFyv_5wLfDIVV8eZIx2P-8gGL3uqbjZWQFdmuakNVFHzboShUI8jtL3KVuTNHTP_6vk28/s320/spruce-island.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div> One of the interesting episodes in the history of the Adirondacks took place at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Follensby</span> Pond in 1858. There Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, Biologist Louis Agassiz and eight other artists and scholars participated in what has come to be known as the Philosopher's Camp. On it's 150<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">th</span> anniversary there is little on record about this event except for a few pages in some comprehensive histories of the region (see, for example, Frank Graham's 1978 book <em>The Adirondack Park </em>pp.20-22) and a lengthy poem by Emerson that can be found at: <a href="http://wildernessandwaterslides.blogspot.com/2008/10/adirondacs-this-poem-in-its-entirity.html">http://wildernessandwaterslides.blogspot.com/2008/10/adirondacs-this-poem-in-its-entirity.html</a><br /><br /><div><div><div><div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj0JZFiCpUI2-mtDCHODCjEzPb6Ud0eLkFxSvupLeSmnTZpnAknPGmcvgEEPRFxATPr-MYIMYHNJvim42WyeNcke8eknEYV5DenObJLr8GVDgZzDoSFhwX_bC6APVQZCYc-OBjeFjw7kQ/s1600-h/philosopher-tom.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254048515948740786" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj0JZFiCpUI2-mtDCHODCjEzPb6Ud0eLkFxSvupLeSmnTZpnAknPGmcvgEEPRFxATPr-MYIMYHNJvim42WyeNcke8eknEYV5DenObJLr8GVDgZzDoSFhwX_bC6APVQZCYc-OBjeFjw7kQ/s320/philosopher-tom.jpg" border="0" /></a>It might seem a tad self-inflated to call the recent camping trip Steve and I took to Lake Lila a modern-day version of the Philosophers Camp, but both of us have <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Ph</span>. D's and that at least allows us to claim a similar title for our experience. We did not dissect any animals as they did at the original <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Philosopher's</span> Camp (although Steve did sacrifice some mushrooms to make "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">sporecasts</span>"), and we did not hunt, fish, or shoot at targets with rifles as they did. We drank our "foaming ale" from not from "hunter's pans" but from plastic cups, and at times our laughter "echoed through the woods" as theirs did 150 years earlier. We ate processed food we brought with us in a smooth plastic anti-bear <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">canister</span> rather than feasting on "wild game and fresh baked bread." When we weren't pumping our drinking water through a micro-filter, gathering "dead and down" firewood to get us through chilly nights and mornings when temperatures dipped into the 30's, washing our dishes and ourselves with biodegradable "camp soap" made from hemp oil, or taking care of other camp chores, we explored Lake Lila in the same manner that the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Philosophers</span> explored <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Follensby</span> Pond, by canoe and on foot. After two days we returned to soft beds and "the fires of home" and were greeted by news of collapsing financial markets that history may someday judge as significant as the laying of the Trans-Atlantic cable. </div><br /><div>At about the midpoint of our stay we began to focus our explorations and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">discussions</span> on two questions: What makes camping at Lake Lila special, and what circumstances and policies make or help keep it that way? One of the first things we noticed about Lake Lila was how quiet it was. So quiet, in fact, that during our stay we noticed at times that our ears "ringing" in response to the lack of background noise. Much of that quiet is due to the fact that motorized boats and vehicles, generators, and chainsaws are prohibited. The nights were clear, and that made us aware of the fact that there is almost no light pollution, which made the night sky a much more crowded and interesting place then the night sky in Cortland (it actually made some of the <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFaQ01FlGYFOTeEPIcZDzGlObOnOYaPI-vzHUDvm6PIcjU-ShkaQEYUcfJKfz6qHpASJql_PMa5Xy08WtWiwGRHdOg-wM1MRO2GLLfuce5ZnPwsBP_ZFgM9ayGL2o8wWr_pOY8vZ1P3fU/s1600-h/lake-lila-2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254049228102068626" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFaQ01FlGYFOTeEPIcZDzGlObOnOYaPI-vzHUDvm6PIcjU-ShkaQEYUcfJKfz6qHpASJql_PMa5Xy08WtWiwGRHdOg-wM1MRO2GLLfuce5ZnPwsBP_ZFgM9ayGL2o8wWr_pOY8vZ1P3fU/s320/lake-lila-2.jpg" border="0" /></a>familiar objects we looked for to help us find our way around the night sky unfamiliar). Isolation from other campers contributed to the quiet and our sense of solitude. A quick check of the register at the parking area revealed that there were probably fewer than 30 other campers occupying the 1400 acre lake and shoreline during our stay, and the only other voices we heard aside from our own were from two or three boats that passed by during the 48 hours we spent at our island campsite.</div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254049529667203906" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE3LpVtkfw7h3kk2LkmSBaaemD0if62EYRvEHBOSL7_01fn5Q61mMdN_L4DNrVChL0n_UqRcDplgqTbft1gHAFHBlVjgjQRyium0595FRxcrhd14BjCt_t5-r5i25Y7rwxO6l7EsKEvUI/s320/lake+lila+clean+water.jpg" border="0" /><br /><p>Another special things about Lake Lila were water that is probably clean enough to drink without filtering if it weren't for the omnipresent backwoods threat of <em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Giardia</span></em> contamination. We saw no litter on land or water except for a few small scraps right near our campsite and a helium-filled <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">mylar</span> balloon that had blown in from somewhere (Ohio? Michigan? California? China?). With the exception of a two foot tall box privy DEC had placed near our campsite and the railroad tracks we crossed over on our hike to the summit of Mt. Frederica, no man-made structure was visible anywhere on the lake, and Steve noted the welcome absence of invasive species such as purple <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">loosestrife</span> and zebra mussels.</p><p>We decided that the spacing of the campsites was one of the things that made our experience at Lake Lila special. With three exceptions, the twenty-four designated shoreline and island campsites are strategically placed to minimize contact with each other. The most <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">desirable</span> campsites (and we concluded this was probably somewhat a matter of personal preference) regularly become available to newly arriving campers due to a regulation that limits stays at a specific campsite to three days unless prior permission for a longer stay is granted by a forest ranger assigned to the area. A provision that allows camping anywhere in the area outside of 150 feet of lakes, ponds, streams, trails, or roads insures that no one will spend a lot of effort only to be completely denied the experience of camping at Lake Lila, and the fact that there is no fee means people are less likely to feel cheated if they must camp at one of the less-<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">desirable</span> sites. Lake Lila's location near the center of the park, far from the popular tourist and commercial centers such as Old Forge, Lake George, Lake Placid/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Saranac</span> Lake, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Tupper</span> Lake that dot it's edges keeps visitors down, which contributes to the sense of isolation and solitude. It also means that people who wish to camp must plan there visit carefully since there are no stores, restaurants or motels nearby, and we concluded that such people are likely to be better neighbors when it comes to camping in a natural setting. </p><p>Despite the its isolation, Lake Lila provides a relatively safe and comfortable camping experience from July through October. The lake can be choppy, but it is relatively narrow and the water is warm if the waves cause paddlers to tip. The Adirondacks are generally free of dangerous flora and fauna (especially compared to, say, tropical <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">rain forest</span>). There are no poisonous plants or snakes. There are no grizzly bears, only relatively <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">unaggressive</span> and (thanks to Lake Lila's widely spaced <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">campsites</span> and generally well-equipped and well-educated campers that frequent them) wary of humans black bears. The largest predator in the Adirondacks is the coyote, and we know of no instance of coyotes attacking humans. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTJjL3Dm8qPJ3Gh30w5pYqr5bLchGmqlgajaeslWgBcmDPqugQazB10v5BxF6X4dVDLQjTCG_EaH2SQw494A-TDq7CSTukHC_XSiz1epcRmDvgCxBt9pWyIASpYYyKbKFMqM6eFbThhEE/s1600-h/frederica-mtn.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254049806876592370" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTJjL3Dm8qPJ3Gh30w5pYqr5bLchGmqlgajaeslWgBcmDPqugQazB10v5BxF6X4dVDLQjTCG_EaH2SQw494A-TDq7CSTukHC_XSiz1epcRmDvgCxBt9pWyIASpYYyKbKFMqM6eFbThhEE/s320/frederica-mtn.jpg" border="0" /></a>On the other hand, the often early onset of harsh winter weather and Lake Lila's cool and buggy (e.g. black flies) springs keeps most campers away for seven months, and this reduces human impact on the ecosystem. So does the fact that it takes 1/2 an hour to cover the last 8 miles of bumpy dirt road to the parking lot, after which campers face a 1/3 mile portage for boats or a 3 mile hike. This makes most campers reasonable well-equipped, educated (e.g. about bears, camp soap, burning only dead and down wood, etc.), and respectful of others' camping experience, although the physical demands of camping at Lake Lila are not such that only a tiny percentage of people may reasonably participate.</p><p>In some ways, Lake Lila has changed considerably since I last camped there in the mid 1990's. Where before it was a thin strip of state-owned land surrounded by large tracts of private forest products land, it is now part of a large new wilderness area in the Adirondack Forest Preserve that was created in March 2000 by the purchase of 15,000 acres of land from the Whitney family using money from the Environmental Protection Fund and the Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act (need links). The William C. Whitney Wilderness that resulted form this purchase embodies a pragmatic view of nature in several important respects. </p><p>The William C. Whitney Map and Guide published by DEC states that the "former road system of the Whitney purchase is quickly being overtaken by vegetation (and gradually taking on) the character of a wilderness." At the same time, a well-maintained combination of a paved and dirt road provides relatively easy travel to designated parking areas, which greatly increases access to the interior of the wilderness. A road around the north edge of Lake Lila is closed to motor vehicles and bicycles, but owners of private land bordering the wilderness retain a legal right to use the road. Other roads at the headquarters area of the wilderness are closed to public motor vehicle use but open to "people with mobility impairments who utilize mechanized aids (i.e., non-motorized or motorized wheelchairs or other similar devices), and there is a privately-owned <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">inholding</span> of several hundred acres adjacent to the headquarters. Finally, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Remsen</span>-Lake Placid Travel Corridor, which allows <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">public</span> use of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">snowmobiles</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">ATV's</span> borders the wilderness on the west, but riders and their machines are not legally allowed into the wilderness itself.</p><p>In the end, it may be that Lake Lila provides an outstanding camping experience to those who for whom outstanding camping requires a healthy dose of nature because its design and regulation allow it to function as a "public good" whose use in this context by one does not significantly diminish its use by others. At the same time, it is accessible to a relatively wide range of individuals who are seeking a natural camping experience. This arrangement is appropriate given that it is collectively-owned by the citizens of the State of New York.</p><p>Since we got home we've begun to explore the idea that Lake Lila "works" because it is rooted in a pragmatic concept of nature. As Louis <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Menand</span> explains in his 2001 book <em>The Metaphysical <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrSpkDBZUJ_ES_odMPd3U5qrmmt56malLvwzoWr5qfsSXrjFJXDNIzudDTY5yuYSjtRRXxw0FLRWZVgFnhvHnfSsP_hr-CS8KHGJGuJbVm8LhddkHXvDPvi1zT1x9lYyfstwcG20rNfs/s1600-h/lila-sunset.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254050042758627538" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrSpkDBZUJ_ES_odMPd3U5qrmmt56malLvwzoWr5qfsSXrjFJXDNIzudDTY5yuYSjtRRXxw0FLRWZVgFnhvHnfSsP_hr-CS8KHGJGuJbVm8LhddkHXvDPvi1zT1x9lYyfstwcG20rNfs/s320/lila-sunset.jpg" border="0" /></a>Club</em> for a pragmatist ideas are "tools people devise to cope with the world", and ideas work best when they are adaptable. this means, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Menand</span> tells us, that ideas "should never become ideologies -either justifying the status <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">quo</span> or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it." In a sense the entire Adirondack Park embodies a pragmatic concept of nature that is adaptable enough to balance the diverse and sometimes competing values (spiritual, recreational, ecological, utilitarian) that humans impose on the landscape. Lake Lila illustrates on how this concept can work to protect nature on a smaller scale. This is, in turn, provides a model for our research and writing about the Adirondack Park where we seek to examine various aspects of the park with an eye toward devising tools that can help us protect nature in our industrialized, mass-society, world. </p></div></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-92191585992148430602008-09-04T10:01:00.009-04:002008-09-30T12:25:52.025-04:00Back to School in the Adirondacks<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-m-yI9klegL_hpEE9x5cuqdQnJm1F8Js_ZjP4by-vlHQ4eWWNhFhNB5E4IkMDbGVaKughx2Iu2Y315pKjucx_b1DIrifoXB-Z-SunR2Nv9_WMadt3iVqBBklrtfSu_lMlOnTtmB8oj20/s1600-h/raq-school.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5251590165564145234" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-m-yI9klegL_hpEE9x5cuqdQnJm1F8Js_ZjP4by-vlHQ4eWWNhFhNB5E4IkMDbGVaKughx2Iu2Y315pKjucx_b1DIrifoXB-Z-SunR2Nv9_WMadt3iVqBBklrtfSu_lMlOnTtmB8oj20/s400/raq-school.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>As children across New York State return to school this week, Steve and I return to writing our Wilderness and Waterslides blog after a brief hiatus. A few thousand of those children live in the Adirondack Park, and the schools they are returning to are funded in part by taxes New York State pays to local governments on the Adirondack Forest Preserve. A closer look at one of those communities shows why this practice is essential to maintaining the Park's marriage of public and private land.<br /><br />Many towns and counties in the Adirondack Park contain a large percentage of state-owned land. Approximately 80% of the land in Hamilton County, for example, is owned by New York State. Until recently, the Hamilton County town of Raquette Lake operated a two-room public school for children in grades K-6. But declining enrollments made that arrangement impractical, and now the three elementary students who live in Raquette Lake must make a 45 minute journey each way to attend school in Indian Lake. The taxes New York pays on Forest Preserve lands allows Raquette Lake to pay for transportation and tuition for those students. It also allows the town and county to maintain the roads the children travel on, and the Raquette Lake School to stay open as a community meeting place. Throughout the Adirondack Park roads, schools, bridges, and public safety are supported by local taxes paid on state lands that require very few services in return. This makes it possible for permanent residents of the park to maintain viable communities under circumstances where this might otherwise be impossible.<br /><br />Recently the arrangement has been threatened by the November of 2007 decision of acting state Supreme Court Justice Timothy Walker, who found the mix of payments and examptions made by New York on various types of state-owned land to be arbitrary and unfair, and ordered payments to municipalities stopped. Walker then stayed his own decision pending review by higher courts, but his action prompted Assembleywoman Theresa Sayward and State Senator Betty Little, both of whom represent Adirondack districts, to propose a moratorium on purchases of state land until the case is resolved. Senator Little argued that "enough is enough" suggesting that future state land acquisition would interfere with necessary development in the park. Environmental groups such as the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks argued against the proposed moratorium as "counter to the best interests of Adirondack and Catskill residents" since "if the State cannot compete to acquire important lands coming on the market in near future, those very lands could be enrolled under the forest tax law by private landowners, who then receive an 80% tax exemption, thus forcing other landowners to be taxed more to be able to maintain local services."<br /><br /><br />As the events above illustrate, decisions about environmental policy are often made in the political arena where competing values interact in complicated ways. This sometimes leads environmentalists to yearn for a decision-making process that circumvents the messier aspects of democracy. In 1990 environmentalists thought they had such an opportunity when Mario Cuomo put together his Commission on the Adirondack Park in the Twenty-First Century. But the result was policy gridlock and political rancor on a scale unprecendented in the often-turbulent history of the Adirondack Park. If we wish to use the Adirondack Park as one of the world's oldest and largest experiments in marrying public and private land and derive policy lessons for those who would use such arrangements to protect nature in the modern world, we must examine its failures along with its successes. In future posts we will examine the failure of the Commission on the Adirondack Park in the Twenty-first Century with that in mind. Meanwhile we await a decision on Walker's ruling by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court later this fall.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-70925902542979182292008-07-18T10:08:00.001-04:002008-07-18T10:09:39.834-04:00Blow Downs are Natural Disturbances--Part IDisturbance is a natural force, and blow downs are part of nature. This is my view and I stand by it.<br /><br />Disturbances have value and importance in the Adirondack forest. They may be as innocuous as a bear footprint on a decaying log or a winter frost heave on exposed soil. Disturbances may also be as grand as a hundred year flood on a river plain, a fire that burns of days, or the blow down of July 15, 1995. Nature is full of disturbance. In the short term, the disturbance may radically change the ecosystem. For the frost heave, the soil becomes freshly aerated changing the composition of soil bacteria, thin hyphal filaments of fungi shredded, winter hibernacula of insects and amphibians destroyed. The Adirondack blow down opens the forest soil to more sunlight, air flow, and dryer air that affect the birds, amphibians, ferns, insects and microbes. In the long term, nature recovers and the disturbance no matter how grand or how small disappears to the forest.<br /><br />There are three elements of disturbance that are important. First, the type of disturbance sets in place a series of immediate imprints and changes. For example, a fire removes ground vegetation, recycles nutrients, and reduces competition for survivors. A flood on the other hand, inundates the soil and kills seeds, animals, and microbes than can’t survive anoxic conditions. The flood may also deliver a different slate of organisms adapted to periodic soil saturation. <br /><br />The frequency and magnitude of the disturbance are important features that drive the evolution of adaptive traits in organisms. Seasonal floods are frequent and predictable disturbances along some rivers. Thus, if you were to visit a river basin in the lower Mississippi valley or southeastern Atlantic coast in December, you might find a flat dry bed of crusty soil in a bald cypress water tupelo forest. Return to the exact same spot the following April and you might be ten feet underwater. Seasonal flooding selects for tree species whose seed bank remains alive, germinate, growth and reproduction under the influence of disturbance. In this case it is bald cypress and water tupelo that survive and selection works against sugar maple and American beech.<br /><br />The magnitude or size of the disturbance is a final feature of the disturbance that determines the community response. Fires can be so intense, hot and devastating that nothing survives. Fires may also appear as minor, albeit important, occurrences that burn small areas of ground cover. It is important to note that magnitude is not determined by the physical size of the affected area, but more the scale of the impact within an area. In a similar way, meteorologists use the Fujita Scale to measure the magnitude of a tornado in a give area and not the distance traveled by the storm.<br /><br />Why are these features important? The biological response and recovery time to pre-disturbance conditions is determined the type, frequency, and magnitude of the disturbance. Biological organisms and communities adapt to disturbances of predictable nature, rate of occurrence, and size of impact. Many pine forests in the southeastern and western United States are adapted to periodic (on the level of decades), low magnitude fires. The ponderosa pine retains its seeds in closed cones for many years until heat from a fire break the seal on the hard cones and allows the seeds to fall on fresh mineral rich soil days after the area cools. Long leaf pine saplings grow slowly at first. The young growing tissues are insulated from low magnitude fires by a dense covering of green needles. Pitch pine and California Redwoods grow a thick protective bark and self-prune lower branches to protect the canopy from fires that frequently race through their communities. Just like bottomland forests of the lower Mississippi valley have adapted to seasonal floods, many pine lands are adapted for periodic, low intensity, fires. The community does not radically change follow these forms of disturbance.<br /><br />To humans the blow down of July must seem like a massive, unpredictable, once-in-a-lifetime disturbance. Certainly we don’t find organisms adapted to the intense winds experience from 4 to 6 A.M. that day. Trees fell and roots were turned upright. Animal nest and dens were destroyed. The interior of the forest was opened to strongest sunlight, wind and dryness that the soil has experienced in several hundred years. Our concern, sadness, and pain over such a “disaster” elicit emotional and perhaps irrational responses. Do we promptly harvest the wood and plant seedlings to start the process of recovery? Do we harvest the wood to reduce the threat of fire on human settlements? We want to help, but should we? And, would our actions help or hinder the natural process of recovery?<br /><br />My next installments will discuss the pathway to recovery of the Adirondack forests following the 1995 blow down. I will also discuss if this disturbance was truly one of disastrous magnitude and as unpredictable as a short-lived human might believe.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-18448866756628938012008-07-15T09:58:00.003-04:002008-07-15T13:12:48.232-04:00Forever Wild and the Great Blowdown of '95: Part 1Today marks the 13<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span> anniversary of the "Great Adirondack <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Blowdown</span> of 1995." My personal experience with the "Great <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Blowdown</span>" started while I was sleeping soundly in the Staff House at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">SUNY</span> Cortland's Huntington Outdoor Education Center, which is located on a peninsula on the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">roadless</span> eastern shore of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Raquette</span> Lake that is accessible only by boat in the summer, and ice road during the winter. The Huntington Center was <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">originally</span> named Camp Pine Knot, and is justly famous for being the first of the Great Camps of the Adirondacks and the birthplace of William West Durant's "Adirondack Rustic" style of architecture. It was the last day of the "Adirondack Park Policies and Issues" course that I had co-taught for the past week with my colleague and friend, Bob <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Buerger</span>, who was also sound asleep a few bunks away. The Staff House (also known as the Huntington Cabin) is a log cabin that was built by the camp's second owner <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Collis</span> P. Huntington after he acquired the property from William West Durant in the late 1800's. The cabin is made of thick pine logs, and it still has its original glass windows without screens to preserve the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">architectural</span> and historical integrity of the facility. The entrance to the cabin does have a screen door, however, so we left the inner door open when we went to bed to allow fresh air to circulate throughout the cabin since it was extremely hot and humid.<br /><br />Somewhere around dawn the next morning the inner door of the Staff House slammed shut with surprising force. Bob and I sat up and looked groggily over at each other. We heard the sound of a storm raging outside. I concluded that wind from the storm had blown the door shut, and I assumed that Bob had reached the same conclusion since he quickly laid back down. I followed suit and, even though thunder was crashing and the wind was howling outside, I felt secure behind the the thick walls of our cabin and quickly fell back asleep.<br /><br />A little later the Director of the Huntington Center at the time, Joe Pearson, opened the door to our cabin and called in "Are you okay?" Bob and I sat up again and looked at each other less groggily, but more <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">quizzically</span>, than we had earlier since the director rarely visited our cabin and never visited this early in the morning. The sun was shining brightly around our drawn curtains, and the wind was no longer howling outside, so his query made no sense to us. By then he had reached our room and, when he saw that we were obviously just waking up, he said something like, "Don't tell me you slept through all this?" Bob and I looked at each other sheepishly since, whatever "all this" was it was obvious we had indeed slept through it. Joe quickly filled us in. The storm had knocked down trees all over camp. Our students, who were sleeping in a wooden-frame building with open screen windows that faced directly into the path of the storm, had tried to signal us with their flashlights when trees began to fall all around them and they were unable to close their storm windows as rainwater blew through as though someone were throwing it in with a buckets. He concluded by telling us with obvious relief that some buildings around camp had been struck by falling trees, but none of the students or staff had been hurt and only one of the historic buildings had suffered minor damage.<br /><br />After a quick breakfast, Bob, the students, and I went to work helping the Huntington staff with cleanup. They cut fallen trees apart with chainsaws, and we hauled the debris away. At every turn the students took delight in reminding Bob and I that we had slept through what seemed like the end of the world to them. As we worked, news filtered in by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">walkie</span>-talkie from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">SUNY</span> Cortland's Antlers facility on the other side of the lake. Roads were blocked and power was out all over the park, and at least one person had died at the nearby Eighth Lake State Campground when a tree fell on their tent. We briefly considered staying at Huntington for another day to help with cleanup and avoid traveling under what seemed likely to be dangerous conditions but we decided to head home since there was no way for our students to let their friends and families know they were okay because all the land phone lines were down and there was no cell coverage on the peninsula at that time. We drove slowly past emergency crews who were clearing trees and fallen power lines. It is normally a three hour drive from Huntington to our main campus in Cortland, but on that day it took us closer to six hours. The relieved looks on the faces of the people who were there to meet our students told us we had made the right decision since news of the death and destruction caused by the storm had spread quickly to the rest of the state.<br /><br />Over the next several days news reports continued to document the events surrounding what was now being called the "Great <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Blowdown</span>." Five people died as a result of the storm, and many hikers and campers were briefly stranded. Approximately 150,000 acres of forest suffered severe (60% or more of trees affected) or moderate (30-60% of trees affected) damage. A few months later a proposal emerged to salvage timber from trees on the Adirondack Forest Preserve that had fallen during the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">blowdown</span>. The precedent for this proposal was the timber salvage operation that took place on Forest Preserve land following a large cyclonic storm that damaged trees in large areas of the Adirondacks in 1950. As in 1950, the legality of the 1995 salvage proposal hinged on the interpretation of the Forever Wild Clause of the New York State Constitution. Since the Forever Wild Clause is arguably one the strongest laws ever established in the area of environmental protection, its origins are worth examining.<br /><br />The creation of the Adirondack Park in 1892 did not halt logging on state-owned lands within its boundaries, nor the sale and exchange of prime sections of Forest Preserve to timber companies, so conservationists went to work during New York's constitutional convention of 1894 to change this. Eventually they were able to secure passage of the Forever Wild Clause, which stated that: "The Lands of the State, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the Forest Preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed, or destroyed."<br /><br /><br />The significance of the Forever Wild Clause is manifest in three ways: Its inspiring language ("forever kept as wild forest lands"), the extra protection (delay and referendum)afforded by its status as part of the New York State Constitution, and the historical impact of the last minute addition of the words "or destroyed" to the original language of the amendment. Later this summer we will travel to Lake Lila to see how the Adirondack forest has fared in the thirteen years following the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">blowdown</span>, and in subsequent posts we will examine the policy lessons the Forever Wild Clause provides for those interested in preserving natural ecosystems in the modern world.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-58174949371516016922008-06-24T08:49:00.005-04:002008-06-25T08:52:55.651-04:00Bicknell's Thrush and the Adirondack Park: Historical ContextOur pursuit of Bicknell's Thrush started with a three hour car trip from Cortland to the Adirondack Park. We traveled north on Rte 81 to Syracuse through U-shaped valleys carved out by glaciers, then headed east on the New York State Thruway across the plain created after the last ice age when ancient Lake Iroquois drained to leave behind modern Great Lake Ontario. We exited the Thruway at Rome, and took Rte 365 northeast to Rte. 28 on the last leg of our journey. Soon we started to see sandy soil and rolling hills dotted with glacial erratics, telltale signs that we were nearing the Adirondacks. Eventually the perfume of balsam fir in the air and frequent sightings of some of the more than 3,000 Adirondack lakes and ponds announced that we had reached our destination.<br /><br />Despite the fact that the landscape was shouting "Adirondacks" at us, it was not easy to determine when we actually entered the park. The entrance was marked only by a surprisingly unobtrusive brown and yellow wooden sign that was visible through our car windows for perhaps 10 seconds. There was no kiosk, no stop sign, no entrance fee, no posted regulations, no map and no pamphlets. As we continued driving we saw stretches of road lined with homes and businesses alternating with stretches of road lined with forest. If we had missed the entrance sign, and it seems reasonable to assume that many travelers do, there was nothing to distinguish the landscape inside the park from the landscape outside the park.<br /><br />About twenty minutes after we entered the park we reached the hamlet of Old Forge. Only a few people were in evidence along its five-mile-long stretch of restaurants, gift shops, and tourist attractions where, later in the summer, thousands visitors often bring traffic to a near standstill. On a previous visit to Old Forge we stopped at the parking lot of its biggest tourist attraction, the Enchanted Forest Water Safari theme park, and asked several patrons if they might tell us where the Adirondack Park was. They invariably told us they weren't sure where it was, even though they were many miles inside the Park's borders. Given that only one small sign out of the hundreds that lined Rte. 28 even mentioned the park it is not surprising that many visitors fail to recognize that they are actually inside the largest park in the contiguous U.S. Since Enchanted Forest was not yet open on this visit we did not repeat our experiment, but continued on to Long Lake and our appointment with Joan Collins, who conducts an annual survey of Bicknell's Thrush that is described in detail in Steve's earlier posts.<br /><br />After a delightful dinner with Joan, and a somewhat less satisfactory night's sleep, we started out at 2:30AM for Blue Mountain by car. We arrived at the trailhead at 2:45 and started our hike almost immediately. There was no moon so we could see only the small area in front of us that was illuminated by our headlamps and flashlights. In our haste to reach the summit we hiked mostly in silence (except for my increasingly heavy breathing). When we stopped briefly to peel off some layers and catch our breath, I glanced at the pamphlet we had picked up at the trailhead. The first thing it described was the mixture of public and private land in the Adirondack Park, noting that the trail up Blue starts out in private land and ends on state land, but there was no mention as to where this occurred, and I wondered briefly if there would be any way to tell when this happened.<br /><br />I soon forgot about looking for the dividing line between public and private land and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. In just under two hours we reached the summit. Joan quietly sat down with her legs tucked underneath her, spread her charts on the rocks in front of her, and clicked off her headlamp. Steve and I moved about 30 feet away and he quickly assembled his parabolic microphone and digital recorder. For the next twenty minutes Joan sat almost motionless, occasionally turning on her headlamp and leaning forward to make a brief note on her chart while Steve trained his microphone on the various birds that were vocalizing around us.<br /><br />When her time was up Joan moved on to her next survey point and Steve moved around the summit tracking birds with his recording gear. Grateful for the chance to rest my leg muscles before we headed back down the mountain, I pulled my hat down around my ears to ward off the chill breeze and watched the sun rise over the cell tower that dominated the south side of the summit. The stark contrast between the cell tower and the surrounding spruce forest brought back to mind the public/private character of the Adirondack Park that the pamphlet now folded in my pocket had started me thinking about on our way up the mountain, and I continued thinking about the divided nature of the park as I looked down at the lights that dotted the shorelines of lakes off in the distance and the car headlights that followed the thin thread of highway that linked Raquette Lake and Blue Mountain Lake. When the sun hid behind the clouds that had rolled in just as we neared the summit, I sought shelter behind a large rock and thought about how this arrangement had come to pass.<br /><br />The mixture of public and private lands found in the park has its origin in the natural history of the Adirondacks. The region's short growing season, nutrient poor and often poorly drained soil, and rugged terrain determined that Adirondack forests were not settled and cleared for agriculture as were those in much of the rest of New York. In the mid-1800's wood and timber products fueled the industrial revolution in the U.S. in much the same manner as petroleum fuels our modern economy, and loggers went to work in the Adirondack forests in earnest. The accelerated pace of logging in the Adirondacks brought about one of the first political coalitions devoted to protecting the environment. This coalition was a curious blend of early conservationists and downstate business interests who derived from George Perkin Marsh's influential 1864 book <em>Man and Nature</em> the idea that the destruction of the Adirondack Forests threatened the watershed upon which the Hudson River and the Erie Canal depended.<br /><br />In 1872 this coalition realized their first victory when the New York Assembly appointed a commission to recommend actions for protecting the Adirondacks. In 1885 the State Legislature created the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which consisted mainly of scattered parcels of logged-over land previously acquired through non-payment of taxes totaling about 681,000 acres. Although the enabling legislation for the Adirondack Forest Preserve stated that it would "be forever kept as wild forest lands" conservationists kept pushing for stronger protection, and in 1892 the legislature drew a blue line around the scattered Adirondack Forest Preserve holdings and declared that "all lands now owned or hereafter acquired by the state" within specified Adirondack counties and towns "shall constitute the Adirondack Park." The Park's creators left the difficult task of deciding how to deal with the private land that fell within the Park's boundaries, and the people who were living on that land, to future politicians.<br /><br />As we started back down the mountain I concluded that we were fortunate to have ended up with the Adirondack Park's large-scale marriage of public and private land. Steve's post on the likely extinction of Bicknell's Thrush illustrates the enormous threats facing nature today. It is obvious that nowhere in the world will we be able to protect natural ecosystems solely by using what E. O. Wilson (in his 1992 classic <em>The Diversity of Life</em>) called the "bunker" approach of placing large areas of land in public ownership. Instead, we will need to create parks and preserves that combine public and private land, and the Adirondack Park provides us with abundant examples of things that have worked, and things that haven't, to learn from as we strive to create parks that are up to the challenges facing nature in the modern world.<br /><br />One of the difficulties of creating parks that marry public and private land is that the contest between nature and private enterprise is so heavily weighted in favor of the latter. Joan is usually alone when she hikes up Adirondack peaks in pursuit of Bicknell's Thrush and often finds herself singing loudly as she hikes to "keep the bears away." It is safe to say that, if the payoff for the hike were a thousand dollars rather than a few glimpses of an endangered bird, she'd have a lot more company. But surveys confirm what Joan's lonely hikes suggest: love of nature is a widely, but not deeply, held value for most individuals. As a result environmental interests are at a distinct disadvantage compared to economic interests when they must settle their differences in the arena of democratic politics. The Adirondack Park's "Forever Wild" clause and its land use plan help to balance these interests, and we plan to explore both in future posts.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-31004469701723256092008-06-17T10:03:00.005-04:002008-06-17T11:25:00.181-04:00Adirondack Forest and Brown-headed Cowbirds<div><div>The Brown-headed Cowbird is a brood parasite that lays eggs in the nests of other birds for the host species to raise. The cowbird has been observed to lay its eggs in the nests of <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcytkHNPbHyJLAlHWAeDHXXxh5QEn-BpgcNFsL4KzAbThcAHKeDMnUAsG6vF7iN_KiF8GBrfKI34W61hAphUGktVMTY2cujihzt2APXNcQt-vig1ubixrb7BbNEbxYXXodAeYy1-xF2s/s1600-h/brown-headed-cowbird.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5212871277882960738" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" height="191" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFcytkHNPbHyJLAlHWAeDHXXxh5QEn-BpgcNFsL4KzAbThcAHKeDMnUAsG6vF7iN_KiF8GBrfKI34W61hAphUGktVMTY2cujihzt2APXNcQt-vig1ubixrb7BbNEbxYXXodAeYy1-xF2s/s320/brown-headed-cowbird.jpg" width="219" border="0" /></a>more than 220 host species in North America. Brood parasitism by the cowbird is one of many recent disturbances believed to contribute to the decline of North American songbirds.</div><br /><div></div><div>The brown-headed cowbird is formerly a prairie species that followed bison migrations. The colonization of North America by European settlers, their westward expansion and destruction of virgin forests has contributed to a rapid eastward spread of cowbird populations. This expansion has allowed cowbirds to parasitze nests of forest bird species because forests are now fragmented between field, meadows, and open areas where cowbirds forage. One solution to managing cowbird populations may be to increase the size of forest plots where cowbirds are unable to parasitize nests deep within the forests. Such is the case and plans for ecologists and ornithologists in southern Illinois.</div><br /><div></div><div>Earlier today, I examined the 2000-2005 breeding bird atlas for the brown-headed cowbird in New York State. The following graph shows that the cowbird is largely absent from the Adirondack region. Despite an ample supply of host species (warblers, thrushes, vireos, sparrows, and flycatchers) in the ADK, the numbers of putative breeding cowbirds is very low. Perhaps this is one of many favorable ecological consequences of land management practices in the Adirondacks. The large tracks of land with pristine forests limit access to brown-headed cowbirds and, therefore, reduce the negative effects of brood parasitism.<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5212869529122769970" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglAPOy_4czywJrI8MQGLIEddsEPMDM5gjNJNdFsrc08Kh6uJP0OwsvyceGKied-_LsKB-NRdlVFQSpJZxt-QapomEaeDwrp6MgrQrnh-srATdA1QbMdK52oukIjb3hJ740PzBrB16vxAA/s400/bhco.gif" border="0" /></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-8727489923794979852008-06-14T10:03:00.003-04:002008-06-14T10:13:21.471-04:00Bicknell's Threats Stretch Beyond the ADKFew people will ever see or hear this remarkable bird before it goes extinct by 2100. Although its numbers are not in immediate peril, this relative of the American Robin, Wood Thrush, and Eastern Bluebird is plagued with human-induced, chronic environmental health problems that show no signs of disappearing.<br /> Bicknell’s thrush probably exploited the narrow band of boreal-like conditions just south of the ice pack during the peak of glaciation 18-25,000 years ago in North America. As the climate warmed and the glaciers melted, breeding populations of Bicknell’s thrush followed the spruce forest northward each year during spring migration. This forest continued their march northward and some jumped on the escalator delivering them to higher altitudes in the Catskills and Adirondacks of New York, the White/Green Mountains of Vermont, and the mountain ridges of Maine. Some populations became established in Maine and southeastern Canada. Today breeding populations are generally found in suitable habitat above 3500 feet in the ADK.<br /> It is no longer a secret that the climate is warming. Forest communities in the Adirondacks continue to seek out the ground where the appropriate climate for their survival, growth, and reproduction. This means that the spruce fir forests are moving up peaks in the northeast. As the forest migrates to new heights, their total area declines as one might expect from simple geometric analysis on pinnacles. The rules are simple: higher forest, smaller habitat, fewer birds, and greater risk of extinction. Although the Adrondack mountains are growing at a blistering rate of 3 mm per year, global warming and climate change have and will continue to outpace mountain growth. Thus, sometime in the next century the optimal climate for spruce/fir forests will be gone from most of the northeastern United States.<br /> Climate change brings the nails to the coffin on Bicknell’s inevitable death, but it doesn’t seal its fate. Some believe there is still time to help the species. Population numbers are still high. Perhaps populations can adapt to the rising deciduous forests or migrate further north. Perhaps, the climate change nail will rust before its time.<br /> Other nails exist and are currently being driven into Bicknell’s coffin. The industrial revolution of the 19th and 20th century has brought about atmospheric and ecosystem changes that have had a greater impact in the Adirondacks and northeastern United States more so than anywhere else in the country. Coal burning powerplants in the Midwest facilitated this countries growth and industrial boom. Smokestacks were built high to carry the coal emissions far away in the overhead airstream. As sulfates, mercury, and nitrates dissolved in atmospheric water vapor the pH of the water becomes more acidic. Eventually these pollutants fall over the northeastern mountain peaks in snow and rain precipitation.<br /> Until recently the atmospheric pollutants in the Adirondacks seemed to affect lake chemistry the most. Acidified lakes experienced a shift in types of plankton and lost fish species. Many western Adirondack species are now left with the legacy of no fish and low pH from acid precipitation. Aquatic bacteria in the ponds and lakes converted mercury deposition to the toxic methyl mercury. This in turn has bioaccumulated and magnified in fish and higher order predators such as loons and eagles. In the mountains, acid precipitation altered soil chemistry by leaching important cations and increasing the availability of aluminum in the soil. Aquatic bacteria in the ponds and lakes converted mercury deposition to the toxic methyl mercury. This in turn has bioaccumulated and magnified in fish and higher order predators such as loons and eagles. Spruces seemed to be most affected by acid precipitation and exhibit excessive winter kill of yearling needles. To Bicknell’s thrush all of the problems associated with acid precipitation appeared to be downhill and out of reach.<br /> Then in 2005, Rimmer, McFarland, Evers and colleagues reported that Bicknell’s thrush blood serum contained levels of mercury and methyl mercury that were usually associated with wetland bird species such as northern waterthrush and common loon. These results surprised the researchers and ecotoxicologists because a montane bird species with a diet based on terrestrial invertebrates shouldn’t experience methyl mercury contamination. The results implicated two potential sources of mercury contamination in Bicknell’s territory. On breeding grounds, a previously unknown mechanism of terrestrial conversion of methylmercury in leaf litter followed by bioaccumulation in soil invertebrates. Methylmercury may then biomagnify across the invertebrate food chain and into Bicknell’s diet. A second source of methylmercury accumulation now appears likely on Bicknell’s winter habitat on the island of Hispaniola. The concern for Bicknell’;s thrush and other exposed songbirds is that methylmercury toxicity may lead to behavioral problems and reproductive failures as has been observed in Adirondack loons.<br /> If the two nails, global climate change and mercury poisoning, don’t seal the coffin, then perhaps the third problem of winter habitat degradation will. Bicknell’s thrush spends its winter in montane forests on the island of Hispaniola. This island is divided between two nations of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Poverty, government instability, and excessive human population have resulted in intensive land use and deforestation in Haiti. Wood is the staple energy and heating source for Haitians. Periodic changes in government environmental practices and philosophies in the Dominican Republic keep Bicknell’s habitat walking a thin thread between hope and gloom. In short, Bicknell’s thrush has troubles on both ends of its migration.<br /> The recent quest for clean renewable energy has developed new concerns for montane birds in the northeastern United States. Wind farms have been proposed in prime Bicknell’s habitat on mountain ridges in Maine and Gore Mountain in New York. Environmentalist have temporarily beaten down these proposals, but as the price of oil continues to rise and humans become more desperate for clean energy the halt may only be temporary. No one knows whether wind farms will have a negative impact on Bicknell’s thrush, but it is certainly another encroachment on a species in decline.<br /> Only time will tell if these concerns err on the side of extreme pessimism. Biology and evolution has clever solutions to a multitude of problems. Perhaps Bicknell’s thrush will evolve a strategy to utilize breeding habitats further north or adapt to new plant communities on the rise in the Adirondacks. Both scenario present Bicknell’s thrush with new social struggles and competitive challenges that will need to be solved.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-68504349055668275232008-06-09T12:09:00.003-04:002008-08-27T20:42:13.951-04:00Citizen Science in the Adirondacks<div>Mountain Birdwatch is one example of “citizen science” conducted in Adirondack Park. Citizen science is the opportunity for homeowners, landowners, volunteers, and organizations to participate in scientific censuses and endeavors. The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology has popularized citizen science through programs such as Project Feeder Watch, The Great Backyard Bird Count, and surveys of declining species such as Scarlet Tanager and Cerulean Warbler. The number of opportunities for citizen science are increasing and several national/global programs include Monarch Watch, Journey North, All Taxa Biodiversity (<a href="http://www.discoverlifeinamerica.org/atbi/index.shtml">http://www.discoverlifeinamerica.org/atbi/index.shtml</a>), GLOBE at Night (<a href="http://www.globe.gov/GaN/">http://www.globe.gov/GaN/</a>), World Water Monitoring Day (<a href="http://www.worldwatermonitoringday.org/">http://www.worldwatermonitoringday.org/</a>). One of the longer standing citizen science programs is the annual Christmas Bird Count sponsored by the Audubon Society.<br /><br />Citizen science actively engages youth and the public in research and education. Participants are provided with training, education, information, and opportunity to learn about the process of science. Discussions and exchanges with scientists is an active means of information dissemination and awareness education directly with the public. In promoting their research, trained scientists gain access to a larger geographical area and time-sensitive data can be collected much more efficiently with volunteer scientists.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfDYL0Qh2Z33-EENtR9iHs1qPAzip6x1b8fC7QYgjPzTydq1anyPtuGA_FztbRnv4XLYDspjV3R-xLOpM5CGRrL20u7PVDybtNE1GsznN3DPeaPKPI4GEQw7WIeTziGSbvQe8J-bad4gQ/s1600-h/Merlin-1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209921293640462098" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfDYL0Qh2Z33-EENtR9iHs1qPAzip6x1b8fC7QYgjPzTydq1anyPtuGA_FztbRnv4XLYDspjV3R-xLOpM5CGRrL20u7PVDybtNE1GsznN3DPeaPKPI4GEQw7WIeTziGSbvQe8J-bad4gQ/s200/Merlin-1.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />New York State has been blessed with many citizen science programs that document biodiversity throughout the state. The New York State Breeding Bird Atlas is one such program sponsored through the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation in collaboration with Cornell University. From 2000 to 2005, more than 1200 volunteers documented the breeding status of 250 bird species in 5,532 (3 x 3 mile) blocks throughout the state. The breeding Bird Atlas provides important baseline data for examining changes in bird distributions and land use management. In comparison with BBA data from 1985, this program has documented the decline of some Adirondack species such as the Spruce Grouse, but also shown an increase in the Northern Parula and the new appearance and successful breeding of the Merlin. These later two species are nearly exclusive Adirondack breeders in New York State.<br /><br />Adirondack Park is an ideal region for citizen science programs to prosper. The 6 million plus acres with more than 3000 ponds and lakes, more than 100 peaks above 3000 feet, great habitat diversity, and isolated wilderness constitutes tremendous logistical problems for scientists who need access to critical time sensitive data. Bicknell’s thrush presents one such challenge. The species is difficult to find on Adirondack peaks, has an abbreviated vocal period on diurnal and seasonal clocks, and occupies a challenging to navigate habitat. Mountain Birdwatch provides valuable data and observation on Bicknell’s and other montane bird species to researchers such as Dan Lambert (<a href="http://www.vtecostudies.org/">http://www.vtecostudies.org/</a>).<br /><br />Other citizen science programs exist in Adirondack Park. The World Conservation Society’s Loon Program with more that 500 volunteers conducts an annual census of Common Loons on Adirondack lakes and ponds for one hour on a Saturday in July. Volunteers count the numbers of loon adults, chicks, and juveniles seen on their section of water during the hour. The data allows the WCS to track habitat changes, and population trends of this environmentally sensitive species. The Common Loon is recovering from environmental threats such as lake acidification, habitat change, water traffic, lead poisoning from leaded fishing sinkers, mercury deposition from coal burning plants, and periodic outbreaks of avian botulism in the Great Lakes Region. In 2007, the Loon Program counted 681 adults, chicks, and immature loons on lakes in the Adirondack Region. These data allowed the WCS to estimate that the total Adirondack population has doubled since a census conducted in the 1980s.<br /><a href="http://www.wcs.org/media/file/LoonCensusSummaryResults.2007.pdf">http://www.wcs.org/media/file/LoonCensusSummaryResults.2007.pdf</a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVt6kDh8ALBeArBNm8WI6PNkOCyL5Lltt8U7eEazSMfATR0gATtTNaU6gAyyoI0rPNuesoalVeS7J7cTQ5-TyfzbdziCndohh2ZxEFIHDxA3H8Qc7PZtilJfVMMvPudESny5pP9yYac8/s1600-h/milfoil.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209917510800529202" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsVt6kDh8ALBeArBNm8WI6PNkOCyL5Lltt8U7eEazSMfATR0gATtTNaU6gAyyoI0rPNuesoalVeS7J7cTQ5-TyfzbdziCndohh2ZxEFIHDxA3H8Qc7PZtilJfVMMvPudESny5pP9yYac8/s320/milfoil.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />In recent decades, the Adirondack lakes have experience invasions of numerous roadside and aquatic weeds. Terrestrial plants such as garlic mustard and purple loosestrife are high quantity seed producers and spread prolifically by underground stems. These features together with few native predators or herbivores provide opportunities for these weeds to out compete many native species. In aquatic ecosystems, Eurasian milfoil is an invasive species capable of choking rivers, ponds and lakes. Milfoil alters natural nutrient cycles, dissolved oxygen, and light penetration and may indirectly affect aquatic macro invertebrates and fish. Citizen scientists volunteer through the Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program to document and monitor the spread of invasive species in the park. Stores, boat docks, and parks often display information warning advising boaters to check their gear for Eurasian Milfoil and to report new populations.<br /><a href="http://www.adkinvasives.com/">http://www.adkinvasives.com/</a><br /><br />The Adirondacks will continue as a model park for integrating volunteer stewardship and citizen science into educational outreach and scientific research. The combination of public and private lands interwoven into a matrix permit accessibility of researchers to isolate areas, effective sentinels for water quality and invasive weeds, and the rare opportunity for citizens to participate on scientific endeavors. These opportunities foster ownership and community pride in possession of unique biodiversity and the inoculation of communities and visitors with science education. Citizen science will undoubtedly become more important in the Adirondacks as climate change continues and federal funds for research diminish.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-64195872191657147042008-06-07T06:58:00.009-04:002008-08-27T20:42:18.021-04:00Chasing Bicknell's Thrush"…only a freak ornithologist would think of leaving the trails [on Mt. Mansfield] for more than a few feet. The discouragingly dense tangles in which Bicknell's Thrushes dwell have kept their habits long wrapped in mystery” (George Wallace 1939).<br />Quote taken from VINS-2008 (http://www.vinsweb.org/cbd/mtn_birdwatch.html)<br /><br />You will find Joan Collins and her son William as members #4756 and 4755 on the registry of the Adirondack Forty-sixer Club. Membership in this elite club is guaranteed to those who carefully execute and document the completed hikes of the forty-six Adirondack peaks above 4000 feet. Joan and William climbed the fourth highest peak, Skylight Mountain, on October 8, 2000 to complete their quest to become 46ers.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwKMF0FnX9l4-J47AbOtj72duaIucn7CA71T3s2ATODYa-A1ZaC2i-KeaYxOalW8Q1XY05MJF_eSMzGvx_EcJ8bk5Tp35Ajx-8j7uUkKAre5PsySf4E95YnnNrv1UOOIdjQPg-YrEMyIw/s1600-h/Joan-collins.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209094722761590946" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwKMF0FnX9l4-J47AbOtj72duaIucn7CA71T3s2ATODYa-A1ZaC2i-KeaYxOalW8Q1XY05MJF_eSMzGvx_EcJ8bk5Tp35Ajx-8j7uUkKAre5PsySf4E95YnnNrv1UOOIdjQPg-YrEMyIw/s200/Joan-collins.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />At least 6000 others have completed the requirements for membership, but few have accomplished this goal over a 14 month time period as William did at age 8. Climbers of the forty-six peaks face boulder fields, stream crossings, steep slopes, wilderness, occasional bears, snow, ice, and weather conditions that are constantly changing. It is not unusual to start out at a base altitude in 70 degree, sunny weather to experience hours of cold winds, fog, snow or ice above 4000 feet. The accomplishment of Joan and William attests to her determination, drive, passion, and attention to detail she models in all aspects of her professional, family, recreational, and volunteer life. These attributes shape Joan’s impact on bird conservation and education in Adirondack Park.<br /><br />Joan became interested in birds in 2001 under the tutelage of Elliot Adams who was the Mayor of Sharon Spring, NY. He noted Joan’s interest in birds and spent the next 30 days teaching her to identify birds. She was addicted. Her early observations on finding barred owl nestlings and witnessing the white-winged crossbill irruption of 2001 cemented her interest in field ornithology. She eagerly studied and learned the plumages and vocalizations of every bird she encountered. Joan learned quickly and was proficient enough in bird identification to lead her first bird field trip in June 2001(?). A summer doesn’t go by without Joan leading local field trips in the Long Lake region of the Adirondacks.<br /><br />Joan’s love and enthusiasm for birds grew exponentially. She edited newsletters for the local Audubon society, and by 2005 she had been elected President of the influential High Peaks Audubon Society. Joan has completed surveys for the breeding bird survey as well as the New York State breeding bird atlas, and has written and edited species accounts for the later. Joan’s wrap-sheet of newsletter writings, field trips, and surveys is two arm-lengths long. Joan’s writing includes a first-hand account of snow burrowing in common redpolls. Common redpolls move south to the Adirondacks in winter.<br /><br />I wrote Joan in July 2006 inquiring on how and when to find Bicknell’s Thrush on Blue Mountain. Bicknell’s Thrush is for the most part a quiet bird that nests in high elevation balsam fir and red spruce forests in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. These forests above 4000 feet are dense tangles of dead trees and dark needle bearing trees and shrubs. Although the forest is short (10-25 feet), the thick dark foliage and blow down trees make the forest impenetrable off the trail. It is very easy to become disoriented just feet from the trail. These robin-sized, dark birds are impossible to see unless they are perched on the end of branches singing.<br /><br />Bicknell’s thrush received formal recognition as a unique species at the annual meeting of the American Ornithological Union in Cincinnati, Ohio. Their decision was based on the seminal research of Canadian Ornithologist Henri Ouellet published in 1993. Formerly treated as a subspecies of the more common Gray-checked Thrush, Bicknell’s had been essentially understudied since discovered by Eugene Bicknell in 1881 in the Catskill Mountains. (http://www.ns.ec.gc.ca/wildlife/bicknells_thrush/e/species_is_born.html). The rugged landscape and habitat of Adirondack High Peaks, the Catskills, and locations in VT and NH made studies at best difficult. Bicknell’s thrush differs from Gray-checked Thrush slightly in color and few physical features such as wing dimensions that make precise identification of these birds in migration a challenge even for skilled ornithologist. Nevertheless, the Ouellet study provided a firm foundation for recognition of Bicknell’s Thrush as a separate species. Although the songs and calls of these species sound very similar to humans, Bicknell’s doesn’t respond or react to gray-checked songs when their played in the field. The two species have separate breeding grounds and some molecular data suggests that Bicknell’s may be more closely related to another thrush called the Veery. Subsequently, Lambert, Rimmer, and Goetz have established that Bicknell’s winters on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles. Gray-checked thrush winters in Central America.<br /><br />Joan responded to my email request that Blue Mountain in Hamilton County had a stable and relatively large population of Bicknell’s thrush. She indicated that dawn or dusk was the best time to hear and see this bird. The tone of her email suggested the bird is a finicky singer preferring clear skies, cool temperatures, and no winds. Because the bird hides well in the spruce/fir foliage, Joan suggested that June and September were the best months to see the birds when they are at the peak of singing performance. In June, the birds are preparing to nest and mate, and in September juvenile birds are practicing their newly acquired singing ability.<br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209094290878463378" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkxeVSd3ndG9i60_TSMQ_LsIXmW5uL3DLfxlZ-Q1ImC5M_Ld9P94BsflKAFSQJDbliiEBUqcjToNm21AHJv0B0jBpV2AS6dLFgwLJSzO4VmB2R8fI5bJn1LRTVMwcOcx1ntgJLYpLBR0Y/s200/raq-sunrise-1-crop.jpg" border="0" /><br />The past two years, I have tried on three separate occasions to see and hear Bicknell's Thrush on Blue Mountain in the Adirondacks. For the past 15 years I have taught a three-week field biology course at fifteen miles away at Raquette Lake during August. The timing and relative proximity to Blue Mtn. seem to provide a good opportunity. In August 2006 and 2007, several students from my Field Biology class departed Raquette Lake at 4 A.M. to begin the hike up Blue at 4:30 A.M. The trip was also repeated in June 2007 with my son, Cory, and Tom Pasquarello. Although we chose beautiful mornings for hikes, I only heard three "veeer" calls with the bird remaining hidden.<br /><br />We were determined<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUuPChSTQ3ku4mhD5Oqm4EwMSYNzO13TJ2yqeoZeMnknLS2tUQVR1aPKzaJoHCOJmm5dM9oMoLBtCbZEd2skZju5ERA9H2zf8f5GAHPXeys41A8qyIzhNHE4rivXqbv_ytSW0agxAOoe0/s1600-h/early-view-from-blue.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209095260119896290" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUuPChSTQ3ku4mhD5Oqm4EwMSYNzO13TJ2yqeoZeMnknLS2tUQVR1aPKzaJoHCOJmm5dM9oMoLBtCbZEd2skZju5ERA9H2zf8f5GAHPXeys41A8qyIzhNHE4rivXqbv_ytSW0agxAOoe0/s200/early-view-from-blue.jpg" border="0" /></a> for 2008 to have different results. On June 2, 2008, Tom and I rolled into Long Lake to stay at the home of Joan Collins. Joan’s home is in a rustic setting on 140 acres overlooking Long Lake. Black-throated blue warblers, ovenbirds, and hermit thrush sang near the porch of her home. At dusk common loons howled from the lake below and barred owls hooted in the surrounding forest.<br /><br />We learned about Mountain Birdwatch during Joan’s vegetable lasagna dinner. Mountain Birdwatch was organized by the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) Darryl Lee McGrath, a journalist from SUNY Albany, brought salad and fresh bread and I shared some of the cucumber soup made for my wife’s birthday the day prior. Darryl was working on a booking examining New York endangered bird species and the people who study them.<br /><br />Joan laid out the plans for our ascent on Blue: 1:45 a.m. wake-call; 2:30 departure; 2:45 arrival at trailhead and 4:00 arrival to the Blue Mountain peak. Joan would sit, observe, and listen for white-throated sparrow, winter wren, Bicknell’s thrush, blackpoll warbler, Swainson’s thrush from five pre-determined points near the mountain top. We were instructed to be quiet and not move a muscle during these census periods. Joan would record the relative locations of calling, singing, and visual birds within a 50 m radius from her location. This information would be noted on a circular graph that would be filled with the bird species four-letter code (BITH for Bicknell’s Thrush) and lines drawn to indicate birds responding to songs and calls.<br /><br />Blue Mountain (elevation 3759 feet) stands as a majestic pinnacle in the skyline from Raquette Lake. During August, the sunrises over Blue and the sunset paints the mountain with beautiful colors. In my early years at SUNY Cortland, several warned me of the dangers of hiking Blue Mountain with a class. The trail runs along an old creek bed with basketball sized rocks. The upper third of the trail is steeper with smooth surfaced rocks that are slippery when wet. The trail poses many business opportunities for orthopedic surgeons. My family’s first ascent of Blue occurred in when my children were 5 and 7 years of age. The trip up and back took five hours. The kids thought the hike was punishment, the parents thought is was an endurance test on our patience.<br /><br />The wake-up knock on the door arrived as planned. There wasn’t much sleep between 9 p.m. and 1:45 a.m. as the barred owl outside the window gave short performances all night. The Adirondack sky at 2 a.m. was very dark. The brilliant Milky Way belt cut the sky in half from north to south. Joan zipped along the curvaceous road from Long Lake to Blue Mountain in her Toyota Prius. My Saturn GLS was racing to stay within site of Joan’s Prius.<br /><br />At 2:45 a.m., after signing in at the trailhead, we began the hike. It was a mental challenge to make our bodies work to avoid treacherous rocks. The forest was dark and silent except for headlights and the sounds of rubber hiking boot heels hitting rocks and rayon sliding past rayon on our legs. At five feet, Joan has a small stature, but appears natural, confident, and surefooted in walking the mountain in the predawn hours. She carries a backpack with clipboard, extra clothes, water, and essential items. I don’t know the weight of the backpack, but the size was easily half the height of Joan.<br /><br />Joan often completes the Blue Mountain hike and survey alone and in the dark. Her stories describe other feats of bravery in the name of bird surveys. Pillsbury and Kempshall Mountain are two other peaks where Joan completes surveys alone. Kempshall sounds like a hell-filled climb requiring trail blazing and camping overnight. She recalls encountering two lost soles on a recent Kempshall excursion who eventually followed her to the summit for a cold night of unexpected “roughing-it.” The next morning Joan led the two beleaguered gentlemen out of the forest and back to their car.<br /><br />We stopped occasionally to remove extra layers of clothes and once at a small stream that crossed the trail. Joan spoke of how this stream with small shrubs has attracted at least one breeding Canada Warbler which was new to this trail. The trail was dark except for the occasional reflection of streaming water or the whitish glow of hobblebush flowers littering the ground. The clear, cool, early morning hours changed as we approached the mountain. A grayish black cover began to block out the Milky Way and a dull roar of wind moved the forest overhead.<br /><br />At precisely 3:55 A.M. we heard our first Bicknell’s thrush sing a couple of hundred feet below the summit. We froze in our tracks and listened intently. My heart pounded with excitement and for a moment I stopped breathing. Joan heard other distant calls and then instructed us to remain quiet on our final approach to the summit. The final trek passed quickly with great anticipation and the summit was reached by 4:15 A.M.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkv0PYBe7gahPea95oPcJkWQwgebHDJdWrmYRG-F-q7u6cgmSGvtip9aeklQIAhY-dCagfUXp_0FC1icDbXx0Y57se5MzaetgqYYJ5nLLD15dbCWs8O9TIvCY_3yBijdPcnawFkL136PA/s1600-h/joans-notes-2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209093150924940674" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkv0PYBe7gahPea95oPcJkWQwgebHDJdWrmYRG-F-q7u6cgmSGvtip9aeklQIAhY-dCagfUXp_0FC1icDbXx0Y57se5MzaetgqYYJ5nLLD15dbCWs8O9TIvCY_3yBijdPcnawFkL136PA/s200/joans-notes-2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Joan quickly established a work platform with headlamp and notes on a flat working surface. The mountain has a lone fire tower and an acre of exposed granite surrounded by dense Christmas tree shaped firs and spruces. Our signal to remain still arrived precisely at 4:30 A.M. when Joan announced the time. Quickly Joan started listening and recording the locations and behavior of the five target species on the summit. I used the direction of Joan’s headlamp and her slight head movements to identify the direction of important bird vocalizations.<br /><br />Several thrushes were in the dwarf forest to our left (west) and uttered several different calls. One eager singer was volleying between singing posts just downhill from our position. My ears perked with excitement. Even Pasquarello had an intense look upon his face. I believe he was studying the method and intensity of Joan recording notes and listening for birds. During the ten minute summit observation period, Joan noted four Bicknell’s thrushes, one Swainson’s thrush, and one white-throated sparrow. The summit winter wrens did not begun to sing until after Joan departed for census point 2. In the early morning hours of June 3, 2008, Joan recorded 19 bird species across all five census points. This included a total of 8 Bicknell’s thrushes.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUQ-oxFzM-ukAI5XkwdKaC-wxHbKeGt4MM1kk9XGw3hLDIfREQCJKmeqRotYpMSGQvirtRdLbl2T7FfRsiVnbfvFb42dqL6HuTU3hENuxU9i5_kWIVg8o3kanIRplIz63e22rkLVE9UzI/s1600-h/pasq-bick-hab.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209093853968406050" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUQ-oxFzM-ukAI5XkwdKaC-wxHbKeGt4MM1kk9XGw3hLDIfREQCJKmeqRotYpMSGQvirtRdLbl2T7FfRsiVnbfvFb42dqL6HuTU3hENuxU9i5_kWIVg8o3kanIRplIz63e22rkLVE9UzI/s200/pasq-bick-hab.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Tom and I remained on the summit for nearly an hour following the count. Except for a brief tracking of a Bicknell’s thrush on the western slope we remained quiet and in our own world. I followed the pattern of flight of the singing male for almost 20 minutes as it volleyed back and forth over its territory singing from a new location every few minutes. I had a brief 30 second glimpse of the bird against the gray sky while it delivered song from a utility wire. After two years of searching, my goal of hearing and seeing a Bicknell’s thrush was fulfilled. The key to my earlier failures became evident at 5:40 A.M. when the last Bicknell vocalization was heard for the morning. By 6:15 we were ready to leave. (<a href="http://facultyweb.cortland.edu/broyles/bicknell.wav">http://facultyweb.cortland.edu/broyles/bicknell.wav</a>)</p><p><br /><br />Later Installments. There are many lessons from the chase and encounter of Bicknell’s thrush on Blue Mountain. These included (a) remaining discoveries, (b) climate change and environmental politics, and the importance of citizen science in the Adirondacks. These issues will be explored in upcoming Broyles Blogs. </p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-26284723910776506312007-06-27T18:22:00.000-04:002008-08-27T20:42:17.300-04:00Blackflies, Blue Mountain, and Bicknell's Thrush<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPdGvtU-GwQ3noO7j2Fa8MMBA8htXC1yvPEY5fCFwjb6djdJF1qmVnRMNTIXyfyN1RDoVo0XTIlUSTYtq3iXpZPO5YeMsvMv8afgr2JiwS6mGxzxdvzhU9yPiDar7fftRuekTQVqCasqE/s1600-h/DSCN1081.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5080879447838326978" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPdGvtU-GwQ3noO7j2Fa8MMBA8htXC1yvPEY5fCFwjb6djdJF1qmVnRMNTIXyfyN1RDoVo0XTIlUSTYtq3iXpZPO5YeMsvMv8afgr2JiwS6mGxzxdvzhU9yPiDar7fftRuekTQVqCasqE/s200/DSCN1081.jpg" border="0" /></a>On a beautiful Wednesday in June we set out from Cortland on a 3 ½ hour drive to Blue Mountain in the Adirondack Park. Unlike most visitors, we stopped at the entrance because we wanted to photograph the sign that welcomes visitors to the Adirondack Park. Visitors who don't want a photo of the welcome sign have no reason to stop at the park entrance because there is no gate, no uniformed park employees collecting entrance fees, and no list of rules and regulations to read about on a sign or pamphlet. With an estimated 10 million visitors a year, not halting the flow of vehicles into the Park makes sense, but given the 55 MPH speed limit on Rte. 28 and the fact that the brown and yellow sign is designed, like all official Adirondack Park signage, to blend in with natural surroundings, it is not surprising that a lot of visitors to the Adirondack's don't even realize they are staying in the largest park in the contiguous U.S.<br /><br />We tested the notion that many Adirondack Park visitors don't know they are visiting a park by conducting the following not-very-scientific experiment. We drove to Old Forge, a small village located several miles inside Park's boundaries, and asked the first five people we encountered walking through the parking lot of the Enchanted Forest Water Safari theme park if they could tell us where the Adirondack Park was. The response we got in each case was a variation of the following: "I'm sorry. I don't know where it is. I'm not from around here." Taking the experiment a little further we asked the same question of the young woman inside a glass booth who was selling admission tickets to Enchanted Forest. She did know that we were "inside the Adirondack Park," but when we faked puzzled looks in response to that piece of information, she had a hard time explaining further. "It's this county," she told us. "Well, it’s a lot of counties. It's…" Her voice trailed off and we nodded our thanks and walked away.<br /><br />It is not surprising that many Adirondack Park visitors don't realize they are in a park, since homes, businesses, schools, churches, and crowded shopping districts regularly dot, and sometimes crowd, the landscape amidst the vast stretches of natural scenery. Unlike other parks in the United States, the Adirondack Park combines public and private land in a manner similar to some European parks, but on a much larger scale. Its six million acres of public and private land take up approximately the same area as the state of Vermont, and the 45% of the park that is publicly-owned protects more untrammeled land than any other national, state, or local park in the contiguous United States. The trail we climbed up Blue Mountain in search of Bicknell's Thrush illustrates this blending of public and private land by starting at the base of the mountain on private land owned by the Finch Pruyne Paper Company, then moving without notice onto public land on the way to the summit. Hikers that fail to register, or fail to read the brochure that is available at the trail head, will be unaware that they are experiencing this essential aspect of the Adirondack Park.<br /><br />Many of the Adirondack Park's approximately 250,000 permanent and seasonal residents find <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkCmLvjyxj6WuqRCZxRqims8MHY9raxYUlmyV-gErghhotfjEgfqdI08UHhGCp0eycZaX2tHukAhKkrWis97iIy7rx3lvnpk1hXYicajy_PClofMCCUySjVcByDq0_JoZn2P3JeuGj2s/s1600-h/DSCN1155.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5080875084151554210" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkCmLvjyxj6WuqRCZxRqims8MHY9raxYUlmyV-gErghhotfjEgfqdI08UHhGCp0eycZaX2tHukAhKkrWis97iIy7rx3lvnpk1hXYicajy_PClofMCCUySjVcByDq0_JoZn2P3JeuGj2s/s200/DSCN1155.jpg" border="0" /></a>its marriage of public and private land to be a stormy one, mostly because development on <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnvEhpnHgBwlLsc0YKEUF2XlTfZy7Jo3hyvFFdZEhiAFdW2Ammdz-eWoHy9eZVWLB3g9CIDsm3r0pt4Ps59GKA94bRGy0RLmb2g0mgZo4jaW29NIpEooDWYcQNEABBH8IUM2ZsqDvdq0/s1600-h/DSCN1156.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5080874929532731538" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnvEhpnHgBwlLsc0YKEUF2XlTfZy7Jo3hyvFFdZEhiAFdW2Ammdz-eWoHy9eZVWLB3g9CIDsm3r0pt4Ps59GKA94bRGy0RLmb2g0mgZo4jaW29NIpEooDWYcQNEABBH8IUM2ZsqDvdq0/s200/DSCN1156.jpg" border="0" /></a>private land is regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The APA uses density zoning, compatible uses, and agency review of significant new construction to regulate development, and its decisions are often controversial. Environmental groups are frequently critical of APA decisions as well and, as a result, the Park is as much home to heated politics as it is to serene landscapes. After our hike up Blue, for example, we stopped for breakfast in Indian Lake and came across a woman wearing this t-shirt that read "Adirondack Porn Agency: Screwing the Little Guy Since 1972."<br /><br />It is the mixture of public and private land that makes lessons gleaned from the Adirondack Park so valuable. It is clear that merely setting aside land in public parks and preserves will not be sufficient to protect natural ecosystems from careless development and environmental degradation. Studying the Adirondack Park may help us learn how to preserve wilderness and protect natural ecosystems through land use planning on a regional scale, and Steve and I intend to look for, and try to learn from, its successes and failures as we explore the Adirondacks in the future.<br /><br />Re Blackflies. We thought we'd experience the discomfort of blackfly season in the Adirondacks, but it turns out that warm spring temperatures arrived both late and suddenly, and that combination severely diminished the blackfly population. Having made a trip to the emergency room to cope with the aftereffects of a previous visit to the Adirondacks in early June, I can't say I'm sorry we missed them.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-63455388120473221352007-06-20T07:32:00.000-04:002007-06-27T18:50:00.762-04:00Ascent of Blue Mountain - 14 June 2007 - Part IIBicknell’s thrush is a habitat specialist. It nests in spruce fir forests near the top of mountains in the Northeastern United States. The species is fairly secretive, preferring dense conifer foliage. It sings infrequently and then again only in the early morning hours. Today was no different than my two previous early morning trips up Blue Mountain in 2005 and 2006. No singing Bicknell’s. We did hear four birds calling to one another from a short line of firs. Their gentle “breeer” notes varied slightly in frequency, but they were clearly the Bicknell call. Tom watched patiently for several minutes, but no bird showed itself. Thirty seconds of calling was all we earned on June 14.<br /><br />Before our descent, we studied the chain of lakes in front of us from Blue Mountain, Utowana, Raquette and Eighth lakes. Each tells a different story of geological and human history. Raquette bears the scars of a glacial ice scour that moved from the northeast to the southwest creating the lake basin many millennia ago. Changes in Adirondack lake chemistry have followed the industrial revolution which deposited acidic aerosols and heavy metals on northeastern mountains. Changes in soil and water chemistry forms a powerful selective force and is currently at work on the algae, fish, bird, tree, and insect populations of the Adirondacks.<br /><br />Solar light illuminated our path down the mountain. Swainson’s thrush, blackpoll warbler, winter wren and white-throated sparrow blessed the mountain air that was full of fresh balsam. Bunchberry, blue bead, and starflower were in full bloom near the top. I relished this observation as I usually see the fruits during my three week August stint at Raquette Lake.<br />As we end our first Adirondack excursion as a team, the songs of the early morning birds have been replaced with black-throated blue warblers, red-eyed vireo, and American robin. The dull roar of automobiles traveling at double nickel speed signals the end of the trail. It is 7:30 A.M., time for breakfast and a shower. In three hours of hiking, I have begun the outline for the scientific issues that are shaped by the unique features of the Adirondacks: geological history, ecology, and the human environment. Adventure one is complete.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7205262739061381523.post-4010416134431705862007-06-19T21:52:00.001-04:002008-08-27T20:42:16.443-04:00Ascent of Blue Mountain on June 14, 2007January 14th began a little early. At 3:56 A.M., Tom began rustling a backpack and a wind breaker to break the silence in our borrowed pink room. A flip of the lights, a rub on Cory’s back and we are off to the kitchen for a fast coffee. At 4:15 A.M. we are in the Town & Country rolling down highway 28 a half mile to head north on highway 30 to the Blue Mountain trailhead. After turning twice in the darkness, we find the gravel parking lot awaiting our anxious bodies. Flashlights working, trail log signed, and we are off on an Adirondack adventure.<br /><br />The Adirondacks showcase many lessons in ecology, earth science, and a legacy of the human impact. Some 18,000 years B.P. glaciers had moved across this wilderness we recognize as Adirondack Park. One glacier excavated bowl-shaped cuts in the side of Whiteface Mountain. Another glacier from the north shoveled sand and gravel from an area now know as Potsdam, trucked it 30 miles south and deposited at a higher elevation on the north slope of Whiteface. Another glacier is responsible for the boulders thrown in front of my walk up Blue Mountain at 4:30 A.M. These boulders have seen life from somewhere in Canada, survived the migration of entire ecosystems over their surface, and now they serve as a refuge for insects, the beginning of life for mosses, rock ferns, and a yellow birch or two.<br /><br />Fifteen minutes into the walk, the morning chorus begins with a Swainson’s thrush, and then a second, and a third. Their bubbly crescendo introduces our ears to a new day. It is still dark and our flashlights are illuminating the rock strewn trail. Shortly after the Swainson’s started, the smooth clear notes of the white-throated sparrow introduce themselves to the new day. It has been reported that the larger birds with big eyes begin the morning chorus followed by the singing of successively smaller bird species. This trend continued with the Blackpoll warbler, Tenneessee warbler, and the winter wren on our ascent.<br /><br />The change in eleveation along the trail shows another interaction between earth science and biological ecology. Trees typical of a temperature deciduous forest (American beech, eastern hemlock, yellow birch, and sugar maple) throughout New York are observed at 2000 ft where the trailhead begins. Somewhere around 2800 feet balsam fir and paper birch become more common. The forest is shorter here and the trees are sculptured by the wind, long winters, and drier conditions. In terms of appearance, the higher elevation fir-birch forest looks like the impoverished neighborhood on the mountain. Thin soil, dry conditions, and severe winters keeps these trees from reaching their full potential.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBfdF9U59RMgupcJc2OzywOSyGLJXvtprR3pX9sIujyQzlgPSaAbaB6Jdc7MWeUSWqj1csGvmEDdyS6gpsjntJg4yX348E-6uRmacLESOBWQgar29Pd1ZRFthUvdS7lJhfn-hLZ6ZgBwg/s1600-h/DSCN1129.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5080878833658003634" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBfdF9U59RMgupcJc2OzywOSyGLJXvtprR3pX9sIujyQzlgPSaAbaB6Jdc7MWeUSWqj1csGvmEDdyS6gpsjntJg4yX348E-6uRmacLESOBWQgar29Pd1ZRFthUvdS7lJhfn-hLZ6ZgBwg/s200/DSCN1129.jpg" border="0" /></a>At 5:15 we reach the peak of Blue Mountain at 3200 ft. are greeted to a brisk breeze and temperatures that most certainly are no higher than 40°F. The sun breaks about the ridges and mountains to the east and casts an orange glow over the balsam fir near the top of Blue. The steps on the fire tower have small puddles of water. Tom believes the steps were frost covered just moments earlier.<br /><br />Aside from the breeze, the top of Blue is silent except for a dark-eyed junco singing somewhere on the tree line. We skirt around the rock escarpment carefully listening for another, much rarer thrush called Bicknell’s. This bird is the sole reason I encouraged my son, Cory, and my friend Tom to the top of Blue so early in the morning.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15654589270853909075noreply@blogger.com2