Nature Wars

We're used to news of the natural world being dominated by stories of decline, loss and extinction, and those trends are undoubtedly very real. But we also have problems of super-abundance, and those are all the more difficult when they stem from perfectly valid programmes to save rare species. Jim Sterba, from the Wall Street Journal came to Harvard Forest a few weeks back to give a talk on this topic through his new book 'Nature Wars - how wildlife comebacks turned backyards into battlegrounds'. It's a great read, and I recommend it - full of eye-watering facts and appalled realisation of the size of unanticipated problems.

White-tailed buck

What particularly struck me was the chapter on deer - the white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginiana. By the end of the 19th Century, habitat loss and hunting had reduced the population to 350000 across the whole US. In a century or so, they have rebounded to 40 million or so, and despite an 'informal army' of hunters as numerous as the ten largest armies in the world, and an annual kill of more than 6 million deer, are still rapidly increasing in numbers. Some of the consequences of this super-abundance are familiar to us in Scotland – hollowed-out woodlands deprived of understorey, regeneration and non-deer wildlife, people and deer injured and killed in collisions with cars, damage to farm crops, and a ‘mass transit system for ticks carrying Lyme disease’.  Some of the causes are familiar to us as well – hunting lobbies intent on maintaining high populations for their sport, and a focus on shooting bucks rather than does. But Sterba emphasizes a new factor – the regrowth of the great north-eastern forests, and their new residential use.

From the diorama pictures in my last post, you’ll have picked up on the trajectory of the forests here – the massive transformation by European settlers from a mosaic of old forest and beaver/native American maintained open areas to open farmland. The Erie Canal and later railroads opened the much better soils of the MidWest to export-led agriculture, and New England and the rural east emptied – and the trees returned – but so did the people. What’s not obvious – especially to summer visitors – is actually how many houses there are behind the green walls of roadside trees. Not until the leaves fall do you see a forest perforated by houses everywhere. In Massachusetts houses can be built without restriction anywhere which has a frontage on any ‘Town’ road – which includes all the rough tracks and dead-end dirt roads on which I regularly get lost while out cycling. The dean of the Yale School of Forestry, John Gordon, made a great observation:

“If you looked down at Connecticut from on high in summer, what you’d see was mostly unbroken forest. If you did the same thing in late fall, after the leaves had fallen, what you’d see was stockbrokers.”

This Perforated Forest is essentially a massive deer sanctuary. Residences have a kind of petro-ecology of nutritious lawns and shrubs, mown and fertilised, and are often undisturbed except during the periods when cars hum with commuters or kids at the beginning and end of working days. Not only that, but this perforated forest is largely off-limits to the deer’s principal predator – humans. For example, restrictions on firearm use near roads or houses make about 60% of Massachusetts safe for deer apart from vehicle collisions – and make even the task of stabilising deer numbers almost impossible. Add to this mix a range of public attitudes which include energetic anti-hunting attitudes, and the ‘almost impossible’ has in many places moved to ‘impossible’.

It’s fascinating that, throughout ‘Nature Wars’,  there is no coherent conservation philosophy of how we should manage these novel landscapes or runaway species management ‘successes’. Here, as in Scotland, we have no coherent vision, just advocacy from partisan groups promoting their species or habitat or land use at the expense of others. In a crowded world, with space at a premium, perhaps this is understandable. But I don't think that conservation philosophy has really accepted that we’re in a post-Eden world, and that we need a new mental architecture to help us manage messy issues like this – novel, widespread, and where an objective of ‘make it more natural’ becomes both unattainable and meaningless.

Giant mice

I thought I would show you a little more of Harvard Forest - some pictures, and those giant mice. I stay in an apartment in the old 1760s farmhouse, converted in the 1940s to provide staff and visitor accommodation. The main building, Shaler Hall was built in the 1940s too, some years after the establishment of Harvard Forest in 1907. Commuting takes about 1 minute, which will be handy when the snows come (cost of a set of snow tires significantly exceeds the value of my car, so I just need to avoid driving on snow).

'Community House' - the 1760s Sanderson Farmhouse

My office - Shaler Hall

The 'ship's boiler' - wood-fueled 1940s system deep in the basement

The other key feature of Harvard Forest is the Fisher Museum (Shaler and Fisher were early directors here). It's most famous feature are a series of 25 dioramas, showing the changes in New England's forests and landscapes. It's fair to say that before I arrived here, the dioramas weren't particularly on my list of things to get excited about - but actually, they're rather wonderful. My photography isn't great - combination of flash and glass cases not helpful - but the next 5 illustrate the transition from pre-colonial deep woods (interspersed with some open areas) through the immense clearances, agricultural abandonment and regrowth. Living here now, in Massachusetts with 62% forest cover, it's extraordinary to imagine the landscape looking like, well, north Devon really. These dioramas really make that contrast clearly.

Old-growth pre-colonization forest

1800 - peak of farming intensity. Those stone walls are threaded through today's forest, buried in drifts of autumn leaves 

1800 - peak of farming intensity

'Old-field' succession - the return of the trees after farming is abandoned

Mid 20th Century - the forest returned, with timber management dominant in some places

Oh, and the giant mice? Not so long ago a pair of mice found their way into one of the dioramas, and scrambled around in the wire trees, and dwarfed these model woodsmen, until the diorama could be carefully taken apart and the mice restored to a non-Lilliputian world.

Man-sized mouse

Taxes, Big trees, and Happy St Andrew's Day

I'm afraid I've missed a week updating this blog - last week was very focused on preparing for a big seminar  on 3oth November presenting my thinking so far to the (academically intimidating) staff at Harvard Forest and and others (including landscape ecology professor and international guru Richard Forman). There's nothing like a big presentation to force your thinking from the vague to the specific, as you try to sum up complicated ideas into pithy sentences. I enjoyed being able to start the presentation with a 'Happy St. Andrew's Day slide, fresh that morning from Scotland, of Jonathan setting off for his school's sponsored walk. 

Happy St. Andrew's Day

It seemed to go well, and we had a long discussion afterwards. One of the striking things I've learned is that in thinking about the effect of climate change and novel pathogen effects on trees, proposals for action have generally been dominated by saving species. A good example is the Torreya, a subtropical conifer native to only a few fragments in Florida, and soon to be lost to rising temperatures. The 'Torreya Guardians' - a group of enthusiasts - have decided to save the species by planting new stands far to the north in North Carolina.

Planting Torreya far outside its 'natural' range

In this case it seems a reasonable thing to do, although I have detected some concern that such 'guerrilla conservation' - i.e. outside formally consultations or programmes - might lead to unfortunate actions elsewhere, since similar processes have given us many damaging invasive species (think grey squirrels). However the key element for me is that such actions may save species (by moving them to another part of a giant continent-sized country), but don't maintain the forest where they're currently found. In small countries/islands like UK and Scotland, there may not be room to do that, and in any case, we probably want to find a way of maintaining our forests where they are now. That's a much bigger challenge.

Last week also saw final bike rides of the year - it's pretty cold now, and the roads have all been salted. Just before the frosts and snows I rode a loop through the tobacco growing country along the Connecticut River, and stopped to have my lunch beneath  the Sunderland Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis - not the European sycamore) - reputed to be the largest tree east of the Mississippi, and anywhere up to 400 years old. 

Sunderland sycamore (wikipedia photo - I forgot my camera!)

Recently measured at 113 feet tall and a with a girth of 25 feet, it has a huge presence. Those figures come courtesy of the Eastern Native Tree Society, a group with the coolest acronym in woodland conservation (one for Tolkien enthusiasts...).

Taxes remain big news here, but nevertheless I was surprised to receive a tax demand for a car tax from the local Town council of Petersham. It's only $12.50, but its part of the system of local Town councils setting tax rates, collection, and spending at a far finer grain than anything that we're used.

Petersham Town common (i.e. green)

The Town of Petersham has a population of about 1300 - broadly comparable to Glen Urquhart where I live. However the range of local responsibilities is much larger, including the Town Police (2 full-time officers), the school, the Board of Health, Fire, Highways, Animal Health and Planning Departments. This strikes a different balance between local accountability and (probably) the efficiency of multiple tiny departments. One of the issues my colleagues here have emphasized is that school spending can vary enormously depending on the local property tax rates. Poorer towns often simply can't pay for public schools as good as those in wealthy towns - which seems likely to entrench privilege and opportunity for the children of residents in more wealthy areas.

Thanksgiving, conservation and the US gun culture

It's Thanksgiving - one of the central US holidays, focused particularly on family get-togethers - vast numbers of people travelling, and consequently the institute is emptying fast, apart from rare migrants like myself. It's also thankfully relatively uncommercialized, apart from all the food, which is why there's been much disquiet at the decision of some big stores like Walmart to open tomorrow night - Thanksgiving evening - for the first time. I've been invited to several Thanksgiving dinners - people keep saying that nobody should be alone at Thanksgiving - so tomorrow's a day off from the office.

It's getting colder, but we've been in a 2 week dry spell under a canopy of high pressure, so no snow yet - some forecast for next week. The weekend is forecasting similar, dry sunny weather but with stronger winds. Going for a bike ride with windchill at -15C may be, er, bracing.

Ice developing over a nearby pond - the ubiquitous beaver lodge in the background

All the leaves now gone, waiting for the snow

Guns and Conservation

Election unhappiness continues for the Republicans, and  views like this from right-wing commentators  are not unusual:

‘America, like Western civilization, is a set of ideas, institutions, and ways of doing things. For all intents and purposes, this has become occupied territory; land occupied by hominids who subscribe to a primitive set of foreign superstitions and wantonly attempt to impose those primitive superstitions on the rest of us.’  (Breitbart website)

One consequence of this viewpoint is that it seems to encourage people to buy guns and ammunition. Both Obama's first election win, and even more so the current election process has led to big increases in sales, as the graph below indicates. 

Sales of guns and ammunition rise to unprecedented levels.

How does this fit with conservation? We had a fascinating seminar last week on a piece of 1930s legislation - the Wildlife Restoration Act. This Act, and later amendments means that all sales of guns, ammunition and archery equipment is subject to an 11% federal tax. This is paid to the Federal government which then distributes it to the states, paying 75% of the costs of suitable projects. 

Hunting season at Harvard Forest - I wear my day-glo cycling jacket to go for a walk

Thus for conservation projects, the last few years have been bumper years. 2009 provided funds 150% of the average in the Bush years, and 2012-13 looks even better - this single source of income is expected to pay out $555 million - about £370 million, purely from this guns-n-ammo tax. The staff in the Fish and Wildlife Service (somewhat equivalent to SNH) have been trying to prepare better for this surge by encouraging more projects. Incidentally, the other major source of state funding for conservation comes from the sale of hunting licences - which means that here in Massachusetts, $60 million of the state conservation budget  (roughly equivalent to SNH's total budget in Scotland) comes entirely from hunting and gun taxes. That's an interesting contrast to Scotland, where hunting contributes little or no direct revenue to wider society. 

Election Fever, and a trip to Martha's Vineyard

It's grand theatre, with billion-dollar budgets and full-spectrum media coverage, but even for interested spectators it's a relief its over. Especially for those with a landline/phone number - with endless 'robocalls' - recorded messages - and calls from live party volunteers. In Massachusetts the presidential election was always going to go with Obama, but we had a very close senate race, with significant implications for the overall control of the US Senate at stake. A dozen of us - Harvard Forest staff and fellows living nearby - gathered for the evening in our conference room, with some good Pennsylvanian beer, super-sized packs of unhealthy nibbles and a bottle of champagne (just in case). As always, the earliest results are analysed in minute detail, even if they are only for 'Assistant Dog-catcher, West Texas' type races (locally there was a competitive race for the local 'Registrar of Deeds'). However the drama unfolded as I'm sure you know, and  all that's done now apart from some fine examples of ungraciousness in defeat (e.g. 'the typical Democratic base constituency of the poor, stupid, and illiterate', or 'the growing number of Democrats who are scums, bums, union thugs, perverts, old fools, young fools, racists and traitors'). 

Last weekend, a change of gear from the political drama to the landscape drama of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. As the ice sheet receded at the end of the last ice-age, it left gigantic moraines and colossal volumes of sand around the southern edge of New England, in the shape of the islands and penninsulas running from Long Island east to Nantucket and Cape Cod. Several of us migratory Fellows were invited for a weekend to the Harvard Forest Director's house on the island of Martha's Vineyard, and in glorious sun and near record warm temperatures we enjoyed a wonderful contrast to the early winter woods of western Massachusetts. Martha's Vineyard (MV has made a transition from early settlement in 1640 to whaling prosperity and and now as an exclusive and very expensive holiday island. 

This house on Cape Poge is yours for $8.5 million dollars (also required: an insouciant disregard for recent and projected sea-level rise)

 For those with long memories, the island of Chappaquiddick (next to MV) and a certain bridge will stir some memories. In 1969 after a party,Ted Kennedy, Senator, brother of JFK and potential presidential candidate drove off the side of an island bridge leaving his female companion drowned - but failed to report this for many hours. The swirl of conspiracy around this probably ended any presidential hopes. The bridge has since been rebuilt (below), and to my delight, without any evident irony the guard rails either side have been ungraded to anti-tank status. No Kennedy's gonna drive off this bridge any time soon!

 MV has some wonderful coastal scenery, with saltmarshes and endless beaches, and even a large arid pitchpine/scruboak  forest on the central plain of coarse sand. It's here that the Heath hen - a ground nesting bird related to the prairie chicken - finally became extinct in 1932, despite one of the earliest formal efforts  in conservation history. Apparently a 1791 Act to preserve 'Heath-hen and other game' ran into problems with a misinterpretation of 'Heath-hen' as 'Heathen' - not a helpful error in Puritan New England!

Chappaquiddick saltmarsh

endless beaches

pitch-pine forest

 Hurricane Sandy hit the sandy cliffs of southern MV hard, accelerating the long-term erosion trends already present. Part of the unseasonal warmth we enjoyed is connected to this event - the sea here is currently about 4C warmer than normal, allowing the tropical hurricane to maintain its intensity further north than normal.

In the shellfishing harbour at Menemsha, the Hurricane Sandy surge overtopped these quayside posts

Particularly striking was the (probably) doomed efforts of the super-rich to defend their beachfront mansions. At Wasque Point after Hurricane Sandy the owner had initiated this mammoth effort with giant sandbags to stop the cliff erosion.

Wasque Point less than 2 years ago

Post-Sandy efforts to hold back the waves...

the beach a mass of fallen trees and tangled driftwood

After the storm...

Well, we had a stormy 24 hours, maybe 3 inches of rain, but nothing worse than a winter gale in Shetland. The whole university shut down on Monday, and we lost power for half a day as a tree outside the institute fell onto our power lines. 

The unusual westward swerve of Hurricane Sandy was so large as to take the worst weather away to our west, and away from the coast the storm surge was of course not an issue. The weekend was an extraordinary time, with the possibility of calamity even squeezing the elections out of the conversations...

I've been following with great interest the ash dieback developments in the UK, culminating in a COBRA meeting today in some bunker under Whitehall (add your own sentence here including the words horse, stable, bolted and door). It's fascinating to see both  press and website comments eager to embrace a positive note - maybe it won't be as bad as Dutch elm disease, maybe ash will recover, or my personal favourite - 'Ecologists know that Nature is resilient'. I'm all for happy endings to stories of mild peril and rescue, but if there's one thing ecology can tell us, it's that in the face of human influences Nature isn't proving very resilient at all. 

We had a lunchtime discussion this week with staff from a private college in Connecticut who have just built a no-expenses-spared environmental research institute, and were looking for ideas for what research they should consider doing. I guess when a major donor offers you a large chunk of cash you say yes quickly, and some of the details get left until later. We had an entertaining debate over the inspirational qualities of 'wacky' research -with the Harvard Forest simulated hurricane being a good example, but numerous other examples - reintroducing species, mouse-proof fencing, blowing up trees to create deadwood and so on.

Next week - our first snow of the winter, an all-night election nail-biter, and a trip into Boston...

Election quote of the week: "It's time for the Governor to slalom down from Bullshit Mountain"

Most heard local radio song: 'Tequila makes her clothes fall off'

The Snor'eastercane/Frankenstorm

It's rather a nice day here, and forecast to be a very pleasant day tomorrow. After that...one local forecast that has seemed fairly accurate suggested 8 inches of rain on Monday and Tuesday next week as Hurricane Sandy sweeps in and merges with colder weather systems from the West and Canada. The media and coffee -room discussions are full of advice and alarm - it's all rather exciting. What we actually get here is still somewhat uncertain - it looks now fairly certain that a very (possibly record-breakingly) destructive storm will hit the coast between Delaware and New York, timed nicely for a full moon to maximise storm-surge damage. At 1200' here there is even a possibility of significant snow. I'll let you know what happens.

I've been learning some more about the experimental work here in the Harvard Forest - particularly noted for its long term ecological studies. There's some cool experiments going on, like the several acres of forest where the trees were winched down to artificially simulate hurricane damage (ah, the irony), and then monitored - now in the 20th year of monitoring. A more recent experiment has set out heating cables in the soil to simulate the effects of warming on soil structure and composition. The electricity bills are substantial...

In the oldest part of the forest there is a stand of 200 year old eastern Hemlocks. These probably survived because the site is poor and the trees weren't particularly valued for domestic use nor for the lucrative market in masts for sailing ships.

The pictures show the stand and the research tower used to collect information from various levels in the canopy. Its a wobbly 25m climb to the top, but terrific views over the treetops where the oaks stand out in russet tones against the pines and hemlocks. 




















In any discussion of the great northeastern forests the story of the American Chestnut looms large. Once a major component of the forest, valued for timber and nuts and simply for its impressive stature, it was lost to a blight disease imported from Asia. Knowing the story, I must confess I was surprised to find it everywhere. Rather like elms in the UK it re-grows from root systems and grows rapidly to 10m or so, after which it is killed again, in a kind of auto-coppicing process. There's a major effort to reverse the damage done by the disease through cross-breeding with Chinese chestnuts - rather like elm breeding, the confident press releases are not (yet) backed up by results. Given the depressing news about Ash dieback in the UK, one thing stands out - if there were resistant chestnut trees, they were probably felled in a great wave of 'use-it-or-lose-it' anticipatory fellings. It may not be clear which, if any, ash are resistant for some time, and perhaps tidying diseased ash is a short-sighted thing to do...



Above: Chestnut understorey in the oak forest

End of the Fall colours

21st October

The last week has seen madly oscillating weather - a couple of hard frosts interspersed with days that we'd appreciate as warm summer days in the Highlands. Last Saturday it was 3C when I set out to take part in a charity bike ride for a local family whose young son has a brain tumour - 50 miles with 3800' of climbing - so VERY hilly. I came in last, but that was only because I went slower than everyone else. The following day I was in shorts again. Fall is definitely passing with many bare trees and the red colours ebbing out of the pallette as the maples finish and more sombre oaks turn. However, this does allow views into the woodlands, rather than a green wall which rather closes down any roadside views.

I've been chained to my desk for most of the week, trying to understand the approaches in Canada and the US to climate change impacts on forest trees. The focus seems to be almost wholly on planting tree species further north, or at higher altitude than where they're currently found - either to maintain timber productivity or 'rescue' rare species likely to be left behind by changing climates. The latter includes Torreya, a small evergreen tree from Florida which is being rescued by a group called the Torreya Guardians by new stands much further north. I'm detecting a degree of 'official' anxiety at such unilateral, almost vigilante action happening outside any official coordination! I haven't found any work on what I consider to be our problem -    not the moving of threatened species, but the maintenance of woodlands where the trees maybe threatened - that is, not endangered species but endangered sites. One paper mentioned this as a theoretical approach but one where no work had been done - a simultaneously frustrating (because there's nothing to learn from) and cheering (because the work hasn't already all been done) piece of news. I need to explore this more - for example even if the forests have enough species to guarantee their continuation, what is the response of managers to the loss of keystone species - like the (probably) doomed whitebark pine in the Rockies whose nutritious seeds feed grizzly bears and a host of smaller wildlife?

I finished early one sunny afternoon to walk around Harvard Pond (above) as a colleague had reported seeing moose tracks. No moose visible - they're very hard to see given their size - but lots of signs of beaver activity and a host of red and grey squirrels active before winter sets in. This site was a major industrial centre with a series of lakes dammed to power sawmills a century ago. The dam is still here, but a family of beavers evidently is critical of humanity's efforts, and has built a complete duplicate dam 10 feet back from the main rock dam.

Advert of the week in our local paper: 'House cleaning - done in your own home. Call...' 

To Canada

11th October
The last few days have been dominated by a trip north into Canada, partly to visit my aunt and uncle for Thanksgiving (in Canada, Thanksgiving is 6 weeks earlier than in the US - simply because harvest time is so much earlier further north), and partly to take up an invitation to visit the Canadian Forest Service headquarters in Ottawa.

This has also been about the peak weekend for the Fall colours, and in the sunshine the effects were really breathtaking - particularly on the maples which give the impression of a glowing ember - yellows and reds within the canopy, darkening (as if they were cooling) to crimson and almost purple on the outermost leaves.

The visit and my presentation at CFS seemed to go well. They've just completed a large project on Assisted Migration (AM) which relates closely to my own project here at Harvard - but of course the scale and structure of their forests and landscapes has many contrasts with UK or Scotland. In particular, the continuity of forest from south to north means that most of the AM response to climate change is focused on adjusting seed zone regulations by fairly modest distances, or allowing certain species to be planted a little further north, or higher up. A lot of information, links and contacts to follow up after this visit, including some researchers in Waterloo, Canada who are studying public perceptions of changes in forests - perhaps a very interesting lead.

I drove back to Harvard Forest via the eastern Adirondacks of northern New York State. This is an Amish area, and it's fascinating to see horsedrawn buggies on the roads and a farmer ploughing with 2 horses. The buggies are hard to see in dim conditions being black and deliberately free of any reflective 'adornments' - unlike the similar Mennonites in southern Ontario which do allow reflective triangles on their buggies. This part of NY State was very attractive, with evidently fertile farmland in a mosaic with forest, rock and swamp - a pattern perhaps ideally suited to small scale non-industrialised agriculture, and maybe part of the reason the Amish are here.

This week's useful information:
 - Black bears in the Fall are stocking up for winter. That means they are eating around 20000 calories a day.

Arriving...

This is my first post in a blog to keep friends and colleagues abreast of my activities as I spend 9 months away from my work at Scottish Natural Heritage, taking up a Bullard fellowship at Harvard University.

The view from my kitchen window

I'm based not in the main campus in Boston, but 70 miles west at the Harvard Forest, a research institute and experimental forest a few miles from the town of Atholl. Our nearest neighbours include an alpaca farm, a monastery, and thousands of hectares of woodland. Lots more about that later.

The first week was a blur of organising administrative things, including buying a car - yes, that flash-looking beast in the picture - and tedious things like bank accounts and ID cards. I'm learning to love American bureaucracy. Take a ticket from the armed guard, go past the sign noting that it's a Federal offense to 'Kill, maim, injure, kidnap...' their employees, and wait. After some more waiting for your number, you eventually meet a charming person who, endearingly, because it's Fall/Halloween, has a tiny pumpkin on her counter. She solves your problems (for a fee), and after a serious 'Homeland Security' glare from the guard, you're released back into the wild.

I've also been settling into my apartment, which is one of 4 carved out of the original 1763 farmhouse. Some of the floorboards are almost 50cm wide, cut from the original old growth cleared for farming - and also so warped that they resemble traffic-calming measures. It's rather rustic, but perfectly livable...

But I've also found time to put my bike together, with the reward of a great ride at the weekend, exploring the local roads and fall colours.

Navigational problems - this is a road on my map...