Letters to the Editors - Autumn 2006
Managed or Exploited?
To the Editors:
Thanks for another great issue, and congratulations on the NESAF Integrity Award. It is well deserved. However, I must take issue with a statement Henry Whittemore made in his column regarding the award. Our forested landscapes have not “been extensively managed for fully 300 years.” It would be more accurate to say “extensively exploited,” and, at one time, for millions of acres, “extensively extirpated.” There was little if any management involved other than the logistical challenges of getting the cut out. We are indeed fortunate that northeastern forests are resilient, but that is more dumb luck than the result of a “long history of forest stewardship.” It may be more accurate to claim that our forests persist despite our treatment of them and not because of it. After 26 years making a living in the forests of the Northeast, I have yet to see forest stewardship catch on as a mainstream philosophy. Northern Woodlands is so important with its effort to “encourage a culture of forest stewardship” because the need is so great.
I also disagree with the claim that forests are “largely unchanged.” We’re only now getting a better understanding of how they function and how complex they are. The changes have been dramatic. Chestnut and beech, for example, have seen some big changes. We’re not even sure what may have been lost. The current composition of much of the forest is vastly different than it was 300 years ago, even if most of the same species are still there. We certainly face serious challenges regarding future changes (most self-inflicted) from things like climate change, fragmentation, and invasive species. Again, this is why Northern Woodlands is such an important publication. But let’s be honest in describing the past. We should acknowledge how blessed we are with a forest landscape that, up to now anyway, has been very forgiving of how poorly it has been managed and how aggressively it has been exploited for “fully 300 years.”
Harry Dwyer, Fayette, Maine
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Magic of the Grant
To the Editors:
Thanks ever so much for your great article on the Dartmouth College Grant. I have been connected to the Grant in one way or another since 1956, when I matriculated at Dartmouth. I saw it in the “old days,” when logging was done by French-Canadian bondsmen with horses, and the pulp was sent out by river, thundering down the Diamond Gorge during spring runoff. I knew all the old characters including Sam Brungall, fire warden, and Grace Turner, gatekeeper.
I spent the better part of the summers of 1959-60 living in the Grant, in charge of building the Peaks cabin and Merrill Brook, both entirely built by students – what an experience. We peeled the logs during spring break and set up a temporary camp to live in while doing the construction.
The Grant was my first exposure to the “North,” having grown up in New Jersey. It has led to a life of outdoor adventures influenced by my going to Canada for medical school and sent me much farther north on many canoe trips, several north of the Arctic Circle. I serve on the Grant Advisory Committee and get up there several times a year, cross-country skiing and deer hunting.
The sound of a white-throated sparrow always brings memories of the first time I heard that sound, while fishing the Swift Diamond.
Thanks again for a great article – the magic of the Grant still lives.
Eric Sailer, Lyme Center, New Hampshire
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Another Use for Skulls
To the Editors:
Reading “Skull Sessions” by Leighton Wass recalled a bird nesting in one of my white-tailed deer skulls hanging next to the back door on the house wall. Not just on top of the skull where robins try to nest at times but inside the brain cavity of the skull!
Stepping out the door one morning, a small, dark bird flew off the skull. (The size of a wren. I wish I knew my birds.) Looking closer, I detected dead grass hanging out the small holes in the skull wall where nerves and arteries were once connected to the brain. The brain cavity, roughly egg-shaped, is otherwise fully enclosed within bone walls save the hole where the spinal cord connects. This hole is now on top of the skull as it hangs there. It provides an effective opening of 1x 3/4 inches.
I sat down and waited. Soon the little bird reappeared, sat on one of the tines, looked around, and dove into the spinal hole. It had to wiggle for a second to fit through it.
A week later, by sheer accident, I was there when two fledglings emerged. They had a hard time getting up through the hole unassisted, but they made it. They sat for a while on top of the skull, rearranged themselves, and then buzzed down into the forsythia. No adults were visible.
So there is another helpful use of skulls.
Peter Levatich, Brooktondale, New York
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More Than Fair
To the Editors:
In the Spring 2006 issue of Northern Woodlands, Donald Enman of New Hampshire wrote in a letter that he was unhappy about a Sierra Club tone to the magazine at times. The article “Are Coyotes Decimating Deer?” in that issue and a letter in the current issue by John Harrigan, also of New Hampshire, seem to support Mr. Enman’s claim. They have that “Sierra Club” ring to them in that they seriously understate the impact of coyotes on the deer herd.
I have personally seen the Adirondack deer herd drop by 50 percent over the years, and woodsmen friends put the decline closer to two-thirds. And there is plenty of evidence that coyotes are responsible for that decline. I seldom go in the woods in the Adirondacks these days without finding coyote droppings, and in 90 percent of those instances, I find fawn parts and hair in those droppings. Also, hunting camp photo albums show hard evidence of the decline in the deer population. In pre-coyote days, it would not be unusual for those photos to show anywhere from 10-20 bucks hanging from the game pole in the back of a hunting camp. Today, hunters would consider themselves fortunate to hang up five bucks in the fall.
In the Adirondacks, the heavily protected 2.4 million acres of State Forest Preserve are often blamed for the deer problems. In fact, we know that this is not the case, because exactly the same thing has happened on the 3.6 million acres of private timberland in the Adirondack Park over the same time frame. Coyotes don’t respect private property lines in the Northeast.
In all fairness, the impact that coyotes have on whitetails depends on the area you are talking about. In the Adirondacks and the mountains of Vermont and Maine, coyotes have a serious impact. There are numerous reasons for this, but they are beyond the scope of this short letter. In peripheral farm country, where Mr. Harrigan apparently lives, coyotes seem to have a minimal effect. Things like availability of food for coyotes, birth rates of deer, and snowfall are all parts of the equation.
This is where the Letters to the Editors section is so important, since it gives readers a chance to see both sides of the story. Mr. Harrigan claims that coyotes take only their “fair share” of deer. Personally, I think that coyotes taking half of the Adirondack deer herd is a lot more than their fair share. I know a lot of woodsmen in the mountains of Vermont and Maine would agree with me on that.
Donald Wharton, South Glens Falls, New York
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Collaboration is Crucial
To the Editors:
Many thanks to Scot Williamson for his essay, “A Natural Alliance,” in the Summer 2006 issue. His call for collaboration between sportsmen and environmentalists is crucial.
On the surface, our longtime failure to forge such alliances is perplexing. The two groups have such obvious common interests in habitat and wildlife. As Williamson points out, when the two work together, the results are impressive. This is true back to the 1870s, when sportsmen began seriously promoting environmental protection.
In 1886, hunter, naturalist, and conservation pioneer George Bird Grinnell founded the Audubon Society mainly to fight the slaughter of wild birds for hat-making. The next year, with Theodore Roosevelt, he co-founded the Boone and Crockett Club to promote hunting, habitat conservation, and the preservation of big game. Together, sportsmen, naturalists, and city ladies sounded the alarm over the excesses of market hunting. Their combined influence brought about the Lacey Act of 1900, prohibiting interstate commerce in birds or animals taken in violation of state laws. It was a turning point for North American wildlife and came none too soon.
Why then have such alliances been so rare in recent decades? It seems to me that we are separated by a chasm of cultural attitudes that spill over into politics. The left champions environmental causes but alienates sportsmen. The right garners widespread support from sportsmen but undermines environmental legislation.
I am reminded of a 2001 Field and Stream article. On a hunting trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Philip Caputo ponders this hostility between natural allies and concludes that the problem lies in our perceptions of ourselves and each other:
The majority of hunters are politically conservative white males who view themselves as upholders of a red-blooded American tradition. In their collective eye, the word environmentalist suggests an effeminate, sentimental tree-hugger who is probably also a gun-control zealot. Environmentalists as a class tend to be youngish liberals inclined to outdoor activities like hiking and mountain biking, and consider themselves to be on the side of the angels. And indeed, many of the ones I know are gun-control zealots. They picture the hunter as a redneck meathead.
We can be divided by our differences and prejudices. Or we can heed voices like Williamson’s and do the hard work of building necessary coalitions.
Tovar Cerulli, Marshfield, Vermont
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The Problem is Population
To the Editors:
Almost every edition of Northern Woodlands has at least one reference to our deteriorating environment, loss of open space, and fragmentation of forestland. The Spring 2006 edition was devoted to energy from wood, and Summer’s Editorial encouraged us as a nation to lead the way in solving the problem of climate change.
Environmental impacts are a result of three factors, the size of the population, the affluence of the population, and the technology that the population uses. The technology determines how harmful any particular item will be. The affluence determines what type of technology is used such as bicycles or motor vehicles. The population size determines how much harm will be done. Almost all of the emphasis in solving our environmental problems is focused on improving the technology by doing such things as producing more fuel-efficient cars. However, if we improve the fuel efficiency by 20 percent but the population grows by 20 percent, we have gained nothing.
And the population is growing. It is now growing at the rate of 3.3 million people per year and is projected to grow from its present 300 million to 1 billion in just seven generations or less. Will a population of 1 billion or even 500 million result in the kind of environment and quality of life we want to leave our children and grandchildren?
Sadly, our environmental organizations and leaders will rarely even talk about this important factor of the equation let alone work to do anything about it. Their reasons are that it is politically incorrect or they have bought into the myth that growth is progress.
However, as Ed Hartman points out in his new book, The Population Fix: Breaking America’s Addiction to Population Growth, we can deal with this problem. Through public education and understanding we can encourage people to voluntarily lower fertility rates and convince our congress to establish policies that reduce immigration to historic levels instead of the current very high levels.
Most of the northeastern states now have some type of grassroots organization working on this issue. I am secretary/treasurer of Vermonters for A Sustainable U.S. Population. If you share this concern and would like to join with others in doing something about it contact me at .
George Plumb, Washington, Vermont
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