Letters to the Editors - Summer 2008
Lyme Affects Subscribers
To the Editors:
When a buddy told me he was getting me a subscription to Northern Woodlands for Christmas, I was a little dubious. A niche publication about wood? But just pawing over Spring ’08, I’m a believer, from fisher’s feet, to wood boilers, to where bears hang out.
The article on Lyme disease was especially topical. I’m something of an expert, having had Lyme disease four times, and only once did I see the classic bull’s-eye rash (it was a beauty). Fortunately, I have a first-rate country doctor. When someone comes to him in July telling him they have the flu, his default diagnosis is Lyme. More doctors need to get the message – and the diagnosis.
Again, congratulations on a great magazine. I’m looking forward to my next issue.
Jonathan Walters, Ghent, New York
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Lyme Affects Subscribers
To the Editors:
Dave Mance III did a fine job with the “Tale of the Tick” feature in the Spring ’08 issue, especially the sidebar about common misconceptions. The description of the relationship between the numbers of ticks and the changing habitat for hosts was also thorough and well informed. However, I am concerned that there was no mention of the co-infections that can occur following a black-legged tick bite. These co-infections have had a similar history to that of Lyme disease in that they have both been often misdiagnosed and underreported despite signs of increasing numbers of infections in New England in the past five or so years.
Black-legged ticks can carry not only Lyme disease but also several other infectious diseases. The most important in the Northeast are babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and bartonella. The first two are difficult to diagnose and test for and can be mild to severe in their effect on the infected individual. In the case of ehrlichiosis, it is easy to mistake the initial symptoms for flu. Failure to treat these infections can have serious and life-threating consequences. As the reports of diagnosed cases of ehrlichiosis have mounted, New England states have begun to require that a report be turned in to the state public health authorities. Early indications seem to confirm experience from the upper Middle West that the incidence of erhlichiosis is markedly higher in males between 45 and 65.
As someone who has had both Lyme disease and HGA (one type of ehrlichiosis), I know how difficult it can be to achieve a clear diagnosis and to discover what may lie ahead for an infected individual. I am not aware of any current long-term studies of the potential for re-infection or recurrence of symptoms over long periods of time – in the manner of malarial infections.
There are a number of useful sources information that can be accessed via the Internet. Simply using the search term “ehrlichiosis” will turn up many of them. The Centers for Disease Control site provides good basic information, for example, as do the sites of the societies mentioned in the article. Many sites are primarily focused on Lyme. Over the years, Lyme disease has spawned many groups, some of whom provide less than reliable information about tick-born infections and their symptoms and treatment. Some claims on these sites are exaggerated and data uncorroborated. One site I have found to be consistently useful and to provide many links to current medical issues and research is the one run by the Canadian Lyme Disease Association: www.canlyme.com.
My guess would be that a significant portion of your readership falls into the most at-risk population – especially given that they are more likely to be out in the woods than the general population! I would suggest a follow up piece to the “Tale of the Tick,” which might cover these issues in more detail and with information from infectious disease experts and others working in this field. I am neither a researcher nor a medical doctor and so offer this information and observations based on the investigating I found it necessary to do following my second diagnosis with Lyme and subsequent infection with HGA. Given the continuing rise in the incidence of all tick-borne infections, we need to recognize a broader spectrum of possible infections. I would echo and amplify Rick Ostfeld’s comment quoted at the end of the article – that the medical community can’t protect us and sometimes finds it difficult to help us, so we need to take responsibility for ourselves and educate others about the myths and the facts as we know them.
A final report: ticks are taking much shorter winter vacations, in Massachusetts anyway!
David Powell, Byfield, Massachusetts
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Lyme Affects Subscribers
To the Editors:
I just read Dave Mance III’s article on Lyme disease in the Spring ’08 issue. I am thrilled beyond belief that someone has done such a wonderful article on the tick life cycle, habitat, and Lyme disease. I have been researching Lyme disease for nine years, and it takes an extraordinary article to get a reaction from me. Mr. Mance has done incredible research on, and presented it in a non-biased manner, the two standards of care for treatment. He has made it clear that it is better not to get this disease than to deal with the issues involved in diagnosing and treating it. My only disappointment is that the article is not available online to share with hundreds of Lyme patients in the country who are committed to education and awareness of the public.
Also of note, I spent a few days last week in Stowe, Vermont, with a physician friend who was speaking on Lyme and other tick-borne diseases at the annual Vermont Nurse Practitioner’s conference. Let’s hope that the lessons taught will make a difference in their practice and help to protect the residents of Vermont should they get the disease.
Ticks and the diseases they carry are exploding in numbers and incidence in New England. There is no need for us to repeat the problems of Connecticut and other endemic states – let’s put a halt to the spread of a potentially preventable disease!
It is our mission to teach folks to “play safe” in our great outdoors.
Constance Dickey, Hampden, Maine
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Lyme Affects Subscribers
To the Editors:
Congratulations and thanks to you for the article “Tale of the Tick” by David Mance III. His informative and well-balanced piece should alert your readers to the very real and growing threat of Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.
As someone who has had Lyme disease and spent the last five years educating myself and others about its presence in the North Country, I find his breadth of research impressive. Of particular interest is his explanation of the interplay of environmental factors in year-to-year prevalence of the black-legged tick: small rodents, deer, birds, acorns, gypsy moths, and the weather.
Mr. Mance’s explanation of the need for knowledge by practitioners is also spot on. As a sufferer of chronic Lyme disease (yes, the infection can persist), one of my strongest messages to the public and to medical providers is to be aware of the guidelines set out by the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society. The CDC website acknowledges only those of the Infectious Disease Society of America, which inadequately addresses the needs of those in whom the infection was not immediately recognized.
You can be sure that Mr. Mance’s article and reference to your magazine will be included in my next information session.
Ellen Read, St. Albans, Vermont
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Planning for an Invasion
To the Editors:
I was a bit alarmed – yet pleased to be enlightened – about the likely demise of ash by the emerald ash borer. I hope we have a few more years before it hits here. As a consulting forester, I have never favored ash due to its other two big problems: ash decline and drought intolerance due to shallow rooting.
I wholeheartedly agree with favoring other species in mixed-species stands. My concern is with stands dominated by ash. Often, ash stands are on nutrient-rich, moist soils. Such sites often have invasive barberry, multi-flora rose, and a variety of nasty vines. (What favors the best also favors the worst). Heavy cutting in such stands will likely favor the development of the undesirable vines and invasives.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, much of the red pine in Connecticut was salvaged in the wake of red pine scale mortality. While there are still a few isolated, surviving red pine in Connecticut, most were either killed by the invasive exotic insect or salvaged. Most of these red pines were planted on previously tilled, nutrient-rich, moist soils. These are the same sites that also support excellent ash growth. In fact, many of the stone walls between red pine plantations are loaded with large ash that were established at the time of red pine planting. Because the planters stayed well off the stone walls, these ash had enough space to flourish and now are often the only large seed source in these former pine plantations.
I have noticed two distinct stand development scenarios after the red pine’s demise. In those stands that received heavy salvage cutting, the current 30-year-old stand is a mish-mosh of hardwood saplings/poles and vines/invasives. Those stands that received light or no salvage cutting have developed into vigorous hardwood poletimber stands with only scattered vines/invasives. If there was a sugar maple seed source nearby, these stands are often dominated by sugar maple poletimber that will make you salivate.
What happened here? I think the salvaged stands received a shock to the system in the form of sudden, full sunlight. The unsalvaged stands experienced gradual mortality of the pines over two to five years. Even after most of the pine had died, their standing corpses were providing partial shade for many years to come – hence sugar maple establishment and not the establishment of invasives, vines, and low-value pioneers.
Take home message: it may be better in the long run to allow some natural ash mortality in ash-dominated stands rather than a heavy salvage cut.
David Beers, Winsted, Connecticut
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Burning Issues
To the Editors:
I was pleased to see Hamilton Davis’s fine article about Outdoor Wood Boilers (OWBs) and the clean-burning wood gasification alternative in the Spring ’08 issue of Northern Woodlands. I wanted to make a few points relative to the article that I think deserve a bit more consideration, especially in light of recent regulatory developments that are already restricting consumer choice when it comes to heating with wood – specifically wood-based central heat.
First, I’m not a big fan of conventional OWBs for the same reasons cited by most of their opponents, which is that they are inefficient and polluting by design. As Davis points out in the article, there’s no way to achieve a clean, efficient burn in a firebox surrounded by a large amount of water. And people who own OWBs tend to burn things other than wood in them, resulting in even more noxious smoke and particulate pollution.
That said, I spend a lot of time driving around the rural Northeast in the winter, and the vast majority of smoke that I see in my travels is coming out of chimneys, not outdoor wood burner stacks. Quite often, the OWBs I do see seem to put out less visible smoke than the typical smoky chimney, presumably because their owners have figured out how to operate them correctly to minimize their environmental impact.
When contemplating draconian restrictions or outright bans on these boilers, I think people should open their eyes and admit that OWBs didn’t invent wood smoke, and banning them is not going to make the problem go away. What it will do is punish people who have spent thousands of dollars trying to become energy independent, but sparing those who have far less invested but may in fact be bigger polluters.
Secondly, I think the article left the impression that if you want clean, efficient, wood-based central heat, you have to spend upwards of $15,000 on a Garn, which is a very large, heavy, and relatively expensive gasification-style boiler. There are many cheaper – and in some ways superior – alternatives available. HS Tarm, for example, has been marketing clean-burning gasification boilers in this country for at least a decade. They range in price from $5,000 to $10,000 and can be installed in an outbuilding or in your basement. Similar gasification boilers in the same price range are currently sold in this country by companies like Orlan-EKO, Econoburn, Biomax NextGen, Wood Gun, Greenwood, and Seton.
Like the Garn, these boilers come in a variety of sizes and produce more heat per cord and very little pollution by burning the smoke in a refractory chamber located below the firebox. In my experience, they’re about as easy to operate as a typical wood stove, and are in fact safer because they produce no creosote and have very low stack temperatures. They’re not much more difficult to install than a typical oil- or gas-fired boiler, but they do require very dry wood to operate to their potential.
There is a fairly steep learning curve involved in figuring out what will work best in your situation if you want to make that decision yourself, but thanks to the Internet, you can interact with other users and learn quite a bit with a modicum of online research. I would encourage anyone interested in clean-burning wood-based central heat to visit the Boiler Room forum at hearth.com, which I moderate, to get started.
Eric Johnson, Clinton, New York
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Pruning Wild Apples
To the Editors:
I appreciated the wild apple tree pruning article in the Winter 2007 issue. One addition I’d like to make, with tree longevity in mind, is that pruning cuts should be made, wherever possible, just beyond the slightly swollen “collar” where the limb joins the trunk or larger limb. The collar initiates growth to cover the wound. If a stub is left beyond the collar, it can’t heal. The stub dies back, leading to rot into the main stem. When heading back a limb (as in the haircut method shown in the article), cut close to a lower branch to encourage healing. Try to make the cut so that it will shed water. The cut should go square across the branch but at a place where the branch is not exactly vertical.
Nancy Holmes, Newcastle, Maine
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UK Edition Needed
To the Editors:
I continue to enjoy your great magazine, even though I am unable to visit New England this year.
I share the magazine with fellow conservation workers on a heath and woodlands reserve on Ashdown Forest, near my home. There is no similar woodland/nature magazine in this country, so we all value your articles.
Ron Pidgeon, Uckfield, United Kingdom
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