Letters to the Editors: Summer 2009
Hidden Treasures
To the Editors:
I loved reading Tom Seymour’s article (Forgotten, but Not Gone – Spring ’09) about coming upon lost cemeteries while hunting when he was young. What better way to go back in time while you are in the middle of a forest. My property in Cambridge, Vermont, has remnants from two old sugarhouses and a barn and house cellar hole from the late 1800s, but unfortunately, no cemeteries. Its treasures grow around the house cellar hole: lilacs, an old rose identified as “Dorothy Perkins,” catnip, which was probably used for teas and medicinal purposes, and piles of old Drury bricks from the now defunct Drury brick factory in Essex Junction, Vermont.
A few years ago, my husband and I took a trip to the Little River State Park in Waterbury, Vermont to walk the history hike, which abounds with pristine old cemeteries, stone walls, and cellar holes that are lovingly taken care of by Vermont Forests, Parks, and Recreation. A short distance up one of the trails you find the Ricker cemetery. The families that lived and died here created a beautiful little monument to a small number of families that lived off the hardscrabble hills of Vermont. The cemetery is cornered by four cedars; not an especially notable tree in Vermont, but I heard these were put in to express life. It is surrounded by a stone wall, and stone steps were put in to enter the space. One stone shows a female resident living 100 years – she died in 1908. We eagerly set foot on the trail to the next cemetery, but an approaching thunderstorm turned us away. We’ll be back. If you love old cemeteries and the history behind them, this is a must-see hike.
Thank you, Tom, for your wonderfully spiritual and educational article. The forest does indeed hide mysterious and wonderful treasures.
Penelope Harris, Jeffersonville, Vermont
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Foresters and Easements
To the Editors:
I read with interest the Another View perspective written by George Frame. Mr. Frame is correct, and I support his identification of the role foresters can play in the development of and execution of a conservation easement. I would urge foresters to take an additional step by becoming proactive and volunteering with their local or regional land trust to get in on the ground floor in crafting conservation easement language that supports sustainable management of forests.
All too often, the boards and committees of land trusts are populated by dedicated volunteers from a variety of backgrounds, all supportive and committed to permanently protected open space, but with little of the practical knowledge about silviculture and forest management activities that can be provided by a professional forester. Volunteering on a committee that reviews potential conservation easement properties and/or sitting on a Board of Directors that votes to accept gifts or purchase conservation easements is critical to ensure that these documents commit all parties to sustainable forestry practices yet are flexible enough to accommodate our ever-evolving knowledge of forests and the impacts of climate change.
Without professional forester involvement, we get conservation easement documents with unworkable provisions or restrictions that can sour landowners and land trusts on the value of forest conservation. Professional foresters can bring a wealth of knowledge to the table, not only in terms of their professional skills but also in terms of their experience in the woods with the practical application of how these restrictions can be implemented and monitored into the future.
Keith Ross, Warwick, Massachusetts
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More on Biomass Removals
Bruce Spencer’s letter (Tree Tops, Spring 2009) moved me to write concerning the recently developed practice of removing the tops as well as the trunk when logging, covered in the article in your winter issue. Mr. Spencer’s letter mentioned the issue of calcium depletion of the soil; as a forestland steward, I feel that the loss to the food chain of insect and animal life that is sustained by those tops is just as important.
Perhaps most important, from a national energy perspective, is that the use of feller-bunchers and chippers to feed the woodchip power plants may be too inefficient to continue for very long. Consider that, like solar and wind power, wood energy is widely distributed and has the smallest carbon footprint if it is used as locally as possible, not trucked to centralized locations with the attendant losses, which are on the order of 5–10 percent for each transmission and conversion.
A friend recently told me how pleased he was after a crew came in and completely cleared three acres of woods that he wanted to convert to pastureland. That need seems to be appropriately met by the total biomass harvest. It seems clear to me that as forestland stewards, we really should leave the tops unless we are converting the land to another use.
Knox Cummin, Huntington, Vermont
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Another Turn in The Carbon Cycle
To the Editors:
Your magazine is my favorite, bar none. I read it cover to cover within a few days of its arrival and have gleaned from it a great deal of useful information. So I’d prefer this letter was all praise.
However, Chuck Wooster’s reply to a letter last issue (Healing Warmth, Spring 2009) has compelled me to write about a misconception that pops up all too frequently (see also Hamilton Davis’s story on wood boilers in Spring 2008) regarding burning wood and its contribution to greenhouse gases. When one burns firewood (other pollutants aside), the CO2 that results is essentially the same as CO2 from any other fuel (okay, maybe the carbon isotopes are slightly different) and therefore contributes to greenhouse gases just as the CO2 from burning oil does. The notion that somehow this CO2 is part of a contained biosphere and that it gets recycled while fossil-fuel-generated CO2 does not, makes no sense.
The argument seems to be that this CO2 goes back into green biomass and therefore doesn’t add to the greenhouse gas problem. But can growing plants distinguish firewood CO2 from heating oil CO2? I find that hard to believe.
Perhaps some would argue that cutting down the tree to burn makes room for more growing biomass to absorb CO2, adding capacity for carbon sequestration that wouldn’t exist otherwise, therefore effecting some sort of balance. But I have heard foresters suggest that, in fact, larger trees may produce biomass faster than smaller trees per acre.
There is also the issue of time: we might burn a cord of wood in, say, a month from trees that took years to grow. This is a substantial shift of the carbon to CO2 within the touted biosphere cycle.
This is not to say that I don’t believe in burning firewood. I do, if for no other reason than that it is a fuel produced locally and I’m burning less imported oil. And we all like a nice wood fire.
However, the real test regarding the CO2 contribution would be based on the efficiency of the whole process – from production of the fuel to burning it. The one producing less CO2 per BTUs delivered would be preferable.
Pete Bennett, Underhill Center, Vermont
Chuck Wooster responds:
Mr. Bennett rightly observes that a growing tree cannot distinguish one CO2 molecule from the next, that both fossil-fuel CO2 and wood-fuel CO2 are taken up indiscriminately by growing plants, and that every excess CO2 molecule we emit into the atmosphere these days is increasing the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat, regardless of its source. He also makes the excellent suggestion that we each consider our fuel options in light of how much CO2 they emit per BTU of energy delivered.
The point I want to emphasize, though, is that while CO2 molecules may be chemically equivalent, they are not functionally equivalent when it comes to climate change. The CO2 emitted from fossil fuel is changing the atmosphere because it’s extra CO2 injected into the system; the CO2 emitted from burning wood is not, because it isn’t. The wood is already part of the system, but the oil and coal, having been stored away underground for eons, is an addition to the system when it’s brought to the surface and burned.
As an analogy, let’s assume your fondness for after-supper ice cream has become something of a habit. You notice one day that you’re tipping the scales at 225 pounds instead of your accustomed 170. It’s certainly true that cutting out your morning eggs and bacon would help shave off those extra pounds. After all, calories are calories, and the fundamental problem is that you’re eating too many of them. But you’ve been eating eggs and bacon every morning for your adult life, and since you’ve never gained a pound in the past, you realize that the dessert, not the breakfast, is the fundamental cause of your problem.
To extend the metaphor, it turns out that you’re eating four times more calories from ice cream than from eggs and bacon. Up in the atmosphere, the excess CO2 from fossil fuel is 80 percent of the problem, while the excess from deforestation and land conversion is 20 percent. None of the 20 percent, by the way, comes from burning wood – it comes from bulldozing the forest into houses and parking lots. In other words, you could swear off eggs and bacon forever (stop burning wood and stop farming), but if you keep up with the ice cream, you would still just as surely die of obesity (cook the planet.)
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From Nerd to Rebel
I loved the pictures of the male ruby-crowned Kinglet in the Spring ’09 issue (Birds in Focus, Spring 2009). The four pictures in succession looked like the bird’s high school yearbook photos: first he’s a wide-eyed freshman nerd, then he decides to be daring and get his hair dyed, by sophomore year it’s “his thing,” and by senior year he’s a rebel and won’t let anybody forget it. The contemptuous look that the bird has in the final picture is hilarious.
Ben Peberdy, Burlington, Vermont
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And the winner is…
To the Editors:
I would like to thank you for creating such a wonderful magazine. You all deserve an Oscar, or the highest award, for creating this masterpiece of knowledge.
My twin brother and I are regional planners with bachelor’s degrees in science. We were introduced to the magazine by way of a Vermont state wildlife specialist who gave us a copy of The Place We Call Home. We had asked her to meet us on the seven acres we own in Southern Vermont, regarding a logging project that started in early November and abutted our land. The logger had violated our northern boundary – a historic stone wall, cut trees on our land, and violated a now-deemed-protected wetland. We are working together to amend the issue.
Your masterpiece magazine was what we were always waiting to find some day; a document that would continue to educate us, support us, mesmerize us, compel us to read every word, every page, every letter, and every article two to three times over.
Our family has owned a camp since 1971. My father was a state representative for the town of North Adams and loved the environment. He started sportsmen’s clubs in the Berkshire area, and taught us everything about hunting and the ecology of the woods and forest. To this day, we are protectors of this great, diverse ecosystem.
Your wealth of knowledge is what we need; please continue your most excellent pursuit of it for all.
Francis and Bernard Matrango, Dennis, Massachusetts
Editors’ note: The Matrangos’ letter refers to our publication The Place You Call Home: A Guide to Caring for Your Land in Vermont. It is the third in a series of publications that we developed as owners’ manuals for landowners. We are currently at work on our fourth edition, a statewide version for New York.
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