Site Discussions

Dave, I applaud you on discussing this topic. Hopeful is imagining a world and state with greater abundance of intact natural systems and less anthropomorphic fragmentation. How do we get there is the (7 billion $) question. I believe that we must rethink language that we use. The economists speak of economic well-being based on ‘growth’. Businesses are judged on their ability to grow larger. Governments and entire countries are told that they must change their economic policies (less money for people and environment) so they can ‘grow’. We must start judging businesses, governments, organizations, and individuals based on their ability to foster a more natural world while meeting human needs. I believe that our citizens, especially the youth, will stop being observers and take the lead role in fostering major changes in our governments and businesses. I believe that the current world movement for greater social justice also has strong ties with environmentalism and we should celebrate and support this.

As a child in the 1950s I explored the woodlands and fields of our sixty acre farm in Wales Maine and I have a mental picture of that land and to this day when I close my eyes I can see the fields and smell the sweet scent of the forest.  I remember the shapes of boulders, where the lady slippers grew, where to find the checkerberry, teaberry and the wild raspberry patch.  The trees, boulders, mossy places, brooks, springs, bogs and all living things therein.  The deer crossing and how regimented the deer were always crossing the field from the pond on the farm next door across our long field and into the bog and then to the deer yard.  It was the same every day and I wonder if it has changed.

We heated our home with wood and my father harvested hardwood which we hauled out with a horse and wood sled once the ground was frozen with a good coating of packed snow.  The wood was piled behind the barn, always a year ahead in long piles.  The wood was sawed into stove sized logs with a saw that was hooked to a neighbor’s tractor.  The dry wood was then split and put in the woodshed.

I am not a schollar and I am sorry to say I have not read your books but even as a small child I wondered about the history of the land; how it was formed and who lived there in the past. The farm is no longer in our family but it is a pleasant memory I can bring back anytime and anywhere.  It is good to remember that there are many kindred spirits out there who love to roam the land as I do.  But you purssued what you loved and made it your life and are sharing your knowledge and that is a very good thing.

Great profile, Heather!  And hats off to Tom Wessels!  I have enjoyed Tom’s lectures and have been using Reading the Forested Landscape to teach our grandchildren more about the history of our own land here in New Hampshire.  Like Tom, I am a firm believer in the idea that the more you know about the land, the better you will care for it.

We have a similiar acreage (25) to that of Thomas Rehm in Butler, Pa.
Ours is located in Riceville, Pa, about 25miles south of Erie. The climate is a bit cooler and the winters produce considerably more snow cover. To this point I have only located one Butternut on our parcel. The tree is located between our cottage and the highway and I believe to be an offspring from the large rotted stump located beside the the existing tree. The tree is approximately 8” in diameter and seems to be in good condition except for one larger branch that seems to be dead.

This fall was the first time I was at the Cottage to experience the 95% fallout of the Butternut Bombardment. This small tree produced three wheelbarrow loads of nuts. After planting a few hundred of the nuts in another location on the property, I began a mass diposal approach. Groundhog holes, etc.- I don’t have a squirrel population
so I had to take the situation head on.

I was extremely interested in Virginia Barlow’s experience and helpful comments for handling larger volumns. I did not open any of the nuts therefore cannot comment on the presence of the yellow husk critters.

This is my first exposure to canker infestation but I will be following this topic closely.My grandchildren need to also experience the Butternut Bombardment in the future.

Tim Casey -Breckenridge, CO Nov.3,2011

Hi Christine. If you’re able to get a photo of what you are seeing, email it to me and I’ll see if we can get an ID for you. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Thanks.

Hi Walter. If you can, email me a photo of the plant you came across, and I’ll see if we can get an ID on it. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Thanks.

Hi Rock,
Thanks for your comment.  It would be fascinating to know how those experiments turned out—any effect on the frogs?

Hi Kit,
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed the article.  To the best of my knowledge, wading birds don’t have any special adaptations for dealing with amphibian toxins. But, as I mentioned in the article, skin secretions from frogs are not very toxic, just distasteful apparently (I haven’t tried them myself!).  Toads on the other hand, are presumably avoided by experienced wading birds, since eating one would make them quite sick.  Many snakes however (including Garter and Hognose snakes) appear to be immune to most amphibian toxins, including those from American Toad.  However, when garter snakes were experimentally fed tropical poison arrow frogs (Dendrobates spp.) they had convulsions and one individual died.  Seems like a pretty clear indication that some snakes evolved with certain amphibians.

This morning at 11:00, I noticed something sitting out in the yard bordering the woods on the property. I grabbed my binoculars and saw what looked like a big brown cat. I had seen the same animal earlier this week around 1p.m. walking across our driveway, which is 3/10 of a mile back into the woods. This same animal was spotted in the woods near our house in August around 6:30 p.m. 
Today I was able to see the face in the binoculars and saw white around the chin, and as it walked away saw the long tail. It was brown/tan in color and definitely over 100 lbs.
Catamount???

Yesterday I found 2 light green stems, maybe 2 feet apart in piney woods, with 3 lily-like buds on each, which are pointy at each end, fat in the middle, growing up maybe 3 feet high. Any help with id?

I have tried, I have really tried, during the 13 years I have lived in northern New England, to understand and respect the practice of hunting. It did not exist where I come from.

Intellectually, I get it; but emotionally, it still grosses me out. I found this story particularly sickening but realistic, and I’m glad someone put it up to show the raw logistics without any romance.

I just heard from a neighbor who recently had a Catamount in his yard (He has a plaster cast of the paw print) that a Catamount was hit and killed on the Warren Mtn road. Not sure if on the Warren or Roxbury side. The largest one (7 feet) taken in the state was killed in Roxbury in 1821. ANR doesn’t want to admit there are cats out there, but I’ve had too many sightings around my house in Roxbury to ignore. 4 neighbors so far have seen them over the past 20 years.

Indiana took their sweet time in OWB ordinances. Still, IDEM passes it on to the municipalities instead of enforcing what they voted in. Rural victims are especially left out of the support needed to breathe fresh air.  Villages and hamlets are choking on the smoke.  But this is about me.

Burners need to sit in their neighbors living room, on their porch, garden with them, see what the smoke and fumes are like if they are told there is a problem.  Work together. Try to find the solution.

In my perfect world.

A GARN sounds great, if I get the chance I would choose this manufacturer.  But I would never have one that is too close to my neighbor or affects my life.

Every single day I suffer headaches, sore throat, swollen glands, hot thick-feeling skin, smoke all over me just from going out the door. Am I too sensitive, as the commissioner of Indiana has proposed might be the case “some people are more sensitive to smoke than others….”  Well, with that sensitivity I have now have breast cancer. Can’t blame it on the smoke though.  It’s just that all my good living efforts of organic gardening, feeding birds, walking my dog on the property, swimming in my pool, were coupled with deep breathing smoke and fumes for all the months since we moved in. Sensitive?  How about furious too?

While next door beneath a canopy of trees and right next to thousands of acres of woods, a rickety old OWB smolders grey-white smoke continuously, then every forty-five minutes it billows smoke assaults over the garage roof into our property which never leaves during most weather.  Thrown in are cat litter boxes, carcasses, household trash, plastic, leaves, branches, wet wood, pine and unseasoned wood.  The man doesn’t have the sense we need for it to be operated right. He says creosote built up because his stack was too high.  We actually paid to put it up there to save ourselves then he changed his mind and knocked it down and beat on it a few weeks later.  His answer for operation is load it as full as possible and leave it smolder all day, even in 110 degree heat index and high humidity. No thought required.

Ordinances, protection, support must come from somewhere but where?  Why is he allowed to do this to us?  Why do we have to spend $10,000 for an attorney to take it to court if there could be enforcement?  Why do we need to leave our home to take a walk?  Move away to breathe?

Don’t tell me I am sensitive or need to move back to the city and breathe smog.  I have breathed it right here on my lovely wild property in the country 24/7/365 days a year.

If your neighbor says they are having a problem and need some resolution - please listen to them and help.

Thank you for listening.

Nice reminder, Steve, of 40 years ago when I was doing research at UB Med school with TTX and one of its cousins BTX.  In a bit of turn about, we were exposing frog skin to TTX and BTX, both in live specimens and in isolated frog skin chambers, to explore the impact on the short circuit current.

Steve,

I enjoyed the article on the toxicity of amphibian skin.  Since many wading birds and some snakes eat toads and frogs, do they have a way of neutralizing the effects of the secreted skin chemicals?

Your story has me thinking back to last weekend where, north of the camp on Whiskey Brook by Island Pond, a skilled teamster and a strong Belgian mare yarded our cow moose roadside without incident. Best luck to those still looking to fill tags!

great article, I am a teacher and referred to it in biology class!

In the mid-1950’s, my dad hand-dug and transplanted three 1” diameter maple trees from a rural roadside location into our front yard in western NY state. He chose the trees because of their colors: yellow, red and orange. The trees have changed to those same original colors each autumn for more than 50 years, as I assume all maple trees do. Perhaps we are being misled that there is some advantage to being red or orange. The color change may just be an unintended consequence of the production of anthocyanins for a completely different purpose.

I have been developing and testing a system of stand structure classification for stands in the southern and central interior of British Columbia since 2003.  This has grown into a PhD thesis at the Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia.  The concept is based on reverse cumulative distributions of trees per hectare and basal area per hectare with respect to increasing diameter (i.e. basal area and numbers of trees per hectare greater than or equal to a diameter threshold, where the threshold increases from 0 cm dbh up to a maximum dbh.  The classification was built using these metrics in a cluster algorithm.  I have built a compiler to classify new plots and/or stands.  I have evaluated the classification in the PhD for the purpose of looking at different stand succession patterns, and I have used it to characterize forest inventories extending over 1 million hectares.  I think that much of the complexity you speak of can be related to these distributions, particularly when they are extended to account for differences in species composition. I hope to finish my work at UBC in the spring of 2012.

I have several butternut trees on my 20 acres here in western PA. Some are advanced in their canker disease, but still producing nuts. This year many of the nuts had husks that were very full of bright yellow maggots. I have been unable to find anything about these prolific worms. I am most curious to know what they are and what they will turn into. They do not seem to be harmful to the nuts, but make the job of husking rather revolting.  Anyone know what they are ? thanks, Tom