OUR
COMMENTS - May, 2006
Conservation Opportunities On The Horizon
We have not updated the "OUR COMMENTS" page since last spring, not because there have been no worthwhile events to report, but because we have been very busy with conservation work around First Mountain. We did experience another summer, fall, and winter and continued to enjoy life on the mountain while we hiked, maintained trails, and worked in the woods, just as we have reported in earlier columns. What is new is a growing awareness of conservation in our valley and an acknowledgement by neighbors that we do live in a special place that deserves protection from the growing development pressures often written about in this column.
Our conservation efforts are bearing fruit as we work on projects to protect our own mountain, to protect the unique Shelburne valley's natural and historic resources, and to preserve the undeveloped forest resource in the whole of the Mahoosuc Mountain Range.
First Mountain
The most easily managed of these projects is the placement of a conservation easement on our own First Mountain Forest. We are finally working with conservation partners, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) and The Conservation Fund (TCF), to hold an easement on our land that will protect the values we most cherish. With the help of ATC and TCF, we want to insure that our land always remains an undeveloped and natural forest, benefitting the wildlife that requires such habitat. Our detailed management goals for First Mountain Forest have been highlighted throughout the many pages of this website. The ATC has an interest in protecting and preserving undeveloped landscapes around the Appalachian Trail corridor and will be a perfect fit as an easement holder for our land. I also serve on the ATC national Stewardship Council and share the organization's values.
Shelburne River Valley
We have had as a goal the protection of First Mountain Forest since the day we purchased the property. We also recognized that protection of First Mountain had only limited value if we did not also look at the mountain as a piece of the surrounding forest landscape. The nearby Mill Brook Trust land, the Leadmine State Forest, and the Society for Protection of New Hampshire Forests Peabody Forest, were all part of a protected front range along the Mahoosucs' south ridgline on the north side of the Androscoggin River in Shelburne. Yet, there were many large blocks of privately owned forestland separating those protected lands and First Mountain. Fortunately, almost all of that land is owned in large tracts by long-time Shelburne families, stretching from the Leadmine State Forest all the way to the Maine state line. Our conservation work in the rest of our valley is an ongoing process yet to be reported upon.
Mahoosucs Region
I began working with a number of local, regional, and national organizations on a project called the Mahoosuc Initiative in late 2004, where I have has been representing the Appalachian Trail Conservancy at the coalition of partners. The initiative is a response to the dramatic change in land ownership patterns in the region. Some parcels have changed owners as often as three times during the past ten years. As a result of those sales, all of the region's former timber and paper company lands are now owned by out-of-state land investment companies that specialize in timberland investment. The new ownership patterns foretell a dramatic change to the landscape. In order for the new owners to offer a competitive return on investment to stockholders, the land must be managed on a short term focus with the dwindling timber resource harvested at a higher rate, and the land subsequently often sold for other uses as residential or kingdom lots. With today's timber economics, land investment companies may not be able to manage their investment lands on a forty to sixty year harvest rotation as required for sustainable forest management.
In response, the Mahoosuc Initiative is focusing on a large region made up of New Hampshire and Maine towns and unincorporated areas, roughly from Gorham/Shelburne at the west and Bethel, Maine to the east, continuing north to Umbagog Lake in both New Hampshire and Maine. The Mahoosuc Mountain Range is at the core of this region. Along with the primary local partners, Androscoggin River Watershed Council, Mahoosuc Land Trust, Northern White Mountains Chamber of Commerce, and the regional and national Northern Forest Alliance partners, we are encouraging involvement by all of the region's communities in an effort to identify the region's most valued natural, historic, and cultural resources and their value to the communities' economies and way of life. As part of the initiative, Ginger and I have been working on a Participatory GIS mapping project to gather input from Shelburne and Gorham residents. The results of the mapping project will be incorporated into a Mahoosucs Region Resource Report to be published at the end of the summer. The report is designed to help each of the region's communities recognize the critical resources identified by their own community members as needing protection, and to offer concepts and suggestions on how the communities may achieve protection for those resources. Coalition partners are then prepared to offer their continued assistance in achieving shared goals. This project is ongoing and its future to be fully determined as it evolves to match the communities' needs.
And as Life Goes On
The black bear once again has stolen our expensive squirrel proof bird-feeder. We had been leaving the feeders out while away from the mountain and had just installed a pair of inexpensive sacrificial feeders, which were lost to the bears in mid-April as they were intended to be. Since then, we have been taking the feeders in at night and removing them whenever we were in Maine. We had avoided any bear marauding until mid-May, when we forgot about the feeders that evening as we were in conversation with dinner guests. Our neighbor Stan left about 8:45 PM without fanfare, but when I opened the door a few minutes later to let golden retriever Willie out for a break, he immediately was on the trail of a fleeing black bear. The bear, with our feeder securely in its possession, fled down the nearby trail to the stream with Willie in hot pursuit. Willie is generally considered to be a marshmallow, but he is ferocious when chasing bears. He is also smart enough not to catch bears, which may explain his bravado in such a fierce chase. Anyhow, Willie returned shortly and I placed him back inside the cottage before following the trail in an effort to recover the feeder. The bear had ended his flight at a large pine tree down the hillside along the stream and was in no hurry to leave the feeder. Evidently Willie presented much more of a threat than I did. I returned to the cottage after a short while and brought Ginger and guest Nancy Bell down the trail to continue watching the bear by flashlight as he worked on emptying our feeder . He finally grew tired of the curious onlookers and splashed away through the stream. I am still looking for my feeder in that part of the woods, though generally a bear doesn't leave enough of the feeder to repair.
We
began placing a "critter cam" along trails and good wildlife activity sites
on First Mountain this Spring. The digital camera has caught North Road neighbor
Lala walking along the woods path that she uses to reach our cottage and
a few lone wandering dogs, in addition to the wildlife we were hoping to
photograph. We have a night photo of a coyote with its eyes reflecting far
off in the incandescent flash and another evening photo with three deer clustered
together on the same path used by Lala . We also have a near-miss turkey
photo and the recent early morning picture on the left of a young buck deer
with its velvet antlers just beginning to emerge. We are still fine-tuning
use of the digital camera, experimenting with the infrared/LED and
incandescent flash settings for night use. The sensor for the camera uses
infrared technology to sense heat activity and the camera seems to often
react with a too long delay that allows many creatures to pass before the
shutter triggers. We have also found the infrared LED flash to have a limited
range and little value. We chose a camera with the infrared LED flash in
order to not alert wildlife at night and thus alter their patterns. The camera
also has a video setting which we have not yet tried. The photo at left was
shot in daylight while the camera was in the infrared mode, thus the almost
sepia-tone color of the photo. You can take full color photos in the infrared
flash setting only with a filter lens in place on the camera. To use infrared
flash at night and full color during the day, you must remove the filter
before nightfall and replace it in the morning. That is a little too much
inconvenience when the camera is placed higher up the mountain. We will continue
to experiment with the camera, and hopefully photograph the black bear this
summer. We will eventually post a "critter cam" page as our collection of
photos expands.
Larry
RETURN TO HOME
PAGE
REVIEW THESE EARLIER OWNER'S COMMENT PAGES:
March, 1997 "Who
We Are"
April, 1997
"Impressions of the Town of
Shelburne"
May, 1997
"Learning
Forestry"
June,
1997
"Visiting Our
Forest"
September, 1997
"Return from Sunday River & ATC
Conference"
November, 1997
"Attendance at Granite State
Woodlot and Wildlife Management
Course"
April, 1998
"Moving to
Maine"
July, 1998
"Ice Damage & New Cottage
Design"
November, 1998
"Hiring a
Forester"
March, 1999
"Winter on the
Mountain"
June, 1999
"Second Summer in New
England"
July, 1999
"Tree Farms, Woodlots, &
Timberland"
August,
1999 "Forest Fragmentation
& Building on the Mountain"
October,
1999 "A Summer of Trail
Building"
November,
1999 "Driving to the
Mountain"
February,
2000 "A Matter of
Perspective"
April,
2000 "End of
Winter"
June, 2000
A New Summer and a New
House
October,
2000 Mosquitoes and
Eagles
January,
2001 A New Year and New
Challenges
March,
2001 Winter Fun and a First
Winter Summit Climb
July, 2001
A Setback in the Building of First Mountain
Cottage
October, 2001
Fall Returns - A Different
World
January, 2002
Winter Fun
April, 2002
The Winter that Wasn't & the Spring
that Was (Winter)
September, 2002
Odd Weather Continued into Spring,
A New Job, & Odds & Ends
December, 2002
Tracking Wolves in Maine, Winter Wildlife
at First Mountain
February, 2003 Workshops,
Logging, & Lynx
July, 2003 Weather, Working
in the Forest, and Another Workshop
December, 2003
Don't Fence Me In - Defending Against
Sprawl
May, 2004
Spring Renewal
September, 2004
Bears on the Rampage, AT Photo Project, &
Mushrooms
April, 2005
Spring and Change is in the Air