Newsletters

MARCH, 2012

 

 

“It should be clear to everyone by now–even those with a vested interest in ignorance–that industrial civilization is killing the planet. It’s causing unprecedented human privation and suffering. Unless it’s stopped, or somehow stops itself, or most likely collapses under the weight of its inherent ecological and human destructiveness, it will kill every living being on earth. It should be equally clear that the efforts of those of us working to stop or slow the destruction are insufficient. We file lawsuits; write our books; send letters to editors, representatives, CEOs; carry signs and placards; restore natural communities; and not only do we not stop or slow the destruction, but it actually continues to accelerate.”

- Derrick Jensen

 

 

“It's always tease tease tease
You're happy when I'm on my knees
One day is fine, and next is black
So if you want me off your back
Well come on and let me know
Should I Stay or should I go?

Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know ……”

-Mick Jones/John Mellor, The Clash (Should I Stay or Should I Go)

 

 

 

 

ENOUGH ALREADY – Stay or Go 

Has all this just been one big pissing contest between Meditech’s Pappalardo and the Massachusetts Historical Commission’s Galvin?  After seven months, please! …Is it about to end? We think so.

 

Meditech originally said they had to begin construction immediately or they would locate somewhere else taking their (pick a number) 300, 600, 650, 800 “good-paying” jobs with them. Meditech couldn’t wait …didn’t have time …for archaeological data gathering at their Peace Haven site.

 

Meditech crying “wolf” yet again?  Check out this recent article from The Herald News:http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x1160485345/Legislature-may-still-pass-Freetown-home-rule-petition-to-benefit-Meditech#ixzz1nzq1Z1jB

 

Okay, they’re leaving, but they’ve now been leaving for six months …and counting. They haven’t gone anywhere else yet that we know of. So why are they staying?

 

How can Meditech stay and proceed with their plans if they will not agree to archaeological oversight?

 

Well, it appears they have help from one state regulatory agency. The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection aka …by some critics …as the Department Encouraging Pollution (DEP) required the owners of the Peace Haven property, Churchill and Banks, to remediate the old Algonquin Gas site just to the north of the location where Meditech planned to locate.

 

How is this “remediation” being accomplished? Why, by stripping soil from the Meditech site and using it for fill at the old gas plant location.

 

 

The old Algonquin syn-gas facility has been closed for at least twenty years. Why now? Just a coincidence? Hey, we’ve got an old bridge over the Taunton River we’d like to sell you.

 

Whether Freetown’s "home-rule petition" passes or not, the site will apparently be ready for Meditech.  At that point, the hiring of a "certified" archeologist will be moot.

 

Preliminary archaeological “test pits” by Meditech’s consultants, seemingly in some of the same areas now being stripped, turned up hundreds of artifacts. What is being lost by the DEP’s remediation order? Anything? Something? Nothing?

 

The DEP gas site remediation file is available on their website. It is filed as "Tier II Classification Extension Request RTN #4-16971". If interested, check it out.

 

The file is dated Feb. 2012 and the site does have an extensive history. It does address additional site clean-up, but if you look at the map on Page 18 it shows that the southerly meadow that they have been stripping "for clean fill" is south of the delineated clean-up areas they list and show on the file maps.

 

 

Meditech was to locate in the meadow areas south of the road that runs across the photo. Yellow indicates the area presently being stripped of soil.

 

 

 Artifacts? What artifacts?

 

How can one find out the truth? Meditech refuses comment other than to say they are leaving or have left.

 

Area political leaders when running for office promise “transparency” in government. Once elected, government suddenly becomes opaque.

 

State agencies, when asked, go dumb or give cryptic comments fearful of offending state legislators that hold the purse-strings.

 

Economic development agencies and their boosters will lie in the belief that the end justifies the means.

 

Since one can’t get a straight answer from the principals involved …or even get a response in many cases …and since our political leaders really don’t believe the people should know what is going on … we’ve been forced to go to extraordinary lengths to find out what will be the fate of Peace Haven?

 

Left with little choice, we’ve consulted the Oracle of Peace Haven, our Magic 8-Ball and a friend’s Ouija Board.

 

The Oracle would speak only if we promised not to reveal her comments until next year.  We promised, so we can only say her comments were less than positive.

 

We asked the Magic 8-ball if Meditech would locate in Freetown. The Magic 8-Ball responded with, “outlook good.” When asked how Peace Haven would fare, the answer was, “ask again later.”

 

With our fingers on the Ouija Board’s planchette or pointer we asked the spirits …10,000 years worth of Native American spirits at Peace Haven …if the cultural history and natural environment of the site will be preserved or destroyed.

 

The planchette slowly and mysteriously moved to the following letters …s-c-r-e-w-e-d a-g-a-i-n.

 

After some analysis and thought we predict Meditech will, once they get their way, build at the Freetown site.  Local political leaders and economic development types will be hailed as heroes. The history and archaeological mysteries at Peace Haven will have been compromised.

 

If our predictions turn out to be incorrect, blame a mute Meditech, opaque politicians and appointed leaders, colluding state agencies and prevaricating economic development types.

 

After all, we can only work with the info we are given.

 

 

 

 

BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

Like New England’s much loved pussy willow, skunk cabbage is one of our earliest flowering spring plants. This year, due to the incredibly mild winter, skunk cabbage was up and about in area wetlands in early February.

The ground may still be frozen in spots and some snow may still fall, but with the rapidly lengthening days and therefore more focused sunlight …on those rare winter days when the sky is not cloudy and grey …fat, green skunk cabbage buds push up out of the sun-warmed swamp mud.

Protected inside each emerging purple and green mottled skunk cabbage bud, botanically called aspathe, is the delicate flower cluster, called a spadix.

The skunk cabbage is found in swamps and wetlands from Quebec and Ontario southward to Georgia and Missouri and is a member of the arum family.

Within the arums are a number of species that are “thermogenic.” Thermogenic plants have the ability to produce heat which allows them to shorten their period of dormancy thereby giving them a competitive advantage by allowing them to start growing while competing wetland species are still dormant in winter mode. The warmth also disperses the flower odor and encourages pollinating insects to hang around the spadix longer.

As the hood-like spathe unfolds, it exposes the pinkish-yellow skunk cabbage flowers which give off a carrion-like odor. The large leaves emerge weeks after the flowers.

Though the temperature may be hovering around the freezing mark one may notice swarms of small carrion flies and gnats hovering about the flowers. Attracted by the strong smell and warmth these small insects enter the sheltered spathe and in moving about ensure pollination.

The skunk cabbage is not a “skunk” …nor is it a “cabbage.” Bruise or cut the cabbage-like foliage and a pungent skunky odor is released. The odor given off by the skunk cabbage is nowhere near as powerful as that of its namesake, but is unpleasant enough to serve as a warning to creatures large and small that although abundant, green and succulent, the leaves and other plant parts contain calcium oxalic crystals and cause, in most animals, excruciating pain if chewed and swallowed.

Although shunned by most critters, a few species can eat skunk cabbage with apparent impunity. Black bears, fresh out of hibernation, feed extensively on skunk cabbage.  We have watched wild turkeys, in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve (SMB), eating young skunk cabbage leaves as they walk along foraging through wetlands in early spring. Wood ducks eat skunk cabbage seeds in the fall and our September 2011 “Bioreserve Fauna of the Month,” the great grey leopard slug, feeds on decaying skunk cabbage leaves in late fall and the following spring.

The skunk cabbage grows from a thick perennial starchy rhizome buried deep in the swamp muck. Like many other arum species these roots were gathered by Indians and then dried and ground into flour. The flour would then be stored for a minimum of six months to allow the poisonous calcium oxalic crystals to breakdown and dissipate before the flour was used.

Skunk cabbage was also used extensively as a medicinal plant by various Indian tribes and Indian herbalists traded and sold various skunk cabbage based medicines to early European settlers. Reportedly it was used as an anti-spasmodic to treat persistent coughs, bronchitis, asthma and similar maladies.

Take a walk to a wooded wetland near you and check out this hardy New England native.

 Skunk cabbage spathe and spadix

 

BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum)

The Spotted Salamander is a striking creature, rubbery looking in its shiny black skin with two irregular rows of yellow spots running from the top of the head to the tip of the tail. The salamander’s underside is light gray or black. Adult spotted salamanders are 6 to 9 inches long. Females tend to be larger than males.

The spotted salamander is the largest salamander native to southeastern New England. The spotted, along with its slightly smaller and much rarer cousin the marbled salamander are members of the mole salamander family …so named because they spend most of their time in burrows hunting their prey beneath the forest floor.

Lacking claws they do not dig their own burrows, but utilize those dug by shrews, voles and mice. Shrews, especially, are fierce predators with insatiable appetites but avoid munching on spotted salamanders due to the salamander’s toxic skin secretions.

The spotted salamander lives in hardwood and mixed hardwood/softwood forests. They tend to leave their burrows only to breed, but will occasionally leave to hunt above ground on warm, humid, rainy summer nights.

Spotted salamanders are found in forested areas throughout the eastern United States and southern Canada. Still a common woodland salamander species they are starting to decline in some areas. Acid rain and other rain carried pollutants may be the cause of these gradual loses.

Spotted salamanders are most often encountered during mass migrations on rainy nights in March and April when heading to vernal pools where they will mate and lay their eggs. Like salmon, spotted salamanders return to the exact pool where they were born and lived as tadpoles before undergoing metamorphosis.

Spotted salamanders will travel as far as half a mile to reach the pool of their birth.

Vernal pools are necessary habitats for this species. Vernal pools are temporary, usually shallow woodland water bodies that only contain water during the rainy spring season. Because these pools are temporary these pools do not contain fish which would, if present in the spotted salamanders’ breeding pools, gobble up all the eggs and young tadpoles.

In early spring females are the first to arrive at the pool. The males arrive a day or two later and upon entering the pool they quickly swim to a female and begin the nuptial dance. The males swim about excitedly nudging and rubbing against a female. The females reciprocate.

At the height of the dance males deposit spermatophores at the bottom of the pool. Spermatophores are small capsules of sperm. They resemble small white Chiclets gum pieces. 

The female spotted salamanders locate and position themselves over the spermatophores. Grasping a spermatophore with her hind feet the female salamander        inserts it into her body. Internal fertilization of her eggs then occurs.

Females lay their 25 to over 100 eggs in jelly masses which look similar to frog eggs.  The jelly egg masses cling to twigs and branches in the water. These eggs masses are round and 3 to 5 inches in diameter. The jelly surrounding the individual eggs turns green due to the presence of symbiotic algae.

The jelly mass provides nutrients and the developing salamder embryos provide carbon dioxide needed by the green algae. The algae, through photosynthesis, produce oxygen needed by the developing salamander embryos.

The eggs hatch in a few weeks and the tadpoles are carnivorous feeding on zooplankton, water insects, frog tadpoles …and each other. They are quite fierce and grow very rapidly.

As spring becomes summer the vernal pools begin to dry up. The spotted salamander tadpoles, in their respective pools, sense the changing pool environment and quickly lose their external gill and develop lungs, grow legs and transform into the more rounded shape of an adult salamander.

As the pools dry completely the young salamanders leave …some as early as mid-July, others as late as October.

During the winter, they hibernate in deep underground burrow chambers.

Spotted salamanders eat small insects, spiders, slugs and earthworms.

They are preyed upon by garter and ribbon snakes, but due to their toxic slime few woodland predators want to eat them. Raccoons are one of the few species that thwart the salamander’s slime defense by rolling them in leaves and repeatedly washing them in a nearby brook or pool before devouring them.

If a spotted salamander losses its tail or leg to a predator it will regenerate that lost member …although it may take over a year to do so.

With a lifespan of thirty to forty years they are amazingly long lived for such a small creature.

It has become an early spring tradition with many nature centers, land trusts and environmental groups to lead walks to view the spotted salamander mating rituals in local vernal pools. Take part and learn about your spotted salamander neighbors, vernal pools and this amazing annual spring phenomenon.

 

The Trustees of Reservations (TTOR) Salamander Soiree is an event you do not want to miss. It is usually in late March or early April. With the winter we’ve had this year the salamanders may head to their vernal pools extra early. Maybe even next week.

If you’d like to participate you must preregister with the Trustees so they can call to inform you of the date of the event. TTOR does not pick the date, the salamanders do.

To preregister call TTOR at 508-636-4693 ext.13 or email Bioreserve@ttor.org

Here are a few photos of past Salamander Soirees.

 

 

Click on Calendar for other early spring activities and events.