Newsletters
September 2017 - Narrow-Leaved Blue Eyed Grass, Clymene Moth
WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES!
SEPTEMBER, 2017
“Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.”
- Leonardo da Vinci
“My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.”
- Michelangelo Buonarroti
RECEIVED THIS PAST MONTH FROM OUR SUBSCRIBERS – Check them out
Rewilding a Plymouth bog. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/us/cranberry-bog-wetlands-restoration-climate-change.html
Bad idea gets approval. http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/environment/state-approves-exploratory-drilling-near-yellowstone-national-park/article_b49c3eff-8ae5-5ea7-8ead-dde0e1610d76.html
Too late to stop it. http://www.recorder.com/UMass-holds-conference-on-climate-change-environment-11544923
Crony environmentalism. Part 1 - http://valleypatriot.com/cape-wind-project-a-tale-of-crony-environmentalism-part-1/
Forest land in three states to be preserved. http://www.benningtonbanner.com/stories/forest-parcels-in-3-states-to-be-preserved,515611
Visit a National Park. https://www.popsugar.com/news/National-Parks-Safe-Under-Trump-43752251
Burning biomass is dumb. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/massachusetts-climate-impacts-biofuels-21688
Lawsuit filed. https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2017/08/interior-department-sued-over-monument-review-communications
Ban neonicotinoides and save our bees. http://www.gazettenet.com/Bees-Environment-Story-11740043
Power plant wastewater rewrite maybe. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/epa-plans-rewrite-obama-era-limits-coal-power-plant-wastewater/
Al Gore's movie. http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-real-hero-of-al-gores-an-inconvenient-sequel-isnt-al-gore/
More Gore. https://www.vox.com/energy-andenvironment/2017/8/11/15943200/al-gore-still-has-faith
Saving a true American. http://www.joplinglobe.com/news/lifestyles/is-american-burying-beetle-ready-to-solo/article_2d0758e1-9fb2-5e03-af05-4c20658b8901.html
Fragmenting what little forest still exists in Rhode Island. https://www.ecori.org/renewable-energy/2017/8/18/new-power-plant-reports-offers-conflicting-opinions
A visit from an old friend? http://www.ricentral.com/arts_entertainment/an-unexpected-visit-from-perhaps-an-old-old-friend/article_3a10f590-835e-11e7-9e80-0786fbe596a1.html
REMEMBER THE PHOTO FROM OUR JULY NEWSLETTER? – The photo of public land being destroyed? If you don't, here it is.
Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve hillside at Copicut Road showing damage caused by vandals in 4WD trucks.
Damage much worse today due to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation's negligence in protecting our public forest and parkland.
OUTDOOR WOODLAND LEARNERS (O.W.L.)
As everyone knows or remembers from their own childhood, most little kids love learning, love adventure, love nature and animals and love to be outdoors. Unfortunately in today's America most kids get stuck in overcrowded, failing public schools; have their imaginations stifled ...or worse destroyed ...by electronic games and computer generated “virtual reality” ...and find themselves stuck with parents who think “outdoors” is too dirty, buggy, dangerous ...and just plain uncomfortable and inconvenient. The disconnection from the natural world that children in developed countries now have puts the future of our planet in peril.
In post war Europe, late 1940's and 50's, the European forest schools and nature kindergarten movement began. These forest and nature schools allow children to appreciate nature, learning through play and hands-on experiences how to solveproblems and work together for the common good. Since those early days, the forest/nature school movement has spread around the world and continues to grow. It received a big boost in the United States in 2005 with the publication of Richard Louv's “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”
Imagine our surprise when we heard there was an 'out in nature' education program for little kids existing right here in environmentally challenged and nature deficient southeastern Massachusetts. We've been hearing good things from little kids about their adventures at “O.W.L. Outdoor Woodland Learners” in the town of Berkley.
Not a full-fledged school, but a good beginning. You can check them out, here, if interested.http://outdoorwoodlandlearners.com/WhyNature.html
For a tad more on much needed general environmental education, here is an article from our November 2010 Newsletter. http://www.greenfutures.org/?content=9a7sh4aBCp3zjnND
MORE FAILURE FROM THE MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION AND RECREATION (DCR) – Always more, never less
Earlier this year we joined with 54 individuals and organizations in commenting on a DCR plan to log what DCR calls the “Garnet Hill Lot” in the Peru State Forest.
Not surprisingly DCR's responses to most of the comments were short, simplistic, evasive and formulaic. Frankly, DCR goes through the motions required by law with scant intent to seriously acknowledge questions of concern.Why hold a public hearing, ask for comments …and then trivially dismiss them?
Five or six years ago we issued an “Action Alert” asking for comments to an even dumber DCR plan to log immature white pine simply to use the slash, roots and logging debris to hide serious land damage caused by all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes. Egregious damage due to DCR's negligence in not maintaining and monitoring our public forest land.
We had many individuals and groups respond to our request and they sent in comments. We eagerly waited for DCR’s response to the comments and were sorely disappointed when not only did it appear they hadn't read many of the comments, but the ones they had read were answered perfunctorily. A reply that tells you a lot about the importance of the comment you've made and even more about the agency responding to the comment is, “DCR has reviewed and considered your comment, thank you.”
Green Futures is not opposed to responsible timber cutting on certain public lands if the intent of the logging is to increase species specific biodiversity. For timber extraction to occur, studies and surveys must first be done to determine which species will logging an intended area encourage positively ...and which species will logging impact negatively.
Specifically, within the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve (SMB), where there are endangered, threatened and species of special concern, what can responsible logging due to maintain them and/or what can logging do to return native, but presently extirpated species?
Massachusetts contains 4,992,000 acres of land. Our public forests, parks and watersheds consist of only about 400,000 acres. Those few acres are all we have to protect and preserve native species and their habitat, clean water and air, sequester carbon, provide scenic beauty and passive outdoor recreation, grow old-growth trees and provide a little wilderness in this third most densely populated state.
We, Massachusetts taxpayers, presently subsidize the felling of our forests for private gain. Halting mindless logging of our public lands would increase the value of timber on privately owned forest land and the increase in value to the landowner could be incentive enough to keep the property in income producing trees rather than selling it off to a developer for one-time gain. Help private forests remain economically viable. Save our public forests.
DCR’s Quabbin Watershed contains the largest public forest in southern New England. It has many devoted followers. DCR’s outdated and crude forestry practices in the Quabbin forest, as in our SMB, have not gone unnoticed.
DCR says they cut down trees to “improve” the forest. What arrogance! Here's a DCR improvement where they allowed the trees to be removed and alien thistle moved in.
BIORERSERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – Narrow-Leaved Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium)
Although its leaves are grass-like, blue-eyed grass is not a grass. Blue-eyed grass is in the iris family, Iridaceae, and grows, just like those domestic irises found in many home gardens, from perennial rhizomes (horizontal underground stems that produce shoots above and roots below).
Another wild member of the iris family found in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve is the blue flag, our December, 2015, “Flora of the Month. You can find it here,http://www.greenfutures.org/?content=wfrmNza9lpT940Fe
Narrow-leaved blue-eyed grass grows best in rich, well-drained soil in moist meadows, along meadow stream banks, sunny wetland edges and in damp forest clearings. It is found in eastern United States and Canada west to Ontario, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In the east, from Labrador south to Florida and Texas.
Narrow-leaved blue-eyed grass usually grows eight to twelve inches in height. Although small, the showy flowers are easily noticed. Flowers are between a quarter and a half inch in width, each flower containing six pointed blue petals and a bright yellow center. It blooms in early summer.
The flowers are pollinated by various pollen gathering bee species who inadvertently fertilize the flowers while foraging about. Following pollination a small fruit capsule forms and as the seeds mature the capsule dries, eventually splitting-open and releasing the tiny black seeds. Voles, mice and various small seed-eating birds feed on the capsules and seeds.
BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Clymene Tiger Moth (Haploa clymene)
Photo - Liz Garant
The Clymene moth is in the tiger moth family. Tiger moths are usually brightly colored with interesting shapes and patterns on their fore and hind wings. Most moths are night fliers. Clymene moths don't care and may be seen flying about at any time, in dark of night and light of day.
The tiger moth family contains two other species that we have featured, in past newsletters, as our“Fauna of the Month.” The Isabella moth and its winter weather prognosticating wooly bear caterpillar was in our September 2013 newsletter and the giant leopard moth in September 2014. More on the Isabella moth, here http://www.greenfutures.org/?content=xdkruE878hjQfFR9 and the giant leopard moth http://www.greenfutures.org/content=bevoad8gcgcCVG8a
The Clymene moth is named after the Greek nymph Clymene. In Greek mythology she was the wife of Helios the sun god who drove his sun chariot across the sky each day. Black and white to yellowish-white while at rest, the Clymene moth shows a little sunny brightness as it flies about flashing its yellow-orange hind wings. Its wingspan is 2 to 2 ½ inches.
Caterpillars of this moth are covered in black bristles. They are predominately black in color with a broad yellow stripe down each side and a narrower yellow stripe along the back. The caterpillars feed on the leaves of oak, willow and Joe Pye weed.
Photo – Wikimedia Commons – Megan_McCarty70
SEPTEMBER – Out goes Summer and in comes Autumn
What a wonderful time of the year to live in New England! Late summer/early fall weather usually brings cooler temperatures and less humidity. Our birds of summer are migrating south; woodchucks, bears, raccoons and chipmunks are pigging-out in anticipation of a calorie-scarce winter; crickets and katydids and their friends are singing the last of their summer songs; pumpkins, grapes, winter squash, cranberries and apples are ripening and asters and other fall flowers are blooming.
Although peak leaf color is a month away ...usually in our neck of the woods October 15 through October 22 ...red maple, blueberry and tupelo, especially in wetlands, are starting to turn red, orange and yellow. Life is good. Perfect conditions for exploring your natural environment.
For some Fall activities, click on our Calendar.
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