Highlights
DECEMBER 2022 - Return to the Forest Pt.5,6, Bioreserve Walk
INFO ALERT - You were meant to be wild! Return to the forest, your ancestral home - Part 5
Besides hiking and all those other forest activities that we covered in parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 here are a few more wild and fun things to do in the forest with young Homo sapiens. If we are ever going to really get serious about saving our planet's natural environment and biodiversity it will only be because:
"In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught."
- Baba Dioum
We are neck deep in the Sixth Extinction and sinking deeper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
In 1900 there were two billion people in the world. Right now, November 2022, the United Nations says the world has eight billion people. With those numbers, how do we save our home planet and its rich biodiversity?
We need more and better outdoor environmental education, starting yesterday, for all ages and especially for children living in urban/suburban areas wihout access to the outdoors. Nature play significantly improves all aspects of child development – physical, cognitive, social and emotional. Playing outdoors grows resilience, self-confidence, creativity and more. Take a kid to the forest. Bring snacks, drinks and in the warmer months bring some insect repellent.
To find hundreds of woodland/nature play activities for kids of all ages, google "Nature activities for children in woods/forests" ...or something similar.
Over the years since the creation of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve we've introduced many adults and children to the wonders of nature and the importance of protecting the last bit of Southeastern Massachusetts native biodiversity in this rapidly growing urban part of the state.
As we've mentioned before, 20+ years ago when the Bioreserve was created The Trustees of Reservations, one of the Bioreserve's land owning partners, promised to build an environmental education center. Despite an office in Fall River and extensive outreach they failed to understand the local community and never realized the increase in membership and other funding they expected to find locally. Consequently, they soon reneged on their promise to construct and manage an environmental education center and closed their Fall River office.
At that time The Trustees did hire a professional environmental educator who was excellent at interpreting local nature and biodiversity and led walks and gave talks on the natural wonders of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. Hundreds of inner city school kids and adults took part. Many had never been in the woods before. We all waited patiently for the promised educational facility. It never came and eventually The Trustees eliminated the environmental education position.
Unfortunately for the Bioreserve, The Trustees did not just fade away. They came back in 2021 when they found tens of thousands of dollars for "trail projects" available in a Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation grant program funded by the federal off-road recreational vehicle fuel tax. The Trustees, seeing an opportunity here, wrote a proposal replete with virtue signalling and other "wokeisms", that would destroy and alter almost a quarter mile of The Trustees' Shockley Trail by removing rocks, cutting some trees, and allowing in alien species by opening the forest to construct "play stations". Why destroy land necessary to the survival of local species of flora and fauna when you don't have to?
Why create a faux forest experience when you have miles of already existing trails and exciting natural things to do and nature experiences to have in the actual forest? We've taken small children wading in vernal pools; catching frogs and letting them go; watching turtles lay eggs; climbing Bell Rock; making elf and fairy houses out of ferns, bark, berries and bits of quartz and other pebbles; smelling wildflowers; picking berries, playing with sticks and pine cones; jumping on puffballs to see a cloud of spores; playing Pooh Sticks; etc. It is a shame some adults forget what it was like to be a child. It is a shame The Trustees don't keep their promises and don't realize we are deep in the Sixth Extinction.
Maybe The Trustees' trail construction and altering of natural processes would be fine in a city or suburban park in a nearby city or town, but definitely not in a dedicated bioreserve on rare species habitat. It is just wrong!
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ACTIVITY ALERT - A Walk in the forest as winter approaches
In winter, the stark and drab deciduous forest, before snow and with the birds and insects of summer gone to warmer climates or hibernating, doesn't look very appealing, but looks can be deceiving. Once night falls our local winter woods come alive with both hunters and the hunted as our permanent resident coyotes, foxes, otters, weasels, fishers, deer, rabbits, muskrats, squirrels, voles, mice and a bunch of other hardy critters take winter in stride as they live their daily lives.
December 10, Saturday, 9 a.m. Meet at the parking area at the intersection of Indiantown Road and Yellow Hill Road, Fall River.
Length of walk approximately 4 miles. Wear appropriate clothing and footwear for a walk in the woods. Snack and water a good idea.
Rain cancels walk.
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ACTIVITY ALERT - This past Saturday gave us. a perfect late fall morning for a walk in the woods.
Next walk in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve will be Saturday, January 14, 2023
Saturday morning's hike took us from The Trustees' parking area, at the Intersection of Yellow Hill and Indian Town Roads, southeast to the wetlands and swamp along Miller Brook and the old Miller Farm site at the head of Miller Lane. A lot of successional forest and other areas, especially along the brook, contain tree species not commonly found in most other areas of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. Some of those are flowering dogwood, shagbark hickory, chestnut oak and scarlet oak.
Thank you to Liz for the following photos. Brightly colored clothing on hikers along the trail. Especially important to be visible during fall hunting seasons. Charlie, what are you looking at?
Old stone walls show this is old farm country. Rocks left by earlier glaciers were used to delineate property lines, livestock pastures and farm fields. It is against the law to steal these rocks and destroy these walls. It happens often where rock rustlers remove these walls to sell to landscapers and others on the Cape and/or the Islands. If you see anyone destroying and or removing stone walls in the Bioreserve, call the police and report the activity.
An autumnal pool, same as a vernal (spring) pool, except occurs in the fall when autumn rains fill depressions in the forest floor. Unlike vernal pools that in spring attract vast numbers of breeding salamanders, frogs and other amphibians, autumnal pools, in our neck of the woods, attract one species of salamander that breeds in the fall.
And, that salamander is the marbled salamander. The marbled salamander is state-listed as Threatened in Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program within the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife. Most local populations in Massachusetts appear to be small and isolated, and adult survivorship is very important to maintaining them. Unfortunately, The Trustees wish to alter marbled salamander habitat, in a bioreserve, for an ill-conceived recreational project. Shame on them.
Our next walk in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve will be January 14, Watch for the walk particulars the first week in January.
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INFO ALERT - Here's the Winter Solstice bringing Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. "Let Heaven and Nature Sing!"
You were meant to be wild! Return to the forest, your ancestral home - Part 6
And, bring your camera.
In our neck of the New England woods we are fortunate to have four distinct seasons to enjoy, celebrate and marvel at. Take photos capturing the same scene from the same location in winter, spring, summer and fall. Each season beauty and variety abounds. Each season has its surprises waiting for you to discover.
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