Monthly Archives: April 2010

A Cleaner, Greener Land: What Kalamazoo Ought to Do. 2010, Part 1.

I made the following remarks at the 24 April 2004 Earth Day celebration at Kalamazoo Valley Community College and included them on the earlier version of my website as Conservation Letter 2 . Today, in boldface , I look at the same topics six years later.

White trillium, Earth Day 2010. Photograph by Richard Brewer.

When I agreed to give a talk at Earth Day, I asked my wife what I should talk about. She said, “It’s Earth Day. Talk about positive, forward-looking things.”

“What should I call the talk?” I said.

“Use the title of the last chapter in your book.”

So today I’m talking about positive, forward-looking things going on in the area or the state, and the title is “A Cleaner, Greener Land.”

I added the subtitle myself.

A few months ago, I heard Dave Poulson speak just across the hall in KVCC’s Eye on Environment series. Poulson spent several years as the environmental reporter for the Booth newspapers, the only environmental reporter in the state as far as I know. He had just left that job to join an environmental journalism center at Michigan State University when he spoke here.

In his talk Poulson said that of all the issues he had reported on in his years of covering the environment in Michigan, he had concluded that the most important one, the central one where all the rest came together, was land use. As someone with a special interest in land conservation, I think that’s a sound conclusion, at least for the local and state level.

Today I’m going to mention a few hopeful land use actions that have been done or begun or at least been mentioned. I’ll also add a couple of other hopeful things that ought to be started.

1. First, I think this Earth Day is an encouraging sign in itself. I remember the first Earth Day in 1970 in Kalamazoo. Lew Batts spoke to a large audience at Nazareth College. [At the talk, I probably mentioned that there were smaller gatherings around the same time at Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College.]

For the last several years, there has been no evident continuing civic commitment to Earth Day in Kalamazoo. Nevertheless, every year some group has stepped forward and put on something. I remember a couple of years ago, the Food Co-op, seeing that nobody else had planned anything, did the best they could in the space next to Kraftbrau.

2010–Continuing in the positive mode, it’s worth mentioning that the Kalamazoo People’s Food Co-op in these past few years has a remarkable record of success. I would say this is largely a result of (1) very good management and (2) the existence of a large constituency in and around Kalamazoo who want organic and local foods and who prefer to support this kind of organization instead of pouring their dollars into the pockets of large corporations. The success of the small Co-op store on Burdick St. has shown the need for larger quarters and, after long study, the Co-op is planning to build at the north edge of the downtown area, next to MacKenzie’s Bakery.

To the Co-op’s great credit, the new building will be on a brownfield site, which it is joining with the city in remediating. Also, the new downtown Kalamazoo link between the Kal-Haven trail and the Kalamazoo Riverfront trail will run right by it. Potentially, people could walk or bike to the new store from Portage, Battle Creek, or South Haven. (Unfortunately, people living in downtown Kalamazoo will have a longer walk than they do to the Burdick store.)

The Co-op is raising money for the project starting with its members. It’s a worthy cause.

The groups that I know of that have been working on Earth Day this year are the Kalamazoo Environmental Council and KVCC. I’m sure representatives of other groups and just plain individual environmentalists have contributed also. Today gives every indication of being one of the best celebrations in a long time, but just the fact that official neglect hasn’t managed to kill off Earth Day in Kalamazoo has to be seen as a hopeful sign.

2010–More recent Earth Days have had, as far as I could tell, little or none of the coordination of events among the various groups that was evident in 2004. This is unfortunate but perhaps understandable considering the absence of any city or county sponsorship. However, the number of events and activities have continued to expand, with more and more groups doing their bit for Earth Day.

Earth Day is, strictly speaking, 22 April, but Earth Day events have spread to the weekends before and after the 22nd, and even beyond. Nevertheless 22 April is the date in 1970 that the first of these national teach-in on the environment was held. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin) was the originator. I hadn’t remembered until I read a little Earth Day history recently, that his inspiration came from the Viet Nam war teach-ins that had begun around 1965.

2. The biggest story on the front page of the Kalamazoo Gazette a month or so ago (28 March 2004) had the headline “Highway Upgrades Bypass Schoolcraft.” It’s one of those typical newspaper headings that don’t tell you what the article is about. What the story said was that the Michigan Department of Transportation has for the time being given up any plans to study, then plan and build a 4-lane $250 million 131 bypass around Schoolcraft.

This was not news; MDOT had made the announcement in December 2003. The reason is that there’s no money for new highway projects these days because of the poor economy. The Gazette article admits this but also spins the story to blame the people in the region for not embracing the idea of a bypass years ago.

The postponement is good land use news. Any of the bypass routes would eat up farmland that is probably the best in the state. Most of the routes would also destroy woods and marshes and would obliterate landmarks and relicts of Prairie Ronde, the 20-odd square miles of tall-grass prairie that once occupied the land around Schoolcraft. The bypass itself, depending on the exact route, could be four miles long and would occupy perhaps 600 acres and disturb much more in the construction. Interchanges and later business development would knock out additional acreages of farmland and natural land.

Only total cancellation of the whole idea of having a four-lane expressway all the way from Cadillac to the Indiana border would be better news for farmers and all opponents of sprawl.

2010–The Michigan Department of Transportation has not given up its dreams of a 4-lane highway to Nowhere, Indiana, as yet. Most recently, it has been talking about a bypass around Constantine. The only thing lacking is the money–well, the money and a legitimate reason for spending it this way. The project would cost $22 million, or probably more, which MDOT doesn’t have. But by using other money, MDOT has started environmental impact studies, preliminary engineering, and land acquisition. About 50 parcels of land will need to be bought, just to get around Constantine.

The economic downturn and lower gasoline usage mostly because of high gas prices have again spared Michigan the additional environmental degradation that would occur with a conversion of US-131 to an expressway all the way from Petoskey to the Indiana line. But we’ll never be safe from the threat as long as Michigan retains, where a Department of Transportation ought to be, a Department of Concrete Six Lanes Wide.

If “transportation” was really MDOT’s mission, its public statements would not be 98% about yet one more new highway or one more highway widening. Rather it would also be busily dealing with questions of mass transit, bike trails, sidewalks, passenger trains, and how best to achieve transportation objectives without damaging natural areas and farmland. When it did talk about highways, it would talk about keeping the ones we have in good repair.

3. Today’s Gazette had more good news. After a long process, a Declaration of Conservation Restrictions and Management Framework for the Asylum Lake Preserve was approved last Friday (16 April) by the Western Michigan University (WMU) Board of Trustees. This way of protecting such land is not as strong as a conservation easement held by a land trust provided with an adequate defense endowment. But all in all, I’d say that the Asylum Lake property is now more secure than at any time since 1985. Continued vigilance by area citizens will still be needed. In the long run, their outrage at proposed violations is the only permanent protection.

2010–I’ll update the Asylum Lake/Colony Farm Orchard situation in my next post. In it or later posts I’ll also cover points 4-7 of the original talk.

Land Trusts and The Land Trust Movement

Masthead of the newsletter of the Trustees of Reservations, the first land trust

This is an updated version of a page from the first version of my website. It will be moved to the Pages section in a few days.

For classification purposes, we can separate land conservation by government and land conservation by private organizations. Two models of private land conservation exist–land trusts and land advocacy organizations. Land trusts protect land by direct action. They buy it or accept it as a gift or acquire a partial interest called a conservation easement that allows them to protect the conservation values of the land. Land advocacy groups, on the other hand, protect land indirectly by persuading government to buy or set aside land for parks or preserves and to regulate privately held land in ways that prevent its degradation. The Nature Conservancy is an example of a land trust; the Sierra Club is an example of an advocacy organization.

Land conservation by government has been important since the early years of the 20th century, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt. A few scattershot efforts, such as Yellowstone and Yosemite, occurred earlier. For 75 years or so, federal, state, and local governments did a fairly satisfactory job of land conservation.

This progressive era came to a halt in 1981. Since that time, governmental land protection efforts have been weak or absent, occasionally rising to near adequacy in a few places for brief periods. The slack left in the vital task of land conservation has increasingly been taken up by land trusts.

The first land trust was the Trustees of Reservations, formed in Massachusetts in 1891 through the efforts of Charles Eliot. Several more organizations that followed what we now recognize as the land trust model were begun in the next several decades. Examples include the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, formed in 1901, Save-the-Redwoods League (1917), Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (in 1932 as the Greater Pittsburgh Parks Association), and Michigan Nature Association (1951 as the St. Clair Metropolitan Beach Sanctuary Association). Nevertheless, the rate of land trust formation was slow, and fewer than 50 bona fide land trusts were in operation by the middle of the 20th century. Rapid growth began with the emergence of the popular environmental movement in the late 1950s-early 1960s. By 1980, more than 400 land trusts were in existence.

Formation of new land trusts shifted into high gear in the 1980s as public-minded citizens became aware of two unhealthy trends: the near-abandonment of land protection by government and the escalating loss of natural and agricultural lands to sprawl. By 1990, there were nearly 900 land trusts in existence and by 2000, 1263. A renewed growth spurt took the number to 1667 in 2005 in the most recent complete census.

It probably makes sense to think of the land trust “movement” beginning during a few months from the fall of 1981 to the spring of 1982. Even though about 430 organizations that we would now call land trusts were in operation by 1981, few had any information about what the others were doing. Most were probably unaware that so many other groups with similar aims existed. Two national meetings in 1981, one in Cambridge MA and one in San Francisco, helped to spread the word. The Cambridge meeting, in particular, led to the formation of the Land Trust Exchange, renamed Land Trust Alliance in 1990. These meetings and the activities of the LTE as a clearinghouse and umbrella organization helped to turn the separate local groups into a community.

Today every state except North Dakota has at least one land trust. The density varies greatly. California has (as of 2005 by the Land Trust Alliance census) 198. Massachusetts has 161 and Connecticut, 128. The other states have numbers in the tens or–for much of the South, the Rocky Mountain region and the Plains region–in single digits.

As for results, land trusts have protected about 11.9 million acres, as of 2005. Nearly half of these acres were protected in just the 5 years from 2000 to 2005.

Much more about the history of the land trust movement, its connection with the broader conservation and environmental movements, current practices of land trusts, and prospects for the future are discussed in Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America. The website of the Land Trust Alliance is informative, as are its many publications including its journal Exchange.

Field Trip to Big Island Woods (Cooper’s Island) Coming Up

Hackberry, a frequent canopy tree at Big Island Woods. Photograph by Richard Brewer.

Saturday 24 April I’m leading a field trip to the Big Island Woods, also referred to as Cooper’s Island. It’s a trip for the Kalamazoo Wild Ones chapter.

“Big Island Woods” refers to an “island” of forest in the middle of Prairie Ronde, southwest Michigan’s largest mesic (tall-grass) prairie. The village of Schoolcraft was founded just east of the Island. Of the Island’s original 300 acres or more, about 20 acres now remain. The site is probably the natural area in southwest Michigan most worthy of permanent protection, for its combination of ecological, botanical, and historic values.

Historically, Prairie Ronde and the Big Island are interesting because of their connection with the earliest settlers in Kalamazoo County (such as Bazel Harrison), with James Fenimore Cooper (whence “Cooper’s Island”), and with Clarence and Florence Hanes, authors of The Flora of Kalamazoo County.

Ecologically, the remnant of the Big Island that survives is of interest because of its unusual species composition, its similarity to prairie groves of Illinois, and several rare plant species. The forest could perhaps be called wet mesic and has a diverse canopy, despite a windstorm about ten years ago that blew down many large trees.

Probably the most unusual plant species is the white trout lily, known from only one other site in Kalamazoo County. Two other rare plants are the trees Ohio buckeye and blue ash. There are, in addition, many other plants of mesic forest and southern swamp forest, including a relatively rich complement of spring ephemerals.

Red-berried elder in bud, early April, at Big Island Woods. Photograph by Richard Brewer.

Down trunks and woody debris from the wind storm about a decade ago make travel somewhat difficult in some parts of the woods.

Relatively little work has been done on the biota other than plants. However, as a wooded island surrounded by agricultural fields and village streets, it could be an important stopover site for migratory birds. In less than two afternoon hours on 11 May 1996 three observers found 42 bird species including 14 species of warblers.

The trip will leave from the I-94 car-pool parking lot at Oakland Drive, Kalamazoo, at 9:15 AM Saturday. Because parking at the field trip site is limited to about five cars, car-pooling is essential. The field trip will conclude about noon.

Later on, after the trip, I’ll try to write something about what we saw and talked about at Cooper’s Island.