Prairie planting Oshtemo Township August 2010. Photo by Richard Brewer

When I go outside this summer I’m impressed by the amount of greenery.  I don’t have data, but it’s the greenest summer–the largest volume of foliage–I remember.

This makes sense.  The limiting factors for photosynthesis, Biology 101 tells us, are temperature, light, and carbon dioxide.  Translating photosynthesis into plant growth–that is, new biomass–also involves availability of water and soil nutrients, such as nitrogen.

This  growing season has been, day after day, one of the most consistently warm years–hot, I’d say–that I remember.

As for sunlight, I doubt that one summer is a lot different from another. Certainly, day length is the same from one year to the next.  There may be a few more cloudy hours one year than another, but all in all I suspect that the light this year has been about the same as last year or the one before.

Water, though, I think may have been in better supply than usual.  I haven’t tried to check weather station figures, but from my own rain gauge and how often our garden needed water, it seems to me that we’ve had a lot of well-spaced soaking rains.

Nitrogen is sometimes a limiting factor for plants, including several field crops. I don’t know that it was any more or less abundant this year.  Nitrogen compounds from agriculture are generally increasing in the environment.  For some plants an increase in nitrogen could encourage growth; however, many plants have modest soil nitrogen requirements.  Included are many prairie species.  For such species, a lot more nitrogen doesn’t increase production.

However, the compound nitrous oxide is increasing in the atmosphere as a result of current agricultural practice.  Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas, so it’s likely that more nitrous oxide is a part of the equation for global climate change in general.

More influential though is the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.  As everybody knows, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone steadily up, probably since early in the Industrial Age and certainly since 1958, when the systematic recording of atmospheric carbon dioxide began. Lately, the concentration has been rising about 3% per year.  This implies a doubling in about a quarter century, roughly one human generation.

So, maybe high temperatures, lots of rain, and more carbon dioxide than ever made 2010 a banner year. My guess is that the luxuriant growth this year is mostly tied to the warmer summer and the plentiful and effective rainfall.  The carbon dioxide level would have only have changed a couple of parts per million from last year.

Poison ivy growing up an oak, Oshtemo Township August 2010. Photo by Richard Brewer

However, increased carbon dioxide is probably the primary agent for a great increase in the growth of some plants in the past decade or more.  I’m thinking particularly of the vines, specifically the lianas–vines that can spread across the ground but can also climb trees.  Poison ivy, the several species of grapes, and Virginia creeper are native examples of lianas. There are a number of introduced lianas that are invasives in some natural areas.  Local examples are Asian bittersweet and European ivy.

A little more than twenty years ago, a friend asked me whether I thought that wild grapes were a serious pest in local forests; specifically, how frequently did they climb into the crown of a tree and kill it by shading its leaves?  I had spent a lot of time in beech-maple forests and told him that in my experience such a thing was rare. I went on to say that having a tangle of grapes in the forest canopy had its benefits, among them providing cover for barred and horned owls to hide from crows and blue jays.

No more than five years later my advice would have been different. At least by the mid-1990s, the grapes, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy were creeping up tree trunks in much greater numbers and the trees were suffering.  These trends continue.

Lianas are, of course, a prominent life form in the forests of the Tropics, and it’s possible that their success here in recent years is just one more result of global climate change. But temperatures are erratic.  The general trend in this part of the world is up, but any given year may be unchanged or even down.  Carbon dioxide, by contrast, is a little higher every year. My guess fifteen years ago when I began to notice the increased liana growth was that it was related to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.  Research in the past few years supports that hypothesis.  This link is to a study of poison ivy.

Despite what’s been happening with the lianas, my impression is that most herbs and shrubs within the forest didn’t join in this year’s burst of growth, not the way plants of the edges and the open spaces have.  Perhaps this makes sense too.  In the forests, the limiting factor for plant growth most of the time is light.  Despite our atmosphere’s extra carbon dioxide, despite this year’s good supply of water and the high temperatures, light at ground level within the forest is dim most of the growing season.  In the oak woods here, sweet cicely, white avens, tick trefoil didn’t look any more robust than they did last year.

It was just an average year in the woods.

Now, as can be seen, WMU is telling us the land is restricted again in a different way.

The Colony Farm Orchard's new signs. Photo by Richard Brewer

On 17 July 2010, David Nesius, a conservationist interested in retaining the Colony Farm Orchard as a natural area, noticed activity at the Orchard.  Workmen were installing new signs that read Western Michigan University Property RESTRICTED ACCESS  By Permission Only.

He spread the word via email about this new restriction on the public’s access to the land.

I was struck by the date on which the restricted access signs were posted.  On 16 July 2009, exactly one year ago, Representative Robert Jones introduced House Bill 5207.  This was the bill designed to strip the protective covenant from the Orchard land.  The timing of the legislation, some of us suspected, was designed to hide the attack on the Orchard as long as possible, occurring as it did when most students were away, many faculty were in libraries or at field sites scattered around the world, and many townspeople were on vacation.

Was the timing of the new signs a re-run of a successful gambit?  Maybe. I didn’t learn they’d gone up until I got back from a visit out East, so it kept me in the dark for a week.

On the other hand, the legislators who collaborated in dismantling the conservation covenant on the Orchard might wish that the signs had been delayed until after the August primaries or even the general elections in November.  Such a threatening display from WMU may bring back bad memories for some voters.

The Wednesday 21 July Kalamazoo Gazette carried an article by Paula Davis about the new signs.  She quoted WMU Associate Vice President for Community Outreach, Bob Miller, as saying that a concern for public safety prompted their installation. “We just want to know who is going to be there and what their plans are.  We’re not saying, ‘No Trespassing.’ We’re not saying, ‘Keep out’.”

When asked by reporter Davis how to get permission to be on the property, Miller said that people could “call the university and the university will direct them to the correct office.”  The Gazette article concluded with the university switchboard number.

Ladislav R. Hanka, local artist and conservationist, pursued the matter, finally talking with Donna Marks, executive assistant in the office of the Vice President for Advancement and Legislative Affairs.  After some discussion, it appeared that an email to Ms Marks (Donna.Marks@wmich.edu) containing one’s name, interest in the Orchard, what he or she would be doing there, when or how often visits might be, and who one’s companions might be would suffice.  Probably Ms Marks could provide further information if desired (387-2072).

Obtaining permission to visit the Orchard is highly desirable. Whatever the signs were meant to accomplish, they should not prevent anyone from continuing (or beginning) their bird watching, asparagus picking, snow shoeing, bur oak hugging, plein air painting, or any other other kind of nature, conservation, or environmental activity.

It’s well to remember that the Orchard land is still available for permanent protection.  Even though the open space/public use covenant has been removed, WMU is not compelled to expand the BTR park onto this land. It’s a fact that the original language of HB 5207 called for a new restriction that WMU would use the land for BTR Park expansion.  But after that language served its purpose as a more-or-less plausible justification for dumping the conservation covenant, the language was dropped, even before the bill left Representative Jones’s House Commerce Committee.

The upshot is that the WMU administration and board have the power to grant continued life to the Orchard, and they will bear the responsibility for any death sentence.

In the meantime, the Orchard land lives and participates in the ecological functioning of Asylum Lake Preserve.

To what I say in the letter, I would only add that electing politicians who were involved in passage of House Bill 5207 would be seen as, and would be, a validation of the whole process of breaking the covenant and setting the Colony Farm Orchard up for development.

By “the whole process,” I mean the sneaky introduction of the bill at a time when few students were on campus, most faculty were concentrating on their research in their labs or at off-campus sites, and many townspeople were on vacation.  I mean the way the politicians and WMU spokesmen substituted repetition of PowerPoint bullets for a debate on the issues.  And I mean the cynical marketing of development of these 53 acres next to Asylum Lake Preserve as Kalamazoo’s job creation solution, while giving a cold shoulder to remediated brownfields, in regional economic terms the logical location for BTR park expansion.

Horse chestnut tree, Colony Farm Orchard, spring 2010. Photo by Richard Brewer

Politicians whose names became notorious through their connection with House Bill 5207 are running again.

HB 5207 stripped from the Colony Farm Orchard the covenant that it be kept as open space for public use. Probably the most anti-conservation, anti-environment, anti-sustainability bill in the legislature last session, it fleeced us of dedicated open land and, if the land is developed, is a threat to Asylum Lake Preserve.

Most of us have a clear recollection of the events of 2009.  This recap is for those few who seem to have come down with a case of  early-onset political amnesia, as shown by a scattering of recent endorsements.

Robert Jones, let us recall, introduced HB 5207 July 16th, 2009 with no public notice from him or Western Michigan University at whose behest the deed was done. Jones is running again, this time in the Democratic primary for the 20th Senatorial district.  Fortunately, he is opposed by an excellent candidate, Mark Totten, untainted by the 5207 shenanigans.

And let us remember Larry DeShazor, who represented the District where the Colony Farm Orchard is located (in Oshtemo township).  He is running in Senatorial District 20 in the Republican primary. Neither Jones nor WMU had bothered to tell DeShazor about 5207; nevertheless, he voted for it in Committee and in the full House. His main Republican opponent is Tonya Schuitmaker, who also voted for 5207 in the House.

Tom George voted for 5207 in the Senate Appropriations Committee and in the Senate as whole.  Along with a bunch of other politicians, George is now running in the Republican primary for governor. In the Democratic primary is Andy Dillon, who allowed all this to happen while speaker of the House, and a second candidate, Virg Bernero, untainted by 5207 and as far as I can tell sound on other conservation issues.

Remember that the politicians who voted for 5207, local and otherwise, ignored an unprecedented outpouring of grass-roots sentiment against it.  But the letters, emails, phone calls, and personal visits were from conservationists, members of neighborhood groups, Environmental Studies students, and ordinary citizens who believe that promises should be kept–not the people these politicians are used to listening to.

And finally, remember that Jones or George and probably DeShazor, could have stopped 5207 dead in its tracks simply by saying to their colleagues, “I have concluded that this bill affecting my district is bad legislation.”

Should we put any of the supporters of 5207 in positions to do further damage?

Rosettes of American columbo. Last year's dried flowering stalk from another plant is the diagonal between the two rosettes. Photo by Richard Brewer

The usual way a person encounters columbo is to find one or a group of its basal rosettes.  These look rather like the basal rosettes of the well-known biennial weed common mullein except that the elongate oval leaves of columbo are thin, smooth, and green instead of thick, furry, and silvery like mullein.

Occasionally one sees a columbo flowering stalk.  It’s an impressive sight, often six or even eight feet tall, smooth and green, with several whorls of leaves and a great number of branches in the upper whorls bearing dozens or hundreds of small flowers on slim stems.  Though small, the flowers are striking looking, symmetrical with greenish-white, purple-dotted petals.  Long ago, in southern Illinois, when my friend Kenny Stewart and I found a blooming columbo, he described the flower as looking like a botany text book diagram of flower structure.  Calyx, corolla, stamens, a pistil, all the parts are laid out just as they should be, plus in the middle of each petal, a fringed nectar-producing gland.

A single flower of Am. columbo. Photo by Richard Brewer

Seven years ago, I decided to follow the fortunes of one patch of 121 columbo plants spread over an acre or so of oak woods. Two other patches of similar size exist several hundred feet away, one to the east and one to the west.   Ralph Babcock, a friend and former student, joined me to spend a day marking each plant by means of an orange plastic flag on a wire.  We gave each plant a number, written on the flag using a marking pen with super-permanent ink, and I recorded each location using direction and distance to landmarks and nearby plants. A little later in the summer, we recorded size and other information about each rosette.

Giving each plant an identifying number allows me to follow what happens to each one individually, like birds in a banded population.  Every June, I check to see which plants are still there and their size and condition and to replace weathered and missing flags.

Am. columbo plant number 52. On 23 June 2009, the rosette was composed of 30 leaves and had a diameter of 54 cm. Photo by Richard Brewer

The census usually takes me four or five days, a few hours each day.  Last year I postponed replacing  fading and tattered flags because I wanted to record what other plant species were within a meter or so around each plant and to note something about the topography and litter depth for each point.  So this year’s census took a little longer than usual because I had to make 39 new flags and renew the writing on many others.

As to the plants in the neighborhood, the big trees are mostly white oak, black oak, sassafras, wild black cherry, pignut hickory, and red maple  A few of the herbs are sweet cicely (which went from flowers to fruit just in the week when I was censusing), white avens ( in flower now), Indian pipe (not quite up yet this year), rattlesnake fern, spotted wintergreen, and lopseed.  There’s a fair amount of poison ivy and Virginia creeper on the ground too, more every year.

Some of the birds I hear singing or calling while I work on the columbo are Wild Turkey (pretty quiet lately), Ovenbird, Wood Pewee, Great Crested Flycatcher, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Blue Jay, Red-eyed Vireo, and Scarlet Tanager.

Other vertebrates are sparse.  A few days ago, I saw something hop close to one of my points and was able to find it and see the cross on its back.  It was a spring peeper back from the ponds a few hundred yards away, where they were peeping and mating in April.

There are plenty of deer, though less in evidence now than most of the year. The deer do not eat the columbo and also avoid stepping on them.  Of course, the rosettes die back above ground in the winter, leaving the crown of the large taproot just below the soil surface, so the deer have no visual clues of the columbo from fall to spring.  The deer do blunder into the orange flags, occasionally dislodging them and often bending the wires.  Nothing else seems very interested in the columbo foliage either–not the chipmunks, fox squirrels or even insects. Most plants show little or no sign of insect damage.

Of the original 121 plants, 11 have flowered in 7 years.  The plant then dies, just like the second-year mullein plant.  Some columbo have died without ever flowering, but many of the original plants are still alive, reappearing year after year as a basal rosette.

So, American columbo looks like it could be a biennial like mullein, basal rosette one year, flowering stalk the next, then gone;  but it’s not.  I don’t know how long columbo takes from germination to flowering here in the oak woods, but it’s a good many years at best.

Basal rosette of the biennial common mullein. Photo by Richard Brewer

If you’d like a name for plants with life cycles like columbo you could call them long-lived monocarpic perennials. Long-lived perennial monocarp is OK also. You may think you never heard of such a thing, but you have.  Some species of bamboos and century plants (Agave) act pretty much the same way.  Also a few animals–sockeye salmon and the 17-year cicada, for example.

Logo of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters

About a week ago, the Michigan League of Conservation Voters (LCV) produced its Environmental Scorecard for the state legislature’s 2009-2010 session.  The scores were based on 18 bills in the House and 10 in the Senate.  Much of the report  was interesting and informative.  However, there was one serious omission–House Bill 5207.   This bill, introduced by Representative Robert Jones (D-Kalamazoo) and fast-tracked by him through the Commerce Committee of which he was chair, was as strongly anti-conservation, anti-environment, and anti-sustainability as any measure taken up this session.

The bill was not named “House Anti-conservation Bill 5207;” nevertheless, it was straightforwardly a bill to strip the open space/public use restriction from the Colony Farm Orchard, a semi-natural area adjacent to the Asylum Lake Preserve, in order to allow Western Michigan University to develop the site for expansion of its BTR Park.  Perhaps we ought to see the language of the restriction one more time:

“The conveyance shall provide that Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.”

The anti-environment nature of the bill was brought to the attention of Michigan LCV staff by more than one person and on more than one occasion.  The conservation problems with HB 5207 were repeatedly brought to the attention of House and Senate members and the Governor  by letters, e-mails, phone calls, FAXes, personal visits , and e-mailed links to a documentary movie (The Colony Farm Orchard: Here We Go Again by Matt Clysdale) on YouTube.  By means of a couple of dozen published letters to the Kalamazoo Gazette, many news articles, public meetings and presentations of Matt Clysdale’s movie in Kalamazoo and elsewhere, the environmental controversy became widely known.

Nevertheless, the Michigan LCV did not include HB 5207 on its list of environmentally significant votes.

Because of this omission the LCV was able to award Representative Robert Jones a score of 100% and an “Honorable Mention” on its Environmental Scorecard.  As it turned out, 32 state representatives and 11 senators received 100% scores.  All were Democrats.

It is possible that  Rep. Jones introduced HB 5207 without knowledge of its conservation implications, or even its content.  But he certainly knew the problems well before his Commerce Committee took it up, well before the House passed it, and well before the Senate passed it–which was late at night just before the legislature broke for Christmas.

Dozens of people talked with Jones, asking him to withdraw HB 5207 or modify it.  But perhaps they weren’t the right people. They were WMU Environmental Studies students, local conservationists, members of community groups, and ordinary people who think that promises made should be promises kept.

We should note that with this bill included, no legislator would have received 100%.  All the 100% Democrats either voted for it, or took to the hills when the question was called. The only legislators who voted against the bill were two Republicans in the House and one Republican Senator. Clearly, no one in the Michigan legislature deserved a perfect score.  Without knowing how many other serious omissions there were from the list of “environmental” bills, it is impossible to know what the true highest score might have been.

Michigan LCV needs to consider seriously–and then let us know–why HB 5207 was omitted from the list of environmental bills.  Was it simple ignorance on the part of the staff that did the evaluation?  Was a decision made to overlook the anti-environment nature of the bill because WMU was marketing the bill as a job creation measure?  The politicians looked the other way when it became clear that any jobs created would be few and years away.  Perhaps LCV also looked away, afraid it might be seen as putting environment and business in conflict.

I suppose it could even be possible that HB 5207 was seen as too local an issue to be included.  If so, how many other bills of environmental importance might be missing from the evaluation?

But the conservation impact of HB 5207 reaches far beyond Kalamazoo. It sets a precedent for the legislature to tamper with conservation covenants on any land held by the state or state institutions.  What will happen if the Michigan Department of Natural Resources decides that we could get along without a few of our state parks and persuades a friendly legislator to introduce a bill to sell them for development?

A lawyer for a land-owner who wants to get out of a conservation easement that has become inconvenient could be thought remiss if the lawyer doesn’t say, Talk to your local representative.  The rules for conservation easements are just part of a state statute; they can be changed.

The Michigan League of Conservation Voters has some explaining to do.

View in Colony Farm Orchard early June 2010. Photo by Richard Brewer

Male Yellow-headed Blackbird singing, Wolf Lake Fish Hatchery. Photo 1 May 2010 by Tim Tesar.

A Yellow-headed Blackbird, a rare bird in Michigan, was seen near the end of April at Wolf Lake Fish Hatchery.  The Fish Hatchery is west of Kalamazoo, a few miles over the Kalamazoo-Van Buren County line.  The bird was first reported on 30 April.   I drove out Sunday morning, 2 May, to try to get a look.

It wasn’t hard.  The bird was on territory, hence easy to locate, and also easy to identify with its bold yellow, black, and white plumage.  On the perched bird, the white is seen as a narrow stripe on his side, but when he flies it flashes as a sizable patch on the leading edge of the wing.  Females don’t have the patch, but there were no females evident.

I watched the bird fly back and forth between several perches, singing fairly often, occasionally chasing a Red-winged Blackbird.  Male Yellow-headed Blackbirds are handsome birds, but their song is not handsome exactly, or pretty or melodious–more like odd, but well worth hearing for its oddity.  The recordings readily available on the web don’t quite do justice to the long, loud, vibratory parts of the performance, but you can get a general idea from the example included at the Bird Watcher’s Digest website.

Yellow-headed Blackbirds tend to be polygynous and colonial.  I wasn’t sure whether one lone male would be able to attract a female but I was hoping he’d get lucky.  But as far as I know no female was ever seen, and by some time around the middle of May, the male was gone.

Michigan accounts of the Yellow-headed Blackbird tend to start with a statement to the effect that species is relatively new as a breeding species in the state. It’s true that the first confirmed nesting in the state didn’t occur until 1956.  Four birders visiting the Upper Peninsula in late June followed up a report of Yellow-headed Blackbirds in a large marsh in Gogebic County, a few miles from the Wisconsin border.  They found two males and five females and spent some time hunting for nests but didn’t find any. However, one of the birders returned the next morning and found two nests.

The finder of the nest was Larry Walkinshaw.  Who else would it have been? Walkinshaw was a Battle Creek dentist who was also one of the great field ornithologists of the era. Part of his research repertoire was a seemingly uncanny ability to locate nests.  I wrote about Walkinshaw in an earlier post.

Discovery of the first Lower Peninsula nest followed four years later.  A colony of seven nests at a cat-tail marsh in Saginaw Bay was found in early June 1960 by Bob Grefe and fellow birders in Bay County near Quanicassee.

By the mid-1980s (1983-1988) The Atlas of Breeding Birds of Michigan (Brewer, McPeek, and Adams, 1991, Michigan State University Press) showed confirmed nesting in 13 townships–4 around Saginaw Bay and 2 more not far away, 4 in the Upper Peninsula, and 3 in Muskegon County on the west side of the Lower Peninsula.  Six more townships had summer birds that were probably nesting, but confirmation was lacking, and 10 more townships had birds possibly nesting.  (The uniform breeding codes and criteria for breeding-bird atlases are here.)

These observations could fit a pattern of arrival as a breeding species in Michigan sometime in the 1950s followed by spread and establishment as a regular but rare and local member of the breeding avifauna in the next 30 years or so.  But in preparing the chapter “Original Avifauna and Postsettlement Changes”  (pp 33-58) in the first Michigan breeding-bird atlas, I realized that the view of Yellow-headed Blackbird as a recent immigrant was incorrect or at least incomplete.

The blackbird, I concluded, is one of a small group of Great Plains species that occur in the grasslands and grassland marshes and that extend their geographic ranges when there are severe droughts in the Great Plains. It seems likely that carrying capacities for these birds drop as ponds and marshes shrink and grassland habitats deteriorate. Surplus birds disperse, some coming east.

The important droughts of the 20th century were the Great Drought of 1933-1940 and the 1950s drought, which was most severe in the Great Plains from about 1953-1957.  The first recorded nests of the Yellow-headed Blackbird in Michigan came during the invasion of the 1950s.  What happened in the 1930s drought?

During and just after the drought years of the 1930s, Yellow-headed Blackbirds were seen in the breeding season at a few places around Michigan after being virtually absent through the early part of the 20th century.  No nesting was recorded, but nesting did occur just to the southeast, in Ohio, at a site that has since become much more famous for other reasons–Magee Marsh (Lucas Co.). Nesting was first confirmed there in 1938, but summering birds were present from 1934 to 1941. After that, no summer birds were reported from the area around Sandusky Bay until 1960.

What of other, earlier droughts?  As we go back in time, the ornithological evidence gets scantier but follows the pattern of a bird that, except for occasional stragglers, is only here in the eastern part of the Midwest during tough environmental times in the Great Plains (and for a few years thereafter).

Here’s some more evidence.

Morris Gibbs, one of Michigan’s earliest ornithologists, a Kalamazoo resident, and a very smart guy, wrote in the early 1890s that the Yellow-headed Blackbird occurred in extreme southwestern Michigan and probably bred.  This statement was discounted by most later compilers of Michigan bird lists, although a specimen, the first for Michigan, was taken on 17 May 1890 in the Upper Peninsula adjoining Wisconsin (Dickinson Co.).

What is definitely true is that the species nested commonly in the 1870s-1890s in the large marshes around Chicago, Illinois, including Indiana marshes very close to the southwest corner of Michigan. In the summer of 1871, one egg collector took over a hundred Yellow-headed Blackbird eggs in the marshes along the Calumet River in Indiana southeast of Chicago and within 30 miles of the Michigan line.

This period of relative abundance in northwest Indiana and possible nesting in southwest Michigan was a time of two 19th century  droughts, one in the 1870s, and one from the late 1880s to about 1896. Then, in the early 20th century, populations in the marshes of northwestern Indiana faded to zero.

The second drought, the one from the late 1880s to 1896, was the one that gave rise to the slogan, “In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted” and led to the sod-busters dispersing from their Great Plains farms like Yellow-headed Blackbirds from a dried-up prairie slough.

2.  As we’ve noted, the first Michigan breeding bird atlas documented a substantial Yellow-headed Blackbird population.  But the atlas period included the third and last of the 20th-century droughts (1987-1989).  So the comparative abundance of the bird at that time fits our model very well.

I mentioned that other species seemed to follow a similar pattern of breeding season occurrence in Michigan corresponding to a cluster of drought years in the Great Plains.  The others that I noticed were Wilson’s Phalarope, Western Meadowlark, and perhaps a few more, such as Western Kingbird and Brewer’s Blackbird.

I would add one more thing:  Michigan is as much a part of the geographical range of these birds as it is for the robins and chickadees that are here in numbers every year.  Droughts are an expectable occurrence in the Great Plains.  When habitats deteriorate there, the lakes and marshes of Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio are important refuges for birds that would fail to breed and possibly would perish if the wetlands of the eastern Midwest were unavailable.

Today’s Gazette (24 April 2004) 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 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.

Asylum Lake Preserve Winchell Avenue entrance. Photo by Richard Brewer

These statements are still basically correct.  However, the passage of six years has shown some weaknesses.  Some are structural, stemming from the arrangement that was worked out by the 20-member Focus Group from 1999 to 2004, others are operational shortfalls.  Following are a few I’ve observed.

Omission of  the Colony Farm Orchard

The failure of the non-university members of the Focus Group to insist on the explicit inclusion of the Colony Farm Orchard in the Declaration of Conservation Restrictions was a mistake. However, it’s likely that some element of the WMU administration was already tightly committed to future development of the Orchard land, despite its protection by a conservation covenant. By 2004, the Focus Group had already been meeting for about five years. It’s possible that if the community and other non-university members had been as intransigent on this matter as they should have been–that is, as intransigent as WMU–any resolution might have been several more years away.

Weak Focus on Conservation

The Policy and Management Council set up to oversee the management of the Preserve seems to spend too much time dealing with house-keeping and not enough with conservation.  To an outsider like me, some of the causes for this seem evident, but there may also be other non-obvious reasons.  The first problem is that the composition of the council is stacked in a way that makes any action counter to the WMU administration’s wishes difficult or, perhaps, impossible.  The by-laws specify the composition of the board:

University Members
a. Campus Planning
b. Environmental Institute
c. Environmental Studies
d. Physical Plant
e. VP Business and Finance.
f. 3 At-large members selected by the VP for Business and Finance

Community Members
a. Asylum Lake Preservation Association (ALPA)
b. Environmental Concerns Committee of the City of Kalamazoo (ECC)
c. Kalamazoo Environmental Council (KEC)
d. Oakland Drive/Winchell Neighborhood Association (ODWNA)
e. Parkview Neighborhood Association
f. Parkwyn Village Neighborhood Association

A near-automatic WMU majority of 8 to 6 is built in, if all members are present and voting.  It could be argued that this is the way it should be.  After all, it’s WMU’s land; shouldn’t they be able to do what they want to with it?  Who knows what a bunch of community activists might vote for?

It’s conceivable that on some crucial environmental issue one or more of the University delegates might be persuaded by the arguments of the Community delegates, resulting in a tie or even a majority against the WMU position.  (Perhaps the Environmental Studies delegate might be swayed.) I don’t know that any such thing has ever happened, but it would be interesting to see the WMU administration’s response if it did.

However, my guess is that that the Council meetings will be models of seeming tranquility until such time as every appointee from the Community groups becomes willing to (1) engage the whole Council on every matter related to  conservation purposes, including matters being neglected, and (2) scrutinize and debate every proposal so as to eliminate those that fail to advance conservation mandates or are less than prudent in the use of the Asylum Lake Preservation endowment.

Examples

Sidewalk along Parkview Avenue (looking east) and new parking lot under construction. Photo by Richard Brewer

I do not question the seriousness or good intentions of the Council: nevertheless, I think some actions or the neglect of some actions needed more rigorous examination.  Here are a few examples.

Shrinkage of Preserve. Reduction in size of the preserve has occurred through such actions as widening Drake and Parkview, adding sidewalks which turned the outer acres of the preserve into narrow strips isolated beyond an 8-foot expanse of concrete, and the current construction of a large parking area within the main body of the preserve.  Although WMU refers to the Preserve as 274 acres, that’s what it used to be.  Someone should subtract the land lost and provide  an accurate figure. No more shrinkage should occur.  Explicitly including the Colony Farm Orchard as a part of the Asylum Lake Preserve would be one way to restore lost acres.

Proliferation of Trails. The preserve needs to regain control of its trail system.   The current network seems to consist of paths to everywhere any visitor ever decided to go. The proliferation  is confusing, it contributes to soil erosion, and it opens almost every part of the preserve to disturbance by people and dogs.  I suspect that few if any ground-nesting birds are able to bring off successful broods today.  Every path plus a several-foot zone on each side is, ecologically, a loss from the preserve.  Preserves need trails but they should be short, mostly narrow, and based primarily on considerations of environmental and nature education.

Extravagant and Unnecessary Construction. Some completed and proposed construction probably needed more debate more focused on conservation and prudence.  Of course, we all like to see the old Preserve looking good, but which of these projects have been necessary and a reasonable use of the endowment fund?

Colony Farm Orchard. The Council should have taken up the Colony Farm Orchard’s role in the ecological functioning of Asylum Lake Preserve. A series of special meetings would have been appropriate. After assembling the relevant information, including hosting a forum for public debate, the Council should have made its own recommendation to WMU as to the Orchard’s best use in terms of the conservation values of the Preserve.

How Secure is the Asylum Lake Preserve?

There were faint earlier signals that we should have heeded, but for many of us the alarm bells really began to ring when we read Paula Davis’s article in the 3 July 2009 Gazette reporting that the WMU board had authorized paying Michigan State University up to $985,000 to give up its lease to do insect research at the Colony Farm Orchard.

Possibly the WMU administration and board knew so little history that they didn’t understand how the citizenry would react to a threat to the Orchard property.  But to the many Kalamazoo area residents who had fought the BTR park battles of the 1990s, the news about the Orchard was like the crew of a WW II cruiser sighting a U-boat periscope in the North Atlantic. Somebody involved in the maneuver would seem to have anticipated a negative response, judging by the stealth involved in the introduction of the legislation (to strip the Orchard’s open space/public use covenant) and the attempt–successful–to hustle it through the House.

Many people were, of course, unhappy with WMU’s designs on the Orchard.  Their letters of protest showed that most of them also believed that WMU’s willingness to break this covenant was evidence that its pledge to protect the Asylum Lake Preserve was also suspect.

Was WMU surprised that people drew this inference?  Only the administration and board could say, and they have managed to say remarkably little through the whole process from July 2009 to the present. One thing WMU administrators have said, in various permutations, is,  “We have made a decision to sustain our commitment to the Asylum Lake property.” Sometimes the statements were more forceful, but few people I’ve met were persuaded by any of them. The very fact of the reiteration–coupled with the plain fact that WMU was disregarding identical protections carried  by the Orchard–usually provoked the “The lady doth protest too much” reflex.

Here is a quote from the Declaration of Conservation Restrictions:

This Declaration…is intended to run with the land and shall be binding upon WMU, its present and future boards, its successors and assigns and shall constitute a servitude upon the Preserve.

This a strong statement.  However, it is somewhat undercut by the next clause in the document, Termination:

The intention to terminate this Declaration must be announced at an open meeting of the Policy and Management Council (“the Council”). See Section 8 herein. A hearing on said intention shall occur at the next meeting of the Council, which shall be scheduled within a reasonable time. At least 15 days and not more than 30 days before any hearing to terminate this Declaration, WMU shall place a public notice in the major local paper noticing the public hearing of said meeting at which public comment will be allowed concerning the intention to terminate. The Council shall make findings of fact regarding said intention to terminate this Declaration. A vote to support termination shall require a 3/4 vote of the Council. The action of the Council shall be presented to the WMU Board of Trustees at its next scheduled meeting within Kalamazoo County and at which public comment shall be allowed.

So, how secure is the Asylum Lake Preserve?  We see that the Declaration can be terminated  by a 3/4 vote of the council followed by WMU Board action.  A 3/4 vote of a 14-member Council would require 11 yeas. It would take only four no votes to block it.

Might the Council vote to terminate?  You be the judge.  And you might ponder this question at the same time: If WMU proposed terminating the Declaration and lost in the Council, what would be the administration’s next move?

I’ll return to the status of the Colony Farm Orchard in a future  post.

[23 June 2010.  I rearranged the order of this post to make it more descriptive.]

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.

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.

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.

Friday night sundown, Gulf of Nicoya, from hilltop at La Ensenada. Photo by Richard Brewer.

Katy and I just returned from two weeks in Costa Rica.  As part of an Elderhostel–though the program is now called Exploritas–we visited five sites ranging from mangrove forest along the Pacific Coast to the rather chaparral-like vegetation called paramo around 11,000 feet above sea level on Cerro de la Muerte.  Included were visits to several important conservation areas, including  La Selva (and Selva Verde) and a site in the Savegre River valley.

Spending eight or more hours a day in the field, our group identified, or had identified for it, about 280 species of birds.  On one night excursion we heard and saw the Common Pauraque (but no potoos).  We also saw 2- and 3-toed sloths, howler monkeys, collared peccaries and a few other mammals plus various herp species including crocodiles and caimans, 2 species of iguanas, several other lizards, a few frogs, and the cane toad, native here but with a bad reputation in places where it has been introduced, like St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.

Interest in resource conservation is high in Costa Rica.  For one thing, ecotourism, which is what we were participating in, is a major element in the nation’s economy.  The subjects of ecotourism’s costs and benefits and how sustainable it is are complex, but as an incentive for setting aside natural lands, the impact has been positive and powerful.

At Selva Verde. Photo by Richard Brewer.

I’ll write more about our observations and experiences.  For now, I’ll say just that they involved a lot of interesting and beautiful wildlife and plants, spectacular scenery, lots of good food, and good company.

Large maples, Colony Farm Orchard, fall 2009. Photo by Richard Brewer

The Kalamazoo Gazette for Sunday 14 February carried a Viewpoint I wrote which they titled WMU can keep orchard in natural state.  It had been altered slightly, improving the message in some ways.  Nevertheless, I prefer the version below. Posting it here may also be useful to those who missed the piece in the Sunday paper.  It was on the first section’s back page, which was otherwise totally occupied by a large advertisement for a heartburn medication.  But I was grateful to the Gazette for fitting it in anywhere and continue to regard newspaper conservation as a cause almost as important as land conservation.

Neighbors, WMU Alumni and Friends, and All Others Interested in Conservation: All that is required for the Colony Farm Orchard to be saved is for the WMU President and Board of Trustees to decide to set it aside as conservation land. Nothing prevents this. Please send President Dunn your recommendation. Do this now, even if you have contacted him before to provide current sentiment.

What should happen to the Colony Farm Orchard? House Bill 5207 said nothing about this question. The bill’s only effect was to remove the restriction that required public use for open space. Now that WMU can do whatever it likes with the land, the question becomes, What is the right use?

Feelings of local conservationists have been growing more antagonistic for seven months–feelings that they were kept in the dark by WMU, stone-walled rather than engaged in dialog, feelings that the attempt to remove the conservation covenant was in itself a betrayal of public trust, and feelings that the legislature and governor snubbed an outpouring of grass-roots sentiment that every civics class says is an essential element in our system of government.

People are also unhappy with WMU’s campaign based on a claim of job creation.  With able and willing citizens out of work, thoughtful critics see “job creation” as a cynical fiction, since the claim makes sense only if one realizes that jobs would be few, several years away, and bought at heavy expense to WMU and tax-payers. There is plenty of expansion room at the old BTR Park and then, if ever needed, at ready and waiting brownfields.

But all this is water over the dam.  Now that the WMU board and administration can do anything with the land, what should they do?

If the land could talk, it would likely say that its best use is pretty much what it’s been doing.  The Declaration of Conservation Restrictions for the Asylum Lake Preserve adopted by the WMU Board in 2004 states as its first goal promoting ecosystem integrity by maintaining the Preserve as green space and wildlife habitat and protecting natural features from further degradation.

If the Orchard were developed, WMU would be abandoning the last two aims. Development would diminish the Preserve; its status as wildlife habitat and its natural features would be degraded. Wildlife populations at Asylum Lake would fluctuate more, some would decline, and some declines would end in local extinction. It is easy to underestimate the Orchard’s role in the functioning of Asylum Lake Preserve. The Orchard and the Preserve are ecologically connected.

Ron Sims, the new U.S. Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, was known for preserving open space in his last job in Seattle as County Executive of King County.  He had come to realize that protected natural areas and open space are as important for the lives of the urban dwellers that were his natural constituency as for others. First-hand experience with natural land is valuable for everyone, but even when people are unable to visit the land, it enriches their lives by providing a great variety of services whose effects extend tens, hundreds, or thousands of miles. Included are things as simple as nurturing birds and butterflies any of us can enjoy in the sky and as complex as participating in the global carbon cycle.

Though the restrictive covenant on the Colony Farm Orchard is gone, the land is the same, still providing essential ecosystem services to the Preserve and to all of us, and still deserving permanent protection. The only difference is that now the protection will have to come from knowledge, wisdom, and conscience on the part of the WMU board and administration.

Email address: john.dunn@wmich.edu. US Postal address: President John Dunn, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 4908-5202.

If you wish, you could send a cc or a note to colonyfarmorchard@gmail.com, to let others who wish to save the Orchard see your views.

Lad Hanka, a Kalamazoo artist with strong natural history interests, has been one of the leading proponents of the view that the Colony Farm Orchard should be maintained as open space.  A 19 July 2009 email, sent by him to several  local conservationists began, “A significant portion of the Asylum Lake Preserve is in imminent danger of destruction. The threat is real as I shall outline below…”

KNC is at 7000 N. Westnedge on the right side of the road.  The show will be in the Glen Vista Gallery.  Cross the bridge, veer right at the entry desk, and go south through through the natural history exhibits to the windows looking out into Cooper’s Glen.

The show will be up until March 26, 2010.

Here are a few lines from Lad Hanka’s introduction to the exhibit, “Drawing Sacred Trees at the Colony Farm Orchard.”

In this exhibition, it is the Colony Farm Orchard from whose embrace I have been spiriting out my images.  That property is actually public land and protected by legislative deed restrictions, but that no longer means much.  This place too has been fenced off and gated in order to usurp and eventually sell it off in parcels to private industrial developers.  It sounds as far fetched as a bad spaghetti western, but it is unfortunately the truth.

I’ve been entering the orchard across the scar of Drake Rd., only recently still shaded by centennial bur oaks.  With pencils in hand, I climb the fence, always fearing that I am just a step ahead of the bulldozers and the last to see it intact.  I record the forms of the remaining bur oaks and the hollow, aging apple trees, each cleaving the heavens with its signature branchings – and know that I am transcribing a primal calligraphy – the notation of a poesy far older than the forebrain with which I describe it.

The Orchard is a rare place within the city – a place to be alone without having to drive. The apple trees I‘ve been observing here for these thirty years have grown only more remarkable as they’ve become individuated in their old age.  Killing them and ravaging the earth that supported them is hardly an appropriate response.   Drawing them is.

2 February 2010
Dear Mark,

I received your letter soliciting a donation for the Michigan Democratic Party.  I’m unable to support the Michigan Democrats because of their performance in allowing passage of House Bill 5207.  It was introduced in the House in July 2009 by Representative Robert Jones (D-Kalamazoo) at the behest of Western Michigan University.  The bill, which stripped open space/public use restrictions from a parcel of land (the Colony Farm Orchard) conveyed to WMU in 1977 was anti-conservation, anti-environment, and anti-sustainabiity.  It should never have been written.

Although it appears that every attempt was made to slip the bill into and through the legislature without public knowledge, some local conservationists got wind of it and managed to show up at the House Commerce Committee hearing (chaired by Representative Jones). At the hearing and throughout the whole process, WMU attempted to sell the bill on the basis of jobs creation. Its claim was that this land, this specific land, was needed to expand their “Business Research Technology” park.  The claim was largely bogus since the park isn’t full and remediated brownfields that would make better sites are plentiful in Kalamazoo–to mention just two reasons why killing the open space/public use covenant was unrelated to any job creation. More about the subject is available in this post, and others before and after.

The bill sailed through the Commerce Committee and the full House, where it received only 2 nays, both Republicans.

By this time, local conservationists and neighborhood groups had gathered themselves. The Senate as well as Governor Granholm were besieged with messages asking that WMU’s effort to remove the restriction be voted down.  The Republican leadership of the Senate held the bill up for about three months but in the end brought it up late at night just before the Christmas recess.  It passed with only one nay vote, again by a Republican, Alan Cropsey, who made the point that he was voting against it because of its anti-conservation nature.  All the Democratic Senators voted for the bill, except a few who took to the hills when the time to vote came. This does not make them poor politicians; after all, this was a job creation bill, wasn’t it?

But it does make them politicians that I do not care to support monetarily or otherwise. The same goes for Governor Granholm, who signed the bill in early January 2010.  Governor Granholm made no comment on the bill, as far as could be determined. What could she say?

The outpouring of grass-roots opposition to the bill was remarkable and could not have been missed by anyone of either party in the legislature or by the governor.  No politician of either party who did not vote against the bill deserves the support of anyone who sees land conservation, keeping promises, or paying careful attention to legislation as priorities.

Sincerely

Richard Brewer

The Herald correctly reported on 10 January 2010 (online, 11 January print) that Governor Granholm signed HB 5207 recently.  The bill removed the restriction that the Colony Farm Orchard should be used for open space, public park, or recreation or, by legislative action, could be used for some other public purpose.  The effect of HB 5207 was to kill that covenant, potentially allowing WMU to use the land for anything, without asking anybody.

The Herald story listed a few of the many people who share the blame for stripping the conservation covenant.  Listing all would make a long story–and a long letter–but Kalamazoo’s two elected legislators should be given special recognition, because either could have stopped the process.  Representative Bob Jones (D-Kalamazoo) could have said no when WMU handed him the bill.  He could have said yes when conservationists asked him to withdraw it from consideration.  He did neither.

Senator Tom George (R-Kalamazoo) could have killed the bill at any time during the months it sat in the Senate.  A word from him would have been a death sentence because of the convention in the legislature of deferring to the position taken by the Senator from the affected district (professional courtesy–so to speak).  But Tom George did not say the word.  In fact, his position as given by the Herald is that as times change, so should laws and deeds.

This catches precisely the difference between the exploiter mentality and that of the conservationist–the difference between the polluters, clear-cutters, and  mountaintop blasters, on the one hand, and Teddy Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold on the other. It is the mentality that would make permanent protection of any conservation land impossible.  The times have changed, says the exploiter; we’ll change the laws, we’ll change the deeds. This natural land is now expendable.

It’s a mentality to reject.  Though the restriction on the Colony Farm Orchard is gone, the land is the same, still providing essential ecosystem services to Asylum Lake Preserve and to all of us, and still deserving permanent preservation.  The only difference is that now the protection will have to come, not from a legal constraint, but from the knowledge, good judgment, and conscience of the WMU board and administration.

WMU Students, Faculty, and Alumni, Fellow Citizens, let us follow the board’s and administration’s actions closely.

Consumers Energy substation at Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

Just a quick update for historical purposes:  Mid-afternoon on Tuesday 5 January 2010, Governor Jennifer Granholm signed HB 5207.  She made no reported comment and she has made no known responses to the hundreds of letters, phone calls, emails, and Faxes opposing the bill she received over the past several months.  Governor Granholm has not said Boo.

The Kalamazoo Gazette reported promptly the governor’s failure to veto the bill.  Reporter Paula M. Davis’s first sentence was, “Western Michigan University now has no official barrier to expanding its business park to a nearby 55-acre green space known as Colony Farm Orchard.”

It’s an appropriately neutral statement.  The official barrier, in the form of a restrictive covenant placed on the land at the time it was given to WMU in 1977, has been removed.  The land now belongs to WMU to do with as it may.  One possibility, of course, is to retain it as open green space, not because the university has to, but because it’s the right thing to do.

One immediate response to the governor’s action was an increase in the number of alumni and former supporters calling for a boycott on donations and other types of support to WMU, the WMU Foundation, and other WMU-related causes.  One letter to President Dunn (which I received a copy of) said, “I feel that WMU’s recent actions in this matter reveal a profound lack of respect for the wishes of donors in general. Supporters of WMU are beginning to feel mistrustful about the intentions of the university in regard to the Kalamazoo community.”

One area of mistrust is the real long-term intentions of WMU as to the Asylum Lake Preserve.  Although WMU was party to a Declaration of Conservation Restrictions that is supposed to protect this land in a fashion similar to a conservation easement, the disregard for the covenant protecting the Colony Farm Orchard shown by WMU and the state has brought suspicions and fears of earlier years back to life.

My guess is that we have not yet seen the last go-round.

Swift River at Bear's Den Reservation, New Salem MA, a preserve of The Trustees of Reservations, the first land trust. Photo by Richard Brewer.

In the earlier version of my website, I had a page where I posted reviews of Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement In America, or links to them.  The last count was a dozen.  Posted here for the sake of completeness is the last one, as far as I know. It appeared in 2006, by which time I was not spending a lot of time on the old version of the website.

CONSERVANCY: The Land Trust Movement in America. By Richard Brewer. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. 2003

Reviewed by Donna Luckey, University of Kansas
Published in American Studies 2006, 47 (3-4): 244-245

[p. 244] Richard Brewer has given us a thorough review of land preservation and conservancy history in the United States. He provides a comprehensive treatment of land trusts, focused specifically on those trusts with the “intent to preserve land” as their stated mission. There are three main sections: the early chapters cover background for land preservation, the middle section serves as an excellent handbook for those involved with land trusts, and additional chapters provide case studies of major conservancies and local land trusts in this country.

Beginning with strong arguments for preserving biodiversity, Brewer provides species-specific examples, like the role of Running Buffalo Clover relative to ecological communities and ecosystem succession. He clarifies the differences between early advocacy groups and land preservation groups, explaining how that distinction has carried into the present. A key point is the growth of conservancies since 1980s, cited by Brewer as the true beginning of the land trust movement in America. He explains this well, illustrating the connections to environmental awareness, changes in the federal government’s policies, and other aspects of that era.

The middle section, chapters 3-8, is very useful for landowners, land trust staff, and board members. It addresses questions of land protection: why, who, which lands, how, and what is “land stewardship”? Brewer builds directly on the earlier material, grounded in his extensive background and experience as a biologist and land trust board member. It is here that he answers explicit questions, including how to distinguish forms of land protection. For example, there is a very good section (114ff.) clarifying the actual costs of protecting land, and how to estimate them. Brewer describes the complexities of Conservation Easements, currently very popular (as verified through statistics from the Land Trust Alliance [LTA] workshops, journal articles, etc.). He examines landowner benefits for those who protect land using Conservation Easements, while also raising the “non-economic” values that motivate landowners. He emphasizes ongoing stewardship as most vital; this is key among emerging issues of the conservancy movement today. Education of future generations of land-

[p. 245] owners with property protected by Conservation Easements is also raised as critical. These examples and detail, educating the public as well as current and potential land trust board members, is the gift of Brewer’s work. More images and graphics would nicely enhance this powerful text. On p. 11 Brewer describes the powerful impact four Wisconsin maps compiled by Curtis in 1956 had on him; his own readers would similarly benefit.

Additional acknowledgement of some early key players might be appropriate. These include Ralph Borsodi (father of “trustery” and the International Independence Institute) and Robert Swann. In 1972 the latter, with others, wrote The Community Land Trust – A Guide To A New Model For Land Tenure In America. The Community Land Trust (CLT) movement is indebted to these pioneers, and Brewer explains on p. 11 that CLTs focus on low-income housing. The common roots however are significant. The California State Coastal Conservancy (CCC) also provided timely and significant assistance to California land trusts forming during the critical years Brewer describes. The Humboldt North Coast Land Trust is but one example (cited by Brewer in the chapter on TPL, [222-223]) of a coastal land trust receiving CCC assistance, including financial, political, and organizational instruction.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, referenced by Kingsbury Browne on p. 35 for funding his 1977 report “Case Studies in Land Preservation,” continues to contribute to this field. Jeff Pidot’s timely paper, “Reinventing Conservation Easements: A Critical Examination and Ideas for Reform,” is from the Lincoln Institute (2005). Like the CCC, the Lincoln Institute has many programs, yet each organization has played important roles for many land trusts throughout the country.

Overall, Brewer’s history is thorough and the cases detailed and well documented. He provides a good range of different types of preservation organizations and their structures, with lessons from both success and failure through many examples. This book serves the land trust movement well in each realm–as a history, as a handbook, and for general education. He is right on target with current issues in the final chapter: stewardship, public perceptions and education, and organizational relationships. Brewer gives us hope for the future of land preservation in the USA.

But do they?  WMU has claimed that it wants and needs the Colony Farm Orchard for such expansion and has repeatedly implied that this is what it will do with the land.  Furthermore, its lobbyists and other spokesmen have sold House Bill 5207 to the legislature and the governor by claiming that it is a jobs bill.  Passing it, they say, will allow WMU to create jobs and fuel economic growth with an expanded BTR park.

The whole process has been a commentary on how WMU and Michigan–and perhaps other universities and states–have lost their way.  WMU could use the land for education, for research, for service–the three touchstones of a university’s role in our society–without any need for shenanigans in the legislature.  Instead it ignores these public uses and stakes its claim on job creation and feeding the local private economy.

The “This-park-grows-jobs” hot air has, in fact, been a successful ploy.  Some legislators may have believed the claims, and some that didn’t may have concluded there was no political risk to going with the flow.  Both houses of the legislature passed HB 5207 by large margins.  The bill is awaiting the governor’s attention.  We may soon learn Governor Granholm’s reaction, or we may not; it’s possible she may let it become law without signing it.

HB 5207, of course, has nothing to do with jobs or with a BTR park.  What it does is strip a legislatively imposed restriction from the Colony Farm Orchard, land bought with tax-payer dollars.  The 1977 conveyance from the state provides that “Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.” HB 5207 written for WMU and introduced in the House by Representative Bob Jones (D-Kalamazoo) requires the state to buy the Colony Farm Orchard from WMU for $1, remove the restriction, and sell it back to WMU for $1.

As introduced, the bill included a new restriction that required WMU to use the land to expand the BTR park and provided that in the event of activity inconsistent with this restriction the state could take the land back.  But when the bill came out of Representative Jones’s committee, that language was gone.  The only restriction remaining in the bill sitting on the governor’s desk is that any arrowheads or other aboriginal antiquities that are found belong to the state.  In other words, if the bill becomes law, WMU can do anything it wants with the land.  It does not have to be used for a BTR park; it does not have to be put to public use.  It can be used for anything.

Based on WMU’s rhetoric, a restriction that the land be used to expand the BTR park  was quite logical.  Its quick disappearance is one line of evidence suggesting that WMU does not plan to use Orchard this way now, if it ever did.

WMU’s language about its plan for the Orchard has always been fuzzy. The Colony Farm Orchard and the glorious achievements of the BTR park have regularly been mentioned in the same breath, but in retrospect the absence of a firm connection is striking.  At no time have we heard WMU say, “When the restrictions are removed, we will expand the BTR park onto the Colony Farm Orchard”.  Here are a few quotes from WMU administrators:

Bob Miller, 24 February 2009, “The BTR has been a wonderful success, and we are looking at a possible expansion. No decisions have been made. The Orchard property… is an option. But at this point, it’s premature to even assign a timetable to it.”

Bob Miller, 26 February 2009, “There are no plans to develop that area [Colony Farm Orchard], but it is one of the options we are looking at…. I can tell you, should a decision be made to expand the Business, Technology and Research Park, we would come to you, to the entire community with our plans and share them. [But] we have none.”

John Dunn, 23 September 2009, “Our park is vibrant and full, and more than 1,300 jobs have been directly or indirectly created by its presence….We urge our lawmakers to vote for removal of the restrictions. Then, when the time is right in the coming months or years, we can move appropriately to expand our job-generating BTR Park.”

Why might WMU not want to expand the BTR park onto the Orchard land?  There are a number of possible reasons.  As many of us have pointed out, it has always been a poor choice.

• For one thing, it’s too small. It might be big enough for three new tenants, but three lots are still vacant in the old BTR park and the temporary soccer fields could hold at least two more.

• About a third of the Orchard site, the section where the fruit trees themselves are located, very likely has soil contaminated with lead and arsenic from the fruit-growing practices of the period from the 1880s through the early 1940s.  Development that involved excavating, grading, or other soil disturbance would probably require expensive remediation–hauling off several inches of top and subsoil to a toxic waste dump and bringing in clean replacement soil.

• Michigan State University has a lease on the land allowing it to conduct experimental research on pest insects.  WMU is proposing to buy MSU out over a period of three years for up to $985,000.  Why WMU negotiated such an unfavorable deal is one of many puzzles in this process.  As far as I can tell no one in the WMU administration asked any of the professional entomologists or ecologists on the faculty to look into the experimental pest insects research.  For example, is there still an experimental component to whatever MSU is doing there?

The Colony Farm Orchard is deficient for BTR park expansion in many ways.  Several alternative sites are larger, definitely uncontaminated, not the subject of a prior lease, and a better fit otherwise.

WMU’s talk about the vibrant, wonderful performance of the BTR park whenever the subject of the Colony Farm Orchard came up now looks–and smells–like a red herring.  What, I wonder, does WMU really have in mind for this 53 acres, its old apple trees and grape arbors, its bur oaks, red foxes, wild turkeys, and bluebirds.

There are probably still a couple of days to get your recommendation for the Colony Farm Orchard to the governor. Phone calls would probably be best, email next.

Contact information for Governor Jennifer Granholm:

Phone: (517) 373-3400
Phone: (517) 335-7858 – Constituent Services
Fax: (517) 335-6863

PO Box 30013
Lansing, MI 48909

Here is a link to an email citizen opinion forum.

Here is a link to the governor’s standard email.

Bur Oak tree with US-131 in the background, early winter, Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer.

The Michigan Senate passed HB 5207 Friday night 18 December, not long before adjournment.  The bill goes to Governor Jennifer Granholm, who will sign it or veto it.

Curiously, WMU’s lobbyists did not inform the Kalamazoo Gazette that the bill had passed the Senate. When the bill passed the House in September, Greg Rosine was on the phone to the Gazette within minutes.  Not until Sunday afternoon did the Gazette find out what had happened this time.

There were 30 Yeas and 1 Nay.  The yeas were (Democratic Senators in boldface)  Allen – Anderson – Gilbert – McManus – Sanborn – Birkholz – Gleason – Nofs – Scott – Bishop – Hardiman -Olshove – Stamas – Brown – Jacobs – Pappageorge – Switalski – Cassis – Jansen – Patterson – Thomas – Cherry – Kahn – Prusi – Van Woerkom – Clarke – Kuipers – Richardville – Whitmer - George

Cherry is Deb Cherry, Lt. Governor John Cherry’s sister.

Seven senators were excused and did not vote: Barcia – Basham – Clark-Coleman – Hunter – Jelinek – Brater – Garcia

The single nay was Alan Cropsey, a conservative Republican born in Paw Paw not far west of Kalamazoo, though now living in Dewitt and representing voters in that region.  His protest over the vote is quoted below:

“Years ago when the land was first transferred to Western Michigan University, it was understood that the land would be used as a green space for that area. I think that Michigan State University actually had it in such a horticultural state that they were doing different studies and research for agriculture and fruit farming on that property. It was understood that it would remain a green space.

“I find it ironic that after a couple of decades that now the use is being changed dramatically. Green space is going away. I just want this body to know that at least there is one true ardent environmentalist left in this august body who is going to stand up and speak out for the plants and animals that are so desperately needed in our urban centers.”

WMU has advertised the bill as a way of creating jobs, and probably many of the senators voting yes took WMU at its word.  The Senator from the Kalamazoo district (20th), Tom George, had made up his mind months ago, and the hundreds of messages he received from citizens didn’t change it.  When interviewed by the Gazette on Sunday, he said,  “I have to look at the big picture….Kalamazoo has another mechanism for attracting new jobs and growth.”

Other Senators, and Representatives before them, said much the same thing.  Probably no politicians, or any of the rest of us, are against jobs.  Many able and willing people are out of work in these hard times.  That’s why it’s particularly disheartening that WMU’s claim that removing the open space/public use restriction will lead to job creation at the Colony Farm Orchard rests on such shaky grounds.

It’s hard to evaluate WMU’s statements about jobs created in the current BTR park because the university provides little supporting data. “No supporting data” comes closer.  It is hard to tell, for example, how many of the current jobs among companies at the BTR were “created” by the park and how many were at employers that simply moved to the park from elsewhere in the region, or are new jobs but ones that would have ended up at some other site in the region except that the tax situation was better at a SmartZone site.

In his Gazette Viewpoint of 23 September 2009 President John M. Dunn stated that “more than 1300 jobs have been directly or indirectly created.”  Numbers of  jobs claimed by WMU fluctuate, but the usual quotes I’ve seen are 645-650 direct and 700 indirect.

In other words, the majority of the 1300+ jobs are indirect. There are various definitions of indirect jobs; roughly, they are new jobs outside the BTR park financed by money spent by park firms and their employees. As the Mackinac Center, a free-market think-tank in Midland, Michigan, has stated, “Estimating indirect job counts is a subjective exercise, and econometricians and accountants with the best of intentions can produce widely varying figures, depending on their assumptions and estimation techniques.”

In the BTR Park, summer 2009. Photo by Richard Brewer.

But all this is nearly irrelevant because, although WMU uses the job creation claim as justification for removing the Colony Farm Orchard’s protective covenant, WMU has repeatedly said that nothing is going to happen at the Orchard site soon.  Most statements have said that the reason for removing the restriction is so that WMU will be ready to spring into action when the BTR is actually full. Currently there are three unsold lots (as has been the case for quite a while), two or more vacancies in already constructed buildings, and a 20-acre soccer facility that is supposed to be converted to BTR park use.

The figure I’ve heard most often from WMU vice presidents is that it would be three years before development would begin, which corresponds to the time said to be needed by Michigan State University to switch their pest insect research elsewhere. Hence, the earliest jobs created at the new BTR Annex on the Orchard property would come on line somewhere around 2013.  Kalamazoo will still need jobs in 2013, unquestionably.  But the compelling need is now.

As everyone knows there are plenty of other suitable sites for a BTR park expansion–if a demand for more BTR space actually exists. WMU owns nearby sites that have no restrictions and no existing MSU lease for pest research.  For that matter, most of them probably have no lead and arsenic contamination as the Colony Farm Orchard very likely has. And, of course, there are city of Kalamazoo brownfield sites that once were contaminated but have been remediated and would be ready to roll when, as, and if there were occupants ready to move in.

Many other features make the Colony Farm Orchard an inappropriate place for expansion of the BTR park. We’ve mentioned the possible soil contamination. The fact that the Colony Farm Orchard deserves permanent protection in its own right and as a functional part of the Asylum Lake Preserve are two more.  The list goes on, but let me mention just the small size of the Orchard property.

Subtracting the land occupied  by the Consumers Energy substation, perhaps 53 acres are available.  The current BTR park is 265 acres.  On this acreage 650 jobs have been accumulated.  This occurred from approximately 2001 to 2009, roughly eight years.  We can get a ballpark estimate of how many jobs might be expected from the development of the Colony Farm Orchard from the proportionality X jobs/650 jobs = 53 acres/265 acres.  I make it 130 jobs, starting from 2013 (that is, in three years) and running to about 2021 (8 years).

It’s worth remembering that most of the time from 2001-2009 was one of the greatest financial booms (or bubbles) in American history, so it could be that 130 jobs for the Colony Farm Orchard parcel in 8 years is too optimistic.

One hundred-thirty jobs is one hundred-thirty jobs, well worth having, nothing to sneeze at.  But consider all the work needed to put this land in condition to develop–bringing in all the utilities, cutting down the trees and otherwise clearing the land, testing for and probably having to remediate lead and arsenic contamination (the remediation consisting of removing several inches of soil within the orchard itself, taking it to a toxic waste dump, and bringing in clean soil), engineering a storm water system, meeting other environmental considerations as strict as–or very likely stricter than–at the original BTR park.  And so forth.

Perhaps picking a larger site with a larger future carrying capacity would be a better idea.  Perhaps a site where some of these problems did not exist or had already been solved would be better.

What will Governor Granholm do? WMU’s This-bill-creates-jobs rhetoric fooled at least some of the Senators.  It’s possible that some weren’t fooled but thought that going along with the dubious claims wouldn’t hurt them; after all, they were voting for job creation.

What will Governor Granholm do? She has a chance to strike blows for keeping promises, for upholding covenants that protect open space and public use, a chance to save land that very much deserves saving.  She has a chance to say to all of us that government and universities should not operate by hiding information and dispensing misinformation. She can strike a blow against cynical manipulation of the public and, for that matter, of the legislature. And in so doing,  she will be striking a blow for conservation, for the environment, and for sustainability.

Contact information for Governor Jennifer Granholm:

Phone: (517) 373-3400
Phone: (517) 335-7858 – Constituent Services
Fax: (517) 335-6863

PO Box 30013
Lansing, MI 48909

Here is a link to an email citizen opinion forum.

Here is a link to the governor’s standard email.

We need to recognize three aspects to the conservation value of this piece of land.  One is what’s good about the land itself.  Two is its beneficial effects on the adjacent Asylum Lake Preserve, which Western Michigan says is permanently protected.  Three is the broad question of how the conversion of this dedicated conservation land to commercial use affects the status of conservation land all across the state.

Apple tree in old orchard at the Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

1. The Land Itself. Although this land has been referred to as the Colony Farm Orchard, the old orchard amounts to only a quarter or so of the approximately 53 acres. The fruit trees are surrounded and in some cases overrun by grape vines.  Box-elder is a common invading tree in the orchard.

The rest of the property is varied habitat with a couple of sizable wooded areas at the north and south ends.  Grasslands dominated by smooth brome grass and goldenrods with invading shrubs and trees surround the wooded areas and the orchard.  The land of the wooded area at the north runs down to a springy area with a couple of ponds.

One part of the conservation value of this piece of land is what used to be here.  The east edge of Genesee Prairie, one of the eight tall-grass prairies in Kalamazoo County, extended to the Orchard site.  This is now the only part of Genesee Prairie in public hands and with any approach to natural vegetation.  The rest is gone, beneath US-131 or occupied by the west edge of Western Michigan University’s BTR park and commercial and residential areas and croplands west of US-131.

It’s unlikely that much of the original prairie flora is left at the Orchard site.  However, there are still bur oaks–a good many, some fairly large and old, others young.  They are all almost certainly descendants of the bur oaks that were part of the savanna fringing this tall-grass prairie. They are a genetic connection extending back 180 years to when the first settlers arrived to homestead on the prairies and savannas of Kalamazoo County.  But the connection extends back much further than that, to long before Europeans reached Michigan or North America, probably to some time in the Hypsithermal interval around 9000-6000 years ago.

Goldenrods, old orchard in background. Photo by Richard Brewer.

As for animals, we know from various sources that there are coyotes, deer, turkeys, woodcock, Red-tailed Hawks, Green Herons, and many smaller birds in the summer or year-round.  I will shortly put up a list of summer bird species that several observers are supplying.  The spot also has all the attributes of an excellent migratory stopover site for land birds in both spring and fall.  As to the small mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, I think it may be time for WMU to fund a serious study to find out just what is here.

2. Benefits to Asylum Lake Preserve. The Colony Farm Orchard is properly part of Asylum Lake Preserve.  From the edge of the Preserve vegetation to the edge of the Orchard vegetation is about the same distance as between third base and home plate on a baseball field. The Orchard makes the preserve a larger sanctuary by about 20 percent.  This is good; bigger is better in sanctuaries, mainly because local extinction of species is rarer on bigger sanctuaries.

We could also think of the Orchard as an island near to the Preserve. It serves as a stepping stone that wandering animals not currently living on the Preserve can find and, from there, reach the sanctuary.  The end result of all  this is that the Orchard makes the Asylum Lake Preserve more diverse and less prone to fluctuations in populations, hence more stable.

Bur oak at Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

There are of course the other beneficial effects of buffering against the noise, noxious fumes, and bright artificial lights coming from US-131 and the commercial land beyond it.

3. Threats to Conservation Land Elsewhere in Michigan. The Colony Farm Orchard has a protective conservation covenant that many Kalamazoo residents now know by heart: “The conveyance shall provide that Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.” The restrictions were placed on the land by the legislature at the time of its transfer from the state to WMU in 1977.  If Representative Jones (D-Kalamazoo) and WMU can persuade the legislature to strip away this restriction, as  HB 5207 provides, and if Governor Granholm signs it, WMU will be able to use the land for anything.  This land, bought with taxpayer dollars and now designated for public use–specifically some variety of public open space–would be available to use as an Annex to WMU’s BTR park.  But it could also be used any other way WMU chose.

If HB 5207 is passed and signed into law, what state or university land dedicated for conservation–or any kind of public use–is safe?  What of the state parks? What of the arboretums, botanical gardens, and natural areas of the rest of the Michigan public universities?

What, in fact, of conservation easements?  These are now the most popular way to protect land in perpetuity, widely used by land trusts and government agencies.  They are discussed in many places in Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America but especially chapters 7 and 8.  Very briefly, a conservation easement is a binding agreement that permanently restricts the development and future use of land so as to protect its conservation values.  Conservation easements are held by conservation organizations or units of local, state, or federal government.  The easement holders are charged with defending against violations of the easement provisions. As of 2005, land trusts in Michigan held conservation easements on about 55,000 acres.  The amount of land in conservation easements held by government agencies is hard to determine but substantial.  Conservation easements are a relatively new way to conserve land, rarely used before 1960. Most states have statutes providing the legal foundation for conservation easements; Michigan’s is Act 451 of 1954, called NREPA.

But we have seen what the state legislature, or the House at least, has done with statutes in the case of the Colony Farm Orchard.  Suppose some well-connected land owner found that a conservation easement held by some land trust had become inconvenient to him.  Might the Michigan legislature be willing to pass a statute saying the conservation easement on his land was rescinded?  Maybe, maybe not.  Suppose that this situation came up two or three times.  Might the Michigan legislature decide that NREPA as currently written was becoming an unnecessary burden to worthy land owners who had changed their minds about the easements on their acreages.  In that case, might the Michigan legislature amend the statute to make backing out easier–like, for example, by coming to the legislature with what seemed like a good argument, such as using the land to create jobs?  Maybe, maybe not.

The land owners might still have a few hurdles remaining, with the IRS for example.  But that’s what attorneys and accountants are for.

If the legislature did either of these things, a judge or two or more would decide whether what the legislature did was legally OK.  Probably the judges wouldn’t say whether it was right or wrong or how much it damaged the cause of land conservation.

It is a dangerous path that Representative Jones and WMU are trying to steer the Michigan legislature towards.

Chelsea Thorpe of the SSE and Sherry Sims, Secretary of ALPA. Photo by Katy Takahashi.

The Save the Colony Farm Orchard Rally sponsored by the Asylum Lake Preservation Association was held Tuesday evening 8 November in Van Deusen auditorium at the Kalamazoo Public Library.  ALPA vice president David Nesius said that 53 people signed in and his total head count was 67.

One highlight of the session was a screening of Matt Clysdale’s fine documentary film “The Colony Orchard: Here We Go Again.”  The Here We Go Again refers to the fact that this all played out once before in the early 1990s, when Western Michigan University tried to include the orchard property in an earlier stab at a business park.  WMU was beaten back then, but the current attempt has yet to play out, so the film will need a second act, for which Matt continues to assemble footage.  (Contributions [non-deductible] to support the effort would be gratefully accepted.)

Curiously, in the filmed interview with Bob Miller, a WMU vice president well known for his conversations with the Asylum Lake neighborhood groups, Miller seems to be denying knowledge of the earlier conflict. That’s my impression; you can judge for yourself by watching the film on You Tube.

The film provides a quick and painless way to get the essentials of the current attempt by WMU to strip away the open space/public use restriction on the orchard, seemingly as a prelude to using it to expand its existing BTR Park. Included is the developing realization of WMU’s intentions and the early stages of the opposition to it.  This film was completed about the end of September.  The only updating really needed at the moment is that the original version of HB 5207 said that WMU was required to use the land to expand its BTR park.  That restriction is gone in the bill that reached the Senate.  Now, if the bill should pass, WMU can use the land for anything.

Amy DeShon, President of ALPA. Photo by Katy Takahashi.

The other highlight of the evening was the opportunity for attendees to ask questions and get answers to them, mostly from ALPA president Amy DeShon, but occasionally from others involved with planning the event and also from other members of the audience.  I didn’t count, but there must have been forty questions, plus as many comments in which attendees shared their ideas of what was happening and what ought to be done.

We heard a little about what the affected neighborhood groups are thinking and doing. Several students from the Students for a Sustainable Earth (SSE) at WMU were there.  They have adopted the Colony Farm Orchard question as a project.  Co-chairman Andrew Weissenborn told about their activities, some of which are listed on the Save the Enchanted Forest group page (under Events, on the left, and on the Wall) on Facebook).  Their hard work was warmly received.

Just after the film, I spoke for five minutes or so on the conservation values of the Colony Farm Orchard.  I was glad to have the opportunity to talk to somebody about conservation values, because WMU seems to find the subject uninteresting. When the subject of conservation comes up, they talk about what great things the BTR Park has done.

I don’t know yet how much media coverage the event got, but WMUK, the

Larry Ross of the Winchell Avenue-Oakland Drive Neighborhood Association. Photo by Katy Takahashi

NPR station at WMU in Kalamazoo had a story on the early news Wednesday morning during Morning Edition.  I think it was good, but I wasn’t quite awake when it came on.  This was not, however, WMUK’s first coverage of the matter.  In September, they had a story about the House Commerce Committee passing the bill.

The Kalamazoo Gazette ran a front-page  article Wednesday by Paula Davis, who has covered the topic since it first came up.  Kalamazoo AM radio station WKZO also had a very brief story on the rally.

Another useful feature of the meeting was a hand-out sheet on what supporters of retaining the orchard property as public open space can do.  The version at the meeting by Lad Hanka was crisp and punchy.  I couldn’t quickly get it into this post, so I had to fall back on the following version.

What You Can Do
to Save the Colony Farm Orchard (=Enchanted Forest)

The bill passed the House after being introduced by and has been reported out of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate with Sen. Tom George (R-Kal) voting for it.  The only Senator on the Appropriations Committee who voted against it was Sen. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor).  The Senate has delayed taking it up for two months, perhaps partly in response to hundreds of calls and letters; however, it could be brought up at any time.

Contact key players in state government and educate them about the facts and your position on the stripping of restrictions from the Colony Farm Orchard in Bill 5207. Ask them either to keep the bill from being considered or to amend it to remove the section on the Colony Farm Orchard.  Ask them to vote against the bill if the Colony Farm Orchard provision remains. Phone calls, personal visits, and letters sent through the mail are most effective; however e-mails are also useful.  P.O. Box 30036, Lansing, MI 48909-7536 is the US Postal Service address for all Senators.

Senate Majority leader Mike Bishop controls the scheduling of bills. 517-373-2417. Senator Alan Cropsey, majority floor leader, works closely with Bishop in scheduling votes.  517 373-3760.

Senate Minority leader Mike Prusi should know how strongly the citizens of the Kalamazoo area feel about the bill. 517-373-7840 (Toll Free Phone Number: 866-305-2038).

Sen. Tom George (R–Kalamazoo has said he supports the bill and trusts WMU to do the right thing. He declined to meet with ALPA recently, saying he might have time in January. Separately, he also declined to met with the student representatives of SSE.  As the Senator from this district, the position he ultimately takes may be influential. 517- 373-0793.

Sen. Liz Brater has said she will oppose the bill. She deserves support.  517-373-2406.

Rep. Robert Jones (D–Kalamazoo) is the sponsor of HB 5207.  He could withdraw it or withdraw the section that involves the Colony Farm Orchard.  Let him know what you think. 888-833-6636.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm will need to make a decision to veto or sign  the bill  if it passes the Senate.  Let her know  your position.  517-373-3400, 517-335-7858.

WMU President John M. Dunn needs to be more aware of community sentiment than he now is:  john.dunn@wmich.edu, 269-387-2351, Office of President, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI 49008.

Some WMU Board members may be somewhat isolated from Kalamazoo events. A letter or email to Board of Trustees c/o Secretary of the Board Betty Kocher, with the request that your complete message be distributed to every Trustee would probably suffice. Email: betty.kocher@wmich.edu

And it is still very much worthwhile to continue sending letters and Viewpoints to the Kalamazoo Gazette.  Go to   http://www.mlive.com/mailforms/kzgazette/letters/

Downtown Kalamazoo Public Library, Site of 8 December 2009 Rally to Save the Colony Farm Orchard

The meeting will be held Tuesday 8 December 2009 at 6:30 PM in the VanDeusen Room of the Kalamazoo Public Library (downtown Kalamazoo, 315 S. Rose St.).  Parking is available on nearby streets.  The program will include statements by concerned groups and individuals, a showing of Matt Clysdale’s documentary “Here We Go Again: Colony Farm Orchard” with new footage, a question-and- answer session, and information on how the concerned citizen can get involved.

Other Recent Developments

Something of the mood of the Kalamazoo public on the issue is shown by the Friday night (4 December) Viewpoint in the Kalamazoo Gazette by Holly Jensen. The Gazette headline was “Time to take a second look at donating to WMU.”

The Viewpoint takes a position against WMU selling the Orchard property to private developers.  It mentions an e-mail and letter-writing campaign by a WMU alum to other alumni and donors suggesting they reconsider future donations/endowments/bequests.  The article concludes: “Consider Scarlett O’Hara’s father’s conviction that land is ‘the only thing that lasts,’ because WMU has its ‘For Sale’ sign out.”

Another recent development that has come to my attention:  An attempt by ALPA to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Senator Tom George (R-Kalamazoo) was unsuccessful.  Senator George has stated his approval of the Colony Farm Orchard conversion and voted in favor of Representative Jones’s HB 5207 in the Senate Appropriations Committee.  The explanation for his unwillingness to meet with local citizens, either here or in Lansing, was that he was too busy.  It was suggested that ALPA could try again in January.

It may be of interest that the only member of the Senate Appropriations Committee who voted against HB 5207 was Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor), who has probably the strongest record as a conservationist in either house.  Thanks to Liz Brater are in order from all those striving to continue the existing protection of the Colony Farm Orchard.

See you at the Rally!

Large, old bur oak, one of many at Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

The major story in the Western Herald today, on the front page above the fold, is “SSE advocates Orchard property preservation.” The story was written by Fritz Klug, News Editor of the Herald.

SSE is the student organization Students for a Sustainable Earth.  SSE describes itself as the premiere organization for student environmentalists at WMU. It’s a registered student organization whose mission is to promote attitudes and behaviors on the WMU campus and in the wider Kalamazoo community that are environmentally and culturally sustainable.  It has a Facebook group of 435 members.

The story begins with a field trip that a mostly student group of 26 persons, took to the Colony Farm Orchard in October.  SSE hosted it as a part of their campaign to save the Enchanted Forest.  Benjamin Thayer, a WMU senior is quoted as saying, “It is enchanted because it’s a place in limbo.” This is an excellent, remarkably apt characterization.  My dictionary defines limbo as a region of oblivion or neglect.  WMU has neglected the Colony Farm Orchard, perhaps so that the claim could be made that the property is not utilized.  And certainly, if WMU’s plans for the land are allowed to proceed, oblivion is its fate.

In the story, SSE Co-Chair Andrew Weissenborn indicates no opposition to the current BTR Park or the aim of job creation.  “It is neat and extraordinary what WMU has done with the first BTR park,” he is quoted as saying, “but I do not think the park should be extended to the Colony Farm Orchard.  The focus at this point is to preserve the land.”

The other front page story of the Herald, below the fold, is “WMU researchers study carbon sequestration benefits.”  It describes research proposed by a Geosciences group to study sequestering carbon dioxide from large facilities such as factories and power plants by storing it at depths of 2500-3000 feet in porous sedimentary rocks where overlain by impermeable igneous rocks.  It’s a possible technology that, along with many other techniques including conservation and alternative energy sources, may help us out of the global climate aspect of our current environmental predicament.

In the meantime, the Colony Farm Orchard continues sequestering carbon in its humble way–in the growth of old trees planted or self-seeded long ago and the many young ones that have volunteered in the past 50 years, in the vines of old grapes from the abandoned arbors as well as native grape-vines from seeds brought in by catbirds and robins, and in the large amounts of soil organic matter that accumulates each year mostly from foliage.  Even a fair share of the carbon in the tree leaves from the west side of Kalamazoo that WMU allows the city to dump at the Orchard site becomes incorporated in rather long-lived compounds in the soil, making its own sequestration contribution.

Leaves from trees in the city of Kalamazoo dumped at Colony Farm Orchard

Button from the Facebook group

As we all know,  HB 5207  put forth by Representative Bob Jones (D–Kalamazoo) is designed to strip the conservation/public use restrictions from the Colony Farm Orchard as a first step in turning the 54 acres into an Annex to Western Michigan University’s BTR Park.  Here are the stated restrictions: “The conveyance shall provide that Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.” The bill, introduced in mid-July with no public notice, made its way quickly to the Senate but there progress has slowed.

This delay has given conservationists and other opponents of the measure a chance to make their views known, and they have done so in large numbers.  As of now, we cannot know what will happen.  But we should talk about what ought to be done with the property as conservation land.  I made a start on this subject earlier and concluded that the best role for the land was exactly what it’s doing now, but better.

In that post, I discussed some important ecological functions of the Colony Farm Orchard.  I won’t repeat them in detail, but here’s a quick list.  It’s worth taking note that all these would be diminished or lost altogether by development as a BTR installation.

Many are beneficial effects that the Orchard exerts on the Asylum Lake Preserve, such as

• Reducing noise from M-131

• Filtering noxious fumes from trucks and automobiles on M-131

• Reducing artificial lighting coming from M-131 and buildings across the highway to the west.  Research on the dangerous effects that bright artificial lights have on insects, bats, amphibians in the breeding season, and other forms of wildlife is accumulating rapidly.

• By serving as a very near island of similar but not identical habitats, the Orchard adds species, lowers extinctions and enhances immigration, all of which lead to higher biodiversity and ecosystem stability at Asylum Lake.

Other positive conservation roles the Orchard plays, not necessarily involving the Asylum Lake Preserve directly, include

• Allowing for the presence and reproduction of  shy animals, such as foxes and American woodcock, that are likely to be disturbed on the more heavily visited Asylum Lake Preserve.

• Serving as a migratory bird stopover site well-supplied with cover, water, and food supplies in both spring and fall.

• Preserving land within the historic  Genesee tall-grass prairie and the adjacent bur oak opening.  Perhaps few herbaceous species survive from those pre-settlement plant communities, but numerous bur oaks of various ages and sizes are present that are almost certainly descended from the oaks of the original savanna.

This is just a good start on a listing of the conservation values of the Orchard.  There are, for example, the marvelous asparagus patches along the west edge.  Not for nothing was Euell Gibbons’s first book named Stalking the Wild Asparagus.  “When I am out along the hedgerows and waysides gathering wild asparagus,” he wrote, “I am twelve years old again and all the world is new and wonderful as the spring sun quickens the green things into life….”

There are also the old trees–horse chestnut, tulip tree, maples–planted by the original farm family or by the staff or patients of the Colony Farm.  Big and open grown but surrounded now by many trees of smaller diameters, these are probably what suggested the “Enchanted Forest” name to the Facebook Group.  They ought to be kept as a way of conserving human history as well as natural history.

Then there is the carbon sequestration that has gone on and is going on in the accumulation of tree biomass, which acts to temper the greenhouse effect and slow global climate change.  Turning this land into a BTR park extension would almost certainly mean cutting most of the trees and brush and releasing the stored carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide  either by burning or by the slow fire of decomposition.

It’s not possible yet to come up with a complete conservation design, but here are some things we might want to do when the Colony Farm Orchard is devoted to conservation.

1. Construct a self-guided loop trail going through the property’s major habitats with the trailhead on the east side of the property next to Drake Road.
2. Next to the trailhead, construct a small bicycle parking space.  Too much space for automobile parking has already been subtracted from the Asylum Lake Preserve to allow more to be lost for auto parking here.
3. Provide for safe passage of pedestrians from somewhere south of the Asylum Lake parking lot at the top of the hill on Drake by means of pedestrian on-demand lights, or an overpass.
4. Stop the dumping of leaves and yard waste from Kalamazoo.  It’s a public service of a sort, but on a parcel of only 54 acres it takes up space that ought to be available for natural revegetation or restoration.  The area of thick leaf mulch can be seen in one of the fine low-level aerial photographs of the Colony Farm Orchard by JaySeaAre. Locate the metal pole barn (“Butler building”) on the west border (toward the highway); the heavy leaf mulch is the unvegetated area east of the Butler building and running south toward the electric substation and north toward the old orchard. Several years accumulation are involved, ringed with rank growths of barnyard weeds.
5. Erect a signboard facing M-131 that says something like this: 

Asylum Lake Preserve of Western Michigan University

A sanctuary of 320 acres protected for all time

that by education, research, and as green and open space

benefits the public and the Earth

Before describing what the trail could be like, it’s worth considering why we need a trail at all. People who are highly enough motivated have always made their way onto the Orchard for bird-watching, asparagus hunting, photography, and contemplation. And no trail is needed for the Orchard to continue its services to the Asylum Lake Preserve.  But there are good reasons for the trail: One, it will make it much handier to visit the site, especially for education–classes, but also groups interested in natural history, and any strolling autodidact.

Two, if the Orchard is left as is, there will be those who say, as some connected with WMU have said,  that the land is not utilized.  Of course, the charge was and is bogus. But the trail is one way to demonstrate utilization.  It will show  most people that the land is utilized, though perhaps not that segment of humanity for whom the only meaningful way a piece of property can be utilized is to generate income.

What should the trail be like?  I’d say most of it should be narrow, just wide enough for one person to walk comfortably, and unimproved.  No dogs, I’d say.  It’s nice that people can walk their pets on the Asylum Lake property, but the Orchard ought to continue to be a dog-free refuge, a place for the woodcocks and turkeys and other ground nesters.

There would be plenty to see along the trail, including many of the features already mentioned.  Any trip would find dozens of things to look at and discourse on, as the changing seasons brought forth something new every day.

The trail should loop through the south part of the WMU Foundation property.  In fact, I’d say that the south half of the Foundation land ought to be reunited with the Enchanted Forest. The eight acres extending up to Stadium Drive were regrettably severed from the Orchard property in 1957 and sold into commerce.  The Foundation did Kalamazoo a service by acquiring it in 2007.

Pond with Mallards on WMU Foundation land just north of Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by R. Brewer

Having the trail run through the south part of what is now Foundation property would include a small pond and the ducks and aquatic life that could be seen there and also an area of great hydrological interest as the main source of ground water flow into Asylum Lake.

These are just some ideas of mine. I haven’t discussed them in detail with anybody.  No charette was held.  Nobody paid me a consulting fee; my work was all pro bono publico.  Publico has been given short shrift in WMU’s proposals for the Orchard, so I’m glad to bring a little of it back.

Will the Colony Farm Orchard be allowed to fulfill these conservation aims?  That depends on the Michigan Senate, or perhaps Governor Granholm.  But, of course, it depends most of all on Western Michigan University, which could at any time, decide to let the Orchard live up to the purposes for which it was conveyed from state to university in 1977.  That WMU has not already asked the Michigan legislature to withdraw the section of HB 5207 dealing with the Colony Farm Orchard reveals an anti-conservation, anti-environment, anti-sustainability mindset that may foretell a troubled future.

This was a Thursday night and they were planning a letter writing session for the following evening.  I talked for a little while about past and current threats to the Enchanted Forest.  Andy Weissenborn and a dark-haired young woman whose name I didn’t get asked a few questions that I tried to answer. I gave them my take on how best to get in touch with members of the Michigan Senate, where the bill stripping the restriction that the land be kept as open space for public use was then, and still resides today (30 October).

The student group is on facebook.  Here are the first few lines of the group’s description:

Western Michigan University is moving ahead with a plan to expand the Business Technology and Research Park. In order to do this, they are going to flatten the woods at the northwest corner of the Drake and Parkview intersection, the “Enchanted Forest.”  Don’t get us wrong, we’re not against development in general. And we’re not against new business and new jobs.

The facebook group is open and the content is public.

The students have evidently put on a very effective campaign to reach members of the Senate.  Check out Chelsea Thorpe’s comments for 29 October on the group’s Wall.  Among other things, she says, “Call, write, my babies! Let’s save the dadgum Enchanted Forest!” and includes the phone number for the person to call in Lansing about postponing the vote (Senate majority leader Michael Bishop at 517 373 2417.)

I’ve heard that other actions to save the Enchanted Forest are being planned or contemplated.

In my opinion this effort is the greenest and most biospherically useful thing that’s happened at WMU at least since Dok Stevens left and maybe since Huey Johnson graduated.

Save the dadgum Enchanted Forest!

Horse chestnut tree at Colony Farm Orchard. Photo copyright October 2009 by Richard Brewer.

I’ve always wondered if there was one fundamental difference between conservationists and those other people whose disposition is exactly opposite–the  exploiters, polluters, clear-cutters, mountaintop blasters, and all the other ill-users and abusers of the land and waters. In recent experiences with the case of the Colony Farm Orchard, I think I have an inkling of what the fundamental difference might be.

Several years ago The Nature Conservancy coined the term “trade land” to refer to real estate given to the organization merely as an asset, like a used car or shares of stock, rather than as land meant for preservation. In earlier days, people had sometimes been unhappy, even irate, when they heard of TNC selling land, thinking that sanctuary land was being sold. The term was invented to refer to lands with minor conservation value that are donated mainly for the money that TNC can raise by selling them.

The 54-acre Colony Farm Orchard (henceforth, just Orchard) in Oshtemo Township, Michigan, has certain features that make it desirable for conservation. I’ve listed these in more detail in earlier posts (such as this one), but they include a variety of habitats, historical interest from being located within the tall-grass Genesee Prairie and bur oak opening, and prime habitat as a migratory bird stopover site.  Perhaps more important is that the Orchard contributes to increased biodiversity and stability of the 270-acre Asylum Lake Preserve which is adjacent to the east, across Drake Road.  The Orchard serves as a very near island of similar but not identical habitat.

The State of Michigan gave the Orchard to Western Michigan University in 1977 for the purposes stated in the original legislative conveyance: “Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.”

The intent is perfectly clear; this is land conveyed as dedicated open space for public use. The Orchard is not trade land.

Nevertheless, in the 1990s, WMU sought to develop the Orchard as part of a proposed BTR (Business Technology Research) Park.  A long battle ensued between WMU, elements of Kalamazoo City government, and certain corporations on one side and various environmental and neighborhood groups plus a high percentage of the citizenry on the other.  The first major skirmish was an attempt by WMU to get around the quoted restriction.  WMU persuaded a local Michigan House member, Dale Shugars, to introduce legislation changing the permitted uses to “1. For a public park, recreation area, or open space area.  2. For a business, technology and research park…” The bill with the altered language passed the House, but a Senate committee concluded that a BTR park was not a public purpose,  The Senate did not act on the bill, and in 1993 it died. The Orchard was saved.

Many things happened between 1993 and now.  One was a compromise of sorts, by which land south of Parkview Avenue, which had come from the state to WMU with no restrictions, was opened to the development of a BTR park. Such a development was begun in 2001. The Asylum Lake parcel north of Parkview and east of Drake that had come to WMU in 1975 with exactly the same restrictions as the Orchard was designated as a Preserve.  It was further protected in 2004 by a Declaration of Restrictions, meant to serve the same function as a conservation easement.

The Colony Farm Orchard is at the upper left in this diagrammatic map which appears on the Asylum Lake website

During the years between 1993 and 2004, agreement had been reached on a variety of topics. The conservationist participants in the discussions believed that the Orchard, north of Parkview and with the same legislative restrictions as the Asylum Lake property was a part of the Preserve.  The WMU participants, however, rebuffed all attempts at explicit inclusion of the Orchard in the Declaration of Restrictions.  Probably this should have been a signal that WMU was not giving up its plan to violate the restrictions on the Orchard, but the participants were comforted by the fact that the land was still protected by the original restriction. Perhaps they were also tired after the years-long debates.

Faint signals of a renewed attempt on the Orchard could have been noticed in late February 2009.  WMU Vice-President Robert Miller emerged from WMU’s five-year Orchard dormancy to tell one of the Asylum Lake neighborhood groups: “There are no plans to develop that area, but it is one of the options we are looking at. I can tell you, should a decision be made to expand the Business, Technology, and Research Park, we would come to you, to the entire community with our plans and share them. [But] we have none.”

By 2 July, the signal was much stronger.  The WMU Board of Trustees at its July meeting empowered the admistration to spend up to $985,000 to buy out a long-standing Michigan State University lease to conduct pest insect research on the Orchard.  Greg Rosine, another WMU Vice President, made it all explicit; he mentioned the deed restrictions and said that WMU was “seeking to get those restrictions changed.” Local Representative Robert Jones introduced House Bill 5207 to strip the restrictions on 16 July, though the first local public notice was not until 1 August.

Local adverse reactions were evident as early as 14 July at a meeting of the Oshtemo Township Board. Numerous letters and phone calls followed in later days and weeks, to the Kalamazoo Gazette, WMU administrators and board members, and local members of the legislature.  Much of this is related in earlier posts at this website.  As of the day I write, 28 October 2009, the bill has passed the House and been approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee.  Tardy and prolonged debate on the state budget, typical of the Michigan legislature, has delayed immediate action in the Senate.

Proponents of removing the restrictions and making the Orchard an annex to the current BTR park have said little publicly and have been unwilling to engage in any public forum or debate.  Apparently, their arguments are that the BTR is full, that it created more than 1,300 jobs “directly or indirectly” and an expansion would create many more, and that it is a logical site for expansion because it is already owned by WMU, is adjacent to the current park, and is not utilized.

Some of the claims are questionable and the rest are wrong.  The BTR park isn’t full.  Were the jobs “created” or were they jobs that, in the absence of the BTR park, would still have lodged somewhere in the Kalamazoo area? Considering the current job market, how soon will a BTR Park annex actually be needed?  Plenty of other sites exist for expansion, if expansion should ever be necessary. Included are other unrestricted properties owned by WMU as well as remediated brownfield sites in Kalamazoo that are going begging.  Although WMU’s early, obfuscatory statements in February mentioned that expansion to the CFO was “one option,” evidence is lacking than any other site was considered.

In fact, the main argument in favor of the Orchard is money. The Orchard is land bought with taxpayer dollars and given to WMU by the state for public use as open space.  Expansion of the BTR park would consist of dividing the parcel into a few lots and selling them for commercial use at market value.  Estimates for total income from the sales start at around $3 million.  With a cost basis of zero, WMU could reap a handsome profit.

In a rational accounting, the justification for converting this public open space to a BTR park annex fails.  To me and a good many others, there is little need even to do the accounting.  Here is land that in the transfer from state to university was set aside for the public good in language as plain as can be written.

I believe that here we are coming close to the fundamental distinction between conservationists and exploiters.  The difference is the unwillingness or perhaps the constitutional inability of the exploiters to understand and honor a perfectly explicit covenant.  They see it as nothing more than an obstacle to making money from the land, to be gotten around or over.  To them, conserved land is not utilized; conserved land does not perform.

To the exploiters, all land is trade land.

A small stream in the springy area at the north end of the Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer.

A Herald editorial endorsed WMU’s attempt to turn the protected Colony Farm Orchard into an annex of the BTR park.  After a kind of cost/benefit analysis the Herald concluded that the university would make a bunch of money.  Just four quick points:

1. Since WMU paid nothing for the land (bought by the state with taxpayer money), WMU ought to be able to sell it at a profit.  Who couldn’t? The BTR park has done well–or so we’re told. WMU never provides cash flow figures.

But the BTR park opened near the beginning of one of the biggest booms, or bubbles, in U.S. history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average went from below 10,000 to over 14,000 between 2001 and 2007.  Then the economy crashed and burned. By early 2009 the Dow dropped below 7000; the wealth that people thought had been created disappeared.  Today the Dow is struggling to get back to where it was in 2001.

The current BTR Park has three unsold lots and at least two vacancies, plus the soccer field which remains to be developed.  It may be years before new lots in the Annex are needed.  Or they may never be needed.

2. People like me who want to save the Orchard do not object to WMU making money.  Most public universities, including WMU, have been so starved by state government that to stay in operation they need to beg, borrow, and accept grants and contracts from large corporations that do not have the public good uppermost in their minds.  But there are lines that should not be crossed.  WMU crossed the line with their Colony Farm Orchard plans.

3. The idea that WMU deserves credit for protecting the Asylum Lake Preserve is fantasy.  Its protected status is the outcome of a long, intense battle all through the 1990s between the WMU administration on one side and many people on the other.  Among the WMU opponents were the Asylum Lake Preservation Association; neighborhood groups; an active, vocal group of WMU students; assorted conservationists and environmentalists; and, toward the end, the Michigan Senate following the lead of Senator Jack Welborn.

As late as 1998 when the chance of a business park on the Asylum Lake property and the Orchard was long dead, the WMU administration was still trying to turn the Asylum Lake property into a golf course! WMU lost. This land became the Asylum Lake Preserve.

4. The editorial mentions Aldo Leopold’s land ethic. Adherents to the land ethic will be opposed to WMU’s plan, but you don’t have to be an environmentalist to know it’s not right.  That follows from an older, easily understood ethical principle, the idea that we keep our promises. This is the first reason why WMU should not try to overturn the dedication of the Orchard as open space. A conservation reason is not far behind: How can conservation land ever be secure if the promises of protection by land holders such as the government and the university mean nothing?

Will those who come after us at WMU say of the current leadership, They kept the faith? Or will they say, They betrayed a trust?

Private Options: Tools and Concepts for Land Conservation. Barbara Rusmore, Alexandra Swaney, and Allan D. Spader, Editors. 1982.  Island Press.

This proceedings volume brought together a great fund of information about land trusts at an important time in the development of the movement. Nearly thirty years later, the book is still useful to anyone trying to learn about land trust operations. Other than some specifics of tax law and regulations, little of the material is outmoded.

The approximately 75 papers came from the first two conferences aiming to take a national view of  private land conservation by local organizations.  Both were held around this time of year 28 years ago, in the fall of 1981.  The first, the National Consultation on Local Land Conservation, was held in Cambridge MA October 14-16 under the auspices of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The second a month later, November 13-15, was Private Options for Land Preservation, A Conference for Practitioners.  It was held in San Francisco, though under the sponsorship of the Montana Land Reliance.

The Lincoln Institute, a land use policy group, was relatively new, founded in 1974. The Montana Land Reliance, a local land trust, was still newer, formed in 1976 and awarded non-profit status in 1978.

Land trusts formed since the later 1980s have mostly been named “land trusts” or “land conservancies,” but those formed in the hundred years between 1891 (the Trustees of Reservations) and the early 1980s used a variety of names, sometimes “trusts” or “conservancies” with various modifiers, but also many “associations,” “societies,” or “foundations.” As far as I know, the Montana organization is still the only “reliance.” Perhaps it was called a “reliance” from the rarely used definition of “one relied on.” There may be more to it than that or, possibly, less.

The book combines material from the two conferences; that from the National Consultation amounts to about 60 percent to the Private Option’s 40 percent. A separate proceedings for the National Consultation had been quickly assembled and published by the Land Trust Exchange (later, Land Trust Alliance), the national umbrella organization to which the conference gave rise. The National Consultation material included in this book is virtually identical to the separately published proceedings. Proceedings from the Private Options conference were advertised but evidently never produced, probably being incorporated directly into the joint volume.

Two conflicting emotions dominated the conferences. One was gloom over the threat to conservation and environmental protection that came from the new (January 1981) administration in Washington, that is, from Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and their appointees. “Somewhere between Teddy Roosevelt and James Watt, the Industrial Revolution won out over the purple mountains’ majesty,” wrote Maggie Hurchalla, a representative of a Florida land trust to the National Consultation. “Land trusts are largely an answer to government failure. As a result, they are an accusation.”

But there was also a feeling of excitement at the great potential of private land conservation. Cecil Andrus, governor of Idaho and Secretary of the Interior under Jimmy Carter, gave the keynote address at the Private Options conference. He called the blossoming land trust movement the “leading edge” and the “third wave” of conservation in the U.S. The first wave was the rise of government protection of land, wildlife, and forests–the National Parks, National Forests, game protective laws, and conservation advocacy groups. The second was the popular environmental movement of the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s with its accompanying federal and state regulatory legislation. “I call you the third wave,” Andrus said to the gathering.

In a section of comments from participants of the National Consultation, Allan D. Spader, the organizer of the conference, said, “The relatively spontaneous accomplishments and growth of the local land trust movement [are] unique in a world where success is measured in terms of media hype…or a government program grant.” And Robert Augspurger of the Peninsula Open Space Trust (CA), wrote of the conference itself, “[O]ne might compare [it] to an old-fashioned revival meeting. Here we had a group of ‘circuit-riders’ from all over the country, coming together to refresh, reinspire and reeducate each other. The results were indeed electric.”

Authors include a good many persons still active in the land trust movement–after all, it was less than 30 years ago. Among these are Mark Ackelson, Joan Vilms, Martin Zeller, Jean Hocker, and William Hutton. Some figures important in the exponential growth phase of land trusts are gone or less engaged now. Among these are Kingsbury Browne, Jr., Russell L. Brenneman, Gordon Abbott, Jr., and Benjamin R. Emory. Several more who contributed to the discussions were active for a time but are no longer connected with land trusts or, at least, not in any very visible way. Where, for example, is Maggie Hurchalla, author of the provocative quote a couple of paragraphs back?

[Added 14 August 2009.  I now know where Maggie Hurchalla is.  I was put on the trail by a column in Parade magazine.  (I make it a point to spend at least 30 seconds every Sunday reading Parade.)  Her name came up in an answer to a question concerning former Attorney General Janet Reno.

I must have failed to google Maggie when I wrote the original review, because over five thousand entries came up when I tried the other day.  In addition to being Janet Reno's younger sister, she has been involved in environmental battles throughout her life.  Among her causes have been growth management in Florida and wetlands protection and restoration, including the Everglades.  She served as a Martin County commissioner for 20 years (1974-94), was chosen Florida Audubon's Environmentalist of the year in 1981 and was a National Wetlands award recipient in 2003.  As far as I can tell from material on the web, Hurchalla has little if any recent connection with the land trust movement.  But she has continued to fight the good fight.]

Most topics of importance to land trusts are at least mentioned in the volume. Among other subjects, we read about marketing, preservation of agricultural and historic lands, community land trusts, negotiation skills, tax policy and income tax incentives, conservation easements (including some early comments on possible problems), partial development, cooperation with government (pros and cons), some summary material from the first real census of land trusts, a bit of history, some regional perspectives, organizational development, and ideas about forming a national umbrella organization.

Although there is material on fee acquisition and stewardship of natural lands, an emphasis on conservation easements and agricultural lands is evident. This emphasis was unrepresentative of what the majority of the more than 400 land trusts in existence were actually doing as of 1981. It was, however, prophetic of the shifts in emphasis that characterized much of the 1980s and 1990s and prevail today.

Removing the public purpose restriction will be necessary if WMU is to do what it claims is its goal–to expand its BTR (business, technology, research) park to the Colony Farm Orchard

Within minutes of the vote, WMU’s Senior Vice President for Advancement and Legislative Affairs Gregory Rosine called from Lansing to let the Kalamazoo Gazette know the news.

The story appeared in the Thursday paper, to the consternation of conservationists who have been working to retain the restrictions keeping the land for public purposes.  “Outraged” probably best characterizes the reactions of people I’m in contact with.  This was not because there had been strong expectations that the bill would be defeated.  Since the Appropriations Committee reflects the Senate composition, it contains eleven Republicans and seven Democrats.  Many of the arguments against the WMU action are conservation-based, so few Republicans were expected to oppose the bill.

The hope was that the local senator, Tom George, though a Republican, would be swayed by conservation arguments contained in the many letters sent to him and to the Gazette.  If he opposed the bill,  his colleagues might follow his lead because of his position as the senator from the affected district.

No, the reason for the outrage was that local conservationists expected to be able to attend the Appropriations Committee hearing and make their case for retaining the Orchard, perhaps along with other environmental groups and others who understood the seriousness of the issue.  None was able to attend the hearing because the bill was added to the Wednesday agenda without advance notification and passed within the same meeting.  The lack of notification extended to the Asylum Lake Preservation Association (ALPA) vice president who had signed up for automatic notification of the bill being placed on the committee agenda.  In fact, at 4:55 AM Friday 2 October, the day after the bill had been passed by the Committee, the message from the legislative website update@legislature.mi.gov said of HB 5207, “Last action: 9/21/2009 REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS”[caps in original]

One might think that Senator George,  having noted the letters from his constituents, might think, “Hey, I bet all these people interested in this Colony Farm Orchard might like me to shoot them an email that it’s now on the agenda.”  If he thought that, he didn’t act on the thought.

ALPA, and everyone else, were caught flat-footed. Rumors that the meeting was occurring leaked out on Wednesday afternoon, but few organizations would be able to get to Lansing with persuasive testimony on the spur of the moment, and none did.  When I heard such a rumor, I searched every relevant legislative website and found no mention of HB 5207 being taken up by the Appropriations Committee.  I checked again the following morning–again,the day after the committee had approved the bill–and found no mention even of a changed agenda, let alone passage.

I have heard of other cases in the Michigan legislature of schedules being set so as to put opponents at a disadvantage.  Opponents usually are the other party, but often enough the sides are more complicated; that was the case in the Wednesday afternoon debacle.  The quick-snap in football is an acceptable tactic. In government, such goings-on violate American principles of fairness at the most fundamental level.

Businesses, local governments, and many state agencies have strict requirements to provide public notice for virtually any action in which the public or other parties might have an interest.  Society functions better as a result.  But in the Michigan legislature, there seem to be no penalties–only rewards–for keeping opponents and the public in the dark.

If Senator George read the letters sent to him, he was not swayed.  The Gazette article reporting the committee action quoted him as saying that “job creation” was the reason he voted for the bill.  He also said the BTR park is “one of the few examples of successful job growth in the city of Kalamazoo and in the state of Michigan, for that matter.”

Few Republicans will vote against job creation no matter what negatives may be attached or how bogus the claim. Few Democrats either, these days.  It’s possible that advocates for retaining the Colony Farm Orchard as open space should analyze the BTR jobs claims and other self-congratulatory marketing points. For example, just how many jobs is it that the WMU business park has created?

President John Dunn in his Gazette Viewpoint used a figure of more than 1300, but of these, according to other marketing pieces, 682, a majority, were “indirect salary creation.”  I’m not sure what this means, but I don’t think it’s people working shifts at the BTR park.  The larger question is, Has the BTR park created any jobs at all?  How many of these more than 1300 jobs were already around the area or were jobs that, had the WMU BTR park not been available, would have ended up elsewhere in the county–possibly at a facility set up by private enterprise.

The facts are difficult to get; the overriding fact is that the whole process WMU has followed in pursuing the stripping of the Colony Farm Orchard’s restrictions has been almost fact free. The closest thing to a analysis of the BTR park I’m aware of is an online comment (23 September 2009) of Dunn’s Viewpoint by someone signing himself evadrepus.  It’s a good start and deserves wider attention.

The unwillingness to provide facts is part of the general opacity of the whole process. When the question of pros and cons of the Colony Farm Orchard relative to various other obvious options comes up, WMU says…nothing. I have concluded that nothing means, “We will develop the Orchard, because you can’t stop us.”  A further translation is that “because you can’t stop us” means “the legislature will let us.”

I had almost reached this conclusion about a month ago.  The leaders in and around WMU had concluded that the Colony Farm Orchard was a slam dunk.  The economy/jobs argument was compelling, nobody cared about this insignificant sliver of land, it wasn’t being “utilized.”  But I still thought that something besides a simple case of hubris must be involved to account for the resoluteness with which the Colony Farm Orchard was being pursued.

The reason I now understand is an obvious one.  Money.  The land, bought a good many years ago by the state with tax-payer dollars, came to WMU free.  But unfortunately it came with a public use restriction.  By getting rid of that restriction (which was not a condition of the University Farm property that became the current BTR park), WMU can turn the Orchard into a few lots, perhaps 3-5, and sell them for a total of perhaps $3-$5 million.  This is a nice sum, and it’s pure profit.

The same answer explains one of the companion bills that Representative Bob Jones introduced, the one having to do with the former TB sanitarium.  Because my main interest in the WMU’s actions has been the protection of conserved land, I haven’t bothered to write about the sanitarium bill. I’ll wait to take it up another time, but it’s an even more clever legal maneuver.

It’s not impossible that the full Senate will reject the lifting of restrictions next Tuesday, as the full senate in 1993 was poised to do.

It’s not impossible that Governor Jennifer Granholm will veto the bill if it reaches her.

If neither of those things happen, then barring litigation, it seems likely that the open space/public use restrictions will disappear.  They would have lasted, not the perpetuity that conservationists hope that conservation lands will endure, but about 32 years.  This is figuring from the fall of 1977 when the Welborn brothers of Kalamazoo, one a senator, one a representative, added the Orchard to the adjacent Asylum Lake property (conveyed with similar restrictions in 1975) to give WMU the care of 329 acres of dedicated open space.

So, would this be the last go round for the Colony Farm Orchard?

Maybe not.

The loss of the legal restrictions would be a serious loss, making destruction of the Orchard much simpler in the future.  But even so, the conservationists and environmentalists of the state may stay in the game.  Even if they lose this go round, they may not yet be willing to let their deal go down.

Matt Clysdale, from his website

Matt Clysdale, a local film-maker (Animals Among Us), will be screening the first part of a two or more part film about Western Michigan University’s planned conversion of the Colony Farm Orchard open space to Business Park annex.  Here is his announcement.

Greetings everyone,

Please join me this Tuesday at 9 pm on Channel 19 for the
premiere broadcast of  “The Colony Farm Orchard – Part 1:
Here We Go Again”, a video essay I recently produced on a
controversial, 54 acre piece of property adjacent to Asylum Lake.

The video is the first part in a series examining major issues
surrounding Western Michigan University’s plans to expand
the Business, Technology and Research Park onto the Orchard.

Part 1 explores the tumultuous history of the Orchard, previous
attempts to develop the property, and an earlier attempt to remove the restrictions on the property. Interviews with representatives from WMU, the Asylum Lake Preservation Association, and the Oakland Drive/Winchell Neighborhood Association, as well as former State Senator Jack Welborn and current State Representative Robert Jones, shed light on the inner workings behind this controversial, and necessary, community debate.

Matt Clysdale
HorsePower Pictures

Response to John Dunn Viewpoint

Richard Brewer

After a long silence, President John Dunn of Western Michigan University provided some public commentary on the Colony Farm Orchard by way of a Kalamazoo Gazette Viewpoint on Wednesday 23 September 2009. Following is a response I submitted Sunday to the Gazette.  I tried to keep it close to the 500-word Viewpoint limit the Gazette requests, so there was no space to deal with several other questionable statements.  I will try to address these later.

By mid-July, people were writing letters to the Gazette warning about WMU’s attempt to strip deed restrictions from the Colony Farm Orchard. The restrictions would have to be killed for WMU to expand its BTR park operations onto the Orchard.  The restrictions say WMU “may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.”  Last week, Western Michigan University President Dunn wrote a Viewpoint about the Orchard.

It is well that President Dunn has finally spoken up.  Until now the only WMU statements came from subordinates.

The version of Asylum Lake history given by President Dunn will seem strangely light-hearted and his representation of WMU’s role improbably altruistic to anyone who kept track of the bitter controversies of the 1990s-early 2000s.  These came out of an earlier attempt by WMU to turn the Orchard, the University Farm, and part of the Asylum Lake property into a business park.

But then President Dunn was not here during that time; he took office in July 2007.  His knowledge comes from staff, associates, and the WMU Board. I fear they have not given him a full picture of the long  battle–or the dedication it created in those who still fight to protect this special place.

President Dunn states that the Orchard is a logical choice for development because WMU already owns it.  What he neglects to say is that by the restriction, WMU holds it as a public trust–to keep for all of us as open space.

Among several misleading statements, President Dunn claims that the development would be beneficial because it would provide space for retention ponds that would improve water quality in Asylum Lake.  This is a red herring.  There are other places for such ponds, including the old trailer park at the north end of the Orchard.  The WMU Foundation owns this property, and it is unrestricted.  Work on the retention ponds could begin tomorrow.

President Dunn commends the legislators who wrote the original conveyance of the Orchard for recognizing that “community needs could change and included a mechanism to make such needed changes.” Exactly! We have already seen the language: “the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.” It is just this language that Representative Robert Jones’s bill would remove.

The reason for the Jones-WMU bill is that all of this played out once before, in 1993.  The House passed altered language that would have allowed the Colony Farm Orchard to be used as a research and business park.  When the bill reached the Senate, careful debate led the Senate to conclude that this was not a public use.  They refused to act on the bill, and the door slammed shut on that first misguided effort to turn this property into a business park.

But now a new bill is back, in the Senate Appropriations Committee. If the Senate of 2009 is less wise than the Senate of 1993, the bill may pass and the Colony Farm Orchard will be lost.  Even worse, the legislature will have gone on record that conservation restrictions for the public good are meaningless, to be wiped out whenever they are inconvenient for any group with a powerful constituency.  I emailed Senator Tom George asking him not to allow this. Other citizens unhappy with WMU’s attempt to sell this land bought with taxpayer money to private interests might wish to contact their own senators.

On Thursday 17 September 2009, in the Michigan House of Representatives, Robert Jones’s House Bill 5207 was read a second time, placed on third reading, placed on immediate passage, read a third time, passed and given immediate effect (Yeas 105 Nays 2), title amended, and transmitted to the Senate.  It all happened fast, though perhaps not as fast as its supporters in the Western Michigan University administration and  board have been hoping. Its passage by the House was recorded in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

In the Senate on Monday 21 September, the bill was assigned to the Appropriations Committee.  This committee consists of Senators Jelinek (C), Pappageorge (VC), Hardiman, Kahn, Cropsey, Garcia, George, Jansen, Brown, McManus, Stamas, Switalski (MVC), Anderson, Barcia, Brater, Cherry, Clark-Coleman, and Scott.  Of these, the most important for the future of the Colony Farm Orchard is Senator Tom George.

Everyone who believes that the Colony Farm Orchard should remain as dedicated open space might want to contact Senator George and ask him to make it so. His email address is sentgeorge@senate.michigan.gov

Following is a letter I sent to Senator George last night.

Dear Senator George–

What happens to the Colony Farm Orchard is now in your hands. Since the land is in your district, colleagues in the Senate will follow your lead. If the Senate votes not to remove the restriction placed on it when it was conveyed to WMU in 1977, the land will stay open space as was intended.

Removing the restriction (Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose) would be needed to convert Colony Farm Orchard (henceforth, the CFO) from dedicated open space into a new section of the so-called BTR Park.

The situation is an almost exact rerun of the attempt by WMU in 1990 to convert the CFO into phase 1 of a research and business park.  The Asylum Lake Preservation Association was founded soon afterwards, and a lengthy battle between WMU and the majority of the citizens of the region began.  The conflict came to a head in spring 1993 when the House passed a bill adding “or a business, technology, and research park” to the list of allowed uses for the CFO.

The bill went to the Senate Committee on State Affairs in April 1993. Prolonged, caustic discussion showed that the Committee understood what the intent of the legislature had been in the original conveyance and also showed that the members did not consider the BTR park a public purpose. On April 22, 1993, the Committee adjourned without action, but it was clear that, if a vote were to be taken, the new language would be rejected.  President Diether Haenicke realized that the battle was over and pulled the plug on the whole development proposal on May 3, 1993.

Eventually, a BTR park was built on the University Farm, which had been given to WMU without restrictions in 1959.  The Asylum Lake property, conveyed to WMU with restrictions identical to the CFO, was set aside as the Asylum Lake Preserve.

One major reason why the bill coming to the Senate in 2009 should be defeated is the damage it does to the idea–and ideal–of land conservation.  When government bodies set aside land for open space, the citizens and the local governments should be able to count on it.  They make later decisions with that status as a given; it should only be altered out of critical necessity.

There are also many specific arguments why this particular land should be left pretty much as is and not sold off for commercial development.

Apple trees at the Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

1.  The land functions as part of the adjacent Asylum Lake Preserve.  Its wooded areas, thickets, grasslands, and wetlands enlarge the sanctuary, making the whole more diverse and more stable, in accordance with well-accepted conservation biology principles.

2. The CFO should be saved for its own sake, for its historic significance as part of the tall-grass Genesee Prairie and the Colony Farm experiment itself.  It is also of value for the wildlife species that live more safely here than at the heavily visited Asylum Lake Preserve. It is a high quality migratory stopover site for birds.  Also the vegetation and soil is steadily sequestering carbon.  Most of this stored carbon would be returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide if the development proceeds.

3.  There are numerous reasons why the CFO is not well suited for business park expansion:  It’s small, allowing only a few lots.  WMU will spend up to $985,000 to buy out a Michigan State University entomology lease.  The old orchard occupying one third of the site will require expensive remediation because of the lead and arsenic build-up from insecticide use from the late 1800s to 1947.

4. There are many other sites equally or better suited for the expansion.  Some are held by private owners, but WMU owns suitable lands that are nearby and have no title restrictions.

5.  The orchard was bought by the state long ago with taxpayer money.  Clearly a major motive for the proposed conversion is to convert State of Michigan assets into WMU dollars. The CFO is, in a way, an innocent by-stander.

This is the short list of arguments. You might suppose that WMU has an equivalent list of rebuttals, but that is not the case.  No one in the administration or board has been willing to engage in debate on the merits. President John Dunn has never, to my knowledge, made any public comment on the issue. Nearly all statements about the project have come from one Vice President and questions have been met, not with answers, but with marketing rhetoric about what a great success the already built part of the BTR park has been.

I hope that you and your senatorial colleagues in 2009 will be as wise as the Senate of 1993.

Sincerely yours

The article with two color photos occupied the whole front page.  One of the photos was a slightly elevated view of the south part of the Orchard from the west side of US–131.  The other was an aerial photo from 2007 of the Orchard and the Asylum Lake Preserve.  Both are seen to slightly better advantage in the online version, which also includes a few lines of text not present in the printed version.

The article is a worthy attempt to give the campus community the basics of what has happened and is proposed.

Two letters to the Herald responding to the article were printed on line on 17 September.  They are given below with the Herald titles .  My letter is slightly expanded here over the 300-word version submitted to the paper.

A large open-grown tulip tree now surrounded by other trees at Colony Farm Orchard. Photo by Richard Brewer

Colony Farm Orchard IS being utilized

Thanks to the Herald for information on the proposed development of the Colony Farm Orchard — currently dedicated open space.  Information has been an item in short supply around the campus.  Although many statements quoted in favor of the plan seem questionable, I’ll mention just one, by WMU Board Chairman Kenneth Miller, “That property [Colony Farm Orchard] isn’t really being utilized now.”

Exactly the same argument was made about the Asylum Lake property when WMU tried to turn it into a business park in the 1990s, and failed:  It isn’t being utilized, the public was told.

Why might the Colony Farm Orchard not be utilized, if it’s not?  One reason might be the five‑foot fence and locked gate along Drake Road.  Putting up a fence and then charging the land is not “utilized” sounds a lot like the story about the person who murdered his parents and asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan.

But in what sense is the land not utilized?  Some people have always found their way around or over the fence to bird watch, pick wild asparagus, or commune with nature.  One local documentary film maker has spent many hours there photographing wildlife.  The city of Kalamazoo dumps leaves in one area, and fishermen dig through them for worms.  Such uses go on.

But the way the land is “really” utilized is ecological.  For one thing, the biomass on the land has increased steadily since farming stopped.  This means stored carbon, so WMU — perhaps without knowing it — has been fighting carbon dioxide buildup in the earth’s atmosphere.  But most important, the Orchard makes the Asylum Lake Preserve functionally a larger sanctuary, adding habitats, species diversity, and stability.

What “not really utilized” means to WMU is that the land isn’t producing any direct income.  Income is good. But there are other goods.

–Richard Brewer

Those against orchard destruction not being heard

I am pleased to see a discussion of the Colony Farm Orchard controversy in the Herald, but ask you to treat this issue more even‑handedly. Those opposing destruction of the Orchard as open space for public use are not being heard in ways that fairly represent that position. There are at least three large issues which should be addressed in open public debate:

1.  There was an agreement made with those who transferred the property to WMU and with the community, that lands north of Parkview would remain open space for public use and those to the south would be developed by WMU without further hindrance. The public met its side of the agreement, while WMU is finding it inconvenient to honor its side. Like the U.S. Government in the land treaties it made with Native Americans, WMU is never satisfied. Instead of husbanding its resources with rational land‑use planning, it gobbles up gigantic amounts of land for very little use and quickly comes back demanding more. WMU must learn to keep its word.

2. This is not an environment versus development issue. Any growth of the BTR park could easily be accommodated by infilling at the Lee Baker farm or by redeveloping the many expansive brownfields nearby. A publicly funded research university should act in the public interest. It should redevelop abused industrial lands instead of contributing to suburban sprawl and further degradation of what little public parklands remain.

3. The process that WMU and Representative [Robert] Jones have followed seems to be designed to avoid public disclosure and discussion. Legislation was rushed through the commerce committee during August vacation time. Neighborhood groups were misled about WMU’s plans and timing. Fritz Klug’s article quotes [Bob] Miller saying, “the community will be involved with every step of the planning process.” Does this mean that once the restrictions for public use have been stripped away, WMU will start telling people what it’s going to do with what used to be their dedicated open space?

–Ladislav Hanka

Hackberry (on the right) at Colony Farm Orchard. Often a floodplain tree, hackberry is also characteristic of Midwestern prairie groves. Photo by Richard Brewer

Western Michigan University seems bound and determined to remove the restriction on the Colony Farm Orchard.  The restriction language used by the state when it gave the land to WMU is as follows:  Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.

If that restriction is deleted, WMU believes that it can then use the land to expand its business park.  The University seems totally adamant in using the Colony Farm Orchard. Nothing else will do.  Not one of various unrestricted sites that WMU also owns in Kalamazoo or Oshtemo Township.  Not a restored brownfield downtown, which would contribute to downtown revitalization and make an important environmental statement.  Not unrestricted sites in Portage.  None of these.

WMU has not offered an open forum where the issue could be explored factually rather than in terms of the marketing plan.  In fact, WMU will hardly address the issue at all.  To the best of my knowledge, the only persons connected with the WMU administration or board that have talked in public about the conversion plan are three vice-presidents.  In the past week, President John Dunn gave an interview to a Western Herald reporter and a speech before the WMU faculty and, as far as I can detect, he did not address the question in either.

What WMU’s representatives tend to do if someone raises the question, “Why do you want the Colony Farm Orchard so bad, wouldn’t some other place do just as well?” is talk about what a great job was done developing the current business park and what a great success it has been.  When pressed, the representatives have been known to bring forth three bullet points.

• Contiguity. The dictionary says “contiguous” means sharing an edge, touching.  The short southern boundary of the Colony Farm Orchard lies across Parkview Avenue opposite a small westward projection of the current business park.  But let’s say that the two parcels are contiguous.  It may be worth remembering that the Asylum Lake Preserve is a lot more contiguous.  That is, the whole long southern boundary of the Asylum Lake Preserve lies just across Parkview from the northern boundary of the current business park.  If contiguity is a major consideration, those radicals who have been telling us that Asylum Lake Preserve itself is not safe from WMU’s hunger for more business park space could be right.

• Advertising.  The west border of the Colony Farm Orchard abuts US–131.  Some might say it is contiguous with US-131.  The idea is that WMU needs to let the people driving by on US–131 know about the existence of its business park, or perhaps of WMU itself. Judiciously placed buildings with writing on them, or maybe billboards, will keep WMU in the public eye.  I don’t tend to think of WMU as being in retail and do not think of education in terms of curb appeal.  But this may only show how unrealistic my idea of the modern university is. I’m unwordly enough to think that a billboard extolling the Asylum Lake Preserve, including the Colony Farm Orchard, mentioning research, education, service, and conservation would be more effective advertising for WMU and its mission.

• Bus route.  Last and least is the idea that WMU has already contracted with Indian Trails to run an express bus from campus to the business park, so it wouldn’t be hard to add a stop at Colony Farm Orchard.  All of us are supporters of mass transit, but as a reason for why the expansion must be at the Colony Farm Orchard…. Take it for what it’s worth.

In pondering the question, I’ve thought about other possible explanations for WMU’s insistence that Colony Farm Orchard is the place and nowhere else will do.  The first to occur to me is that the WMU board and its upper administration in association with various politicians, members of the Kalamazoo business community, and quasi-public booster groups are supremely confident that their plan cannot be successfully challenged.  Hence, why bother to talk about alternatives?  It’s a slam dunk.

Actually, this is the first, but also the only, explanation that has occurred to me.  It’s bolstered somewhat by various WMU actions.  One is WMU’s response to Oshtemo Township, where the Colony Farm Orchard is located. Oshtemo Township said to WMU, “This is dedicated open space in our township.  We’d like it to be retained, but if it’s to be lost, the loss should be mitigated by WMU setting aside another parcel of open space in Oshtemo.” It was an innovative proposal, the same approach used to prevent a net loss of wetlands to development.  Under Michigan law, developers usually must set aside as mitigated acreage 1.5 to 2 times the developed acreage.

WMU did not give serious attention to Oshtemo’s proposal or Oshtemo’s concerns. Why should it?  It’s a slam dunk.

The Colony Farm Orchard is clearly not the best possible site.  It’s small, allowing only a few lots.  WMU would have to spend up to $985,000 to buy out a lease held by Michigan State University to use the orchard for pest insect research.  There is a springy area that could not be developed, and much of the natural ground water flow entering the Asylum Lake Preserve comes from this section of the site.  Water management techniques employed at the current business park would probably need a great deal of modification at the Colony Farm Orchard.  Furthermore, the old orchard itself, amounting to about a third of the total site, may approximate a brownfield, and one that is not remediated.  If this old orchard is like most from its era, the ground under it is impregnated with the components of lead arsenate, the dominant insecticide on apple trees from about 1890 to 1947.

All in all, developing the Colony Farm Orchard would be an expensive proposition.

With all these considerations and others, such as the absence of any realistic need for expansion of the business park in the forseeable future, I’m puzzled.  Is there is some overwhelming advantage neither I nor anybody I know has thought of?  Is there some way WMU will derive enormous benefits by holding to their course of killing the restrictions and developing this land, this land specifically?

Perhaps someone who reads this can help.  Does one or a combination of the answers suggested above account for WMU’s implacability?  Or is there something else?

Black-eyed susan at Colony Farm Orchard, a protected site in Oshtemo Township threatened by expansion of the WMU business park

Here are a few items related to Western Michigan University’s efforts, via Representative Robert Jones, to strip the open space/public park/recreation restriction from the Colony Farm Orchard.  This property in Oshtemo Township across Drake Road from the Asylum Lake Preserve would then be sold off as lots in an expansion of the WMU Business Park.  Currently the Business Park is located on land south of Parkview Avenue across from the Asylum Lake Preserve. Here is the language of the restriction that would be dropped:

The conveyance shall provide that Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.

• A Letter to the Editor of the Western Herald from me was posted at the Herald’s website on 7 September.  There is one comment currently, but feel free to leave others there, or here.

• Also online at the Herald is a 7 September interview with WMU President John Dunn in which he does not mention anything about the Colony Farm Orchard.

• The Summer 2009 Michigan Environmental Report (Michigan Environmental Council) arrived today with an article on the Colony Farm Orchard.  The title is Kalamazoo conservationists fight university’s latest plan to develop natural area.  It is pretty much a shortened version of Mark Hoffman’s piece that is on my website for 28 July.

• A short piece of film by local film-maker (Animals Among Us) Matt Clysdale taken early in August on the Colony Farm Orchard shows three Wild Turkey hens and a brood of chicks.  It is on YouTube.

• A letter and a viewpoint speaking out against the conversion of dedicated open space to business park were published 3 September in the Kalamazoo Gazette.  The Viewpoint, by Pat Klein, was headlined Intention of Legislature in 1977 was for orchard to be set aside for public use.

• I found no convenient link to the letter by Nina Feirer, but it was titled Write to WMU and Rep. Jones to stop land grab and here is the text: I want to add my voice to those expressing unhappiness at the idea of  Western Michigan University killing trees to make room for buildings. I am also disappointed with state Rep. Robert Jones’ part in introducing legislation to change the law so this rape of the land can take place. I have written to Rep. Jones and plan on writing to the powers-that-be at Western. Join me! We cannot let this happen.–Nina Feirer, Kalamazoo
  

• Earlier letters and Viewpoints (with links)  in the Gazette on the same topic include the following:

Ladislav R. Hanka.  Deed restrictions on Colony Orchard Farm in Kalamazoo must remain intact.  Three comments by readers reacting to the online Viewpoint are also available.

Richard Brewer.  Other land is available to WMU; leave orchard alone.

Nancy Small.  Western has space, doesn’t need orchard.

Marcia V. Stucki. Use orchard for small scale agriculture.

Oshtemo is interested in the matter because it is their open space that is in danger of being lost; the Colony Farm Orchard lies west of Drake Road, thus in Oshtemo Township, which happens not to be in Representative Jones’s district.

As it worked out, the Orchard was the first agenda item right after the pledge of allegiance and approval of the minutes.  Jones spoke in generalities and expressed his solidarity with the trustees in the hard job of local government.  Rosine talked about what a boon WMU’s current business park had been, citing numbers and mentioning compliments received.

Unfortunately, not all of Senior Vice President Rosine’s statements were entirely factual.  He sought to allay the Trustees’ misgivings about the restriction that Jones’s bill would lift, a restriction that reads as follows:

The conveyance shall provide that Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.

Senior Vice President Rosine explained to the Trustees and citizens of Oshtemo that in those days (1977) it was routine when the state conveyed land to a university that there be a restriction that the land be kept as open space.  But, he explained, such an idea was no longer valid.  Rather, we are more enlightened now and it is understood that the highest and best use of land is for such things as business parks that will generate jobs and make money.

Senior Vice President Rosine seemed not to know that this restriction was, in fact, not in the original language of the conveyance (House Bill 4058). It was added by Robert Welborn, Representative from Kalamazoo.  At this time his brother John was the State Senator from the Kalamazoo area.  Interested in increasing protected open space in the Kalamazoo area, the two Republican legislators had also been involved in the 1975 transfer of the Asylum Lake parcel to WMU with the identical restriction.

Rosine also mentioned the $1.5 million endowment established at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation in 1998-1999, but somehow left the impression that it was connected with the business park.  In fact, it was raised for the stewardship of the Asylum Lake Preserve, including its defense against future attempts to violate the conservation restrictions placed upon it.

The bill sponsored by Representative Jones is short.  If you leave out the legal descriptions of the parcels, it amounts to no more than four pages.  It is, nevertheless, a remarkable, almost magical, device.  It does two things:  The state adminstrative board will pay WMU a dollar for the Colony Farm Orchard.  The state administrative board will then sell it back to WMU for a dollar but with a new restriction as follows:

The property shall be used exclusively for the purpose of expanding and improving the business technology and research park located on western Michigan university’s Parkview campus.

You see why I call the bill magical.  It is like a stage magician’s cabinet.  The old conveyance with a conservation restriction goes in like the magician’s beautiful assistant. The door is closed and locked. Seconds later, when it’s reopened, the new conveyance comes out looking entirely different, rather like a goat, with a restriction that requires WMU to do exactly what it has always wanted to do with the orchard.

Oddly enough, the original conveyance with the restriction to open space, public park, or recreation use was not provided in the bill.  The Commerce Committee members, with the exception of Representative Jones, had no way of knowing prior to the meeting that it existed.

Tuesday night, the Oshtemo Township board seemed in their questions and discussion to be leaning toward the position that they would prefer that the Orchard be left as protected open space but that if it were converted, Oshtemo’s loss should be mitigated by the provision of other protected open space in some multiple of the acreage of the Orchard.  Jones and Rosine pointed out that time was too short for a discussion of such matters.  The bill would be taken up by the Commerce Committee the next day, and in response to a question, Representative Jones assured the Township Board that it would be approved.  Vice President Rosine promised Township Supervisor Libby Heiny-Cogswell that his office would be in touch with her to set up a meeting to talk about the mitigation matter.

In response to a question as to whether the bill could be fast-tracked in such a way that it might be passed by both House and Senate in a week (as had happened with an earlier bill which had targeted Oshtemo Township), Jones had said, no, the House was meeting the next day and then not again until the following Tuesday, 2 September.  He did not rule out the possibility that it would be taken up then (and approved, since the House has a Democratic majority).

View in Western Michigan University Business Park 27 July 2009. Photo by Richard Brewer

As a citizen of Oshtemo Township, I made a few remarks trying to correct some of the misleading statements.  I also pointed out that if the time ever came when more space was actually needed in the WMU business park, many other choices are available, including several parcels that WMU already owns in Kalamazoo and Oshtemo Township.

Although WMU has sometimes given the impression that expansion room is urgently needed, three spaces in the business park are still unclaimed, at least two spaces have become vacant and available for lease, and a large area devoted to soccer fields occupies part of the business park and could be developed.  Besides, times are hard and several of the conditions that contributed to the relatively strong showing of the business park in the past may no longer apply.  It is by no means clear that any expansion room will be needed in the foreseeable future.

A brief account of the Oshtemo Board meeting was published in the Kalamazoo Gazette the next day.  Representative Jones was as good as his word, and the bill was unanimously adopted in the Commerce Committee on Wednesday and sent to the full house.  The Gazette reported that action also.

Today is Tuesday September 2.

A bur oak at the west edge of the Colony Farm Orchard with US-131 in the background

From statements by Western Michigan University’s PR guy, we know what WMU thinks the Colony Farm Orchard is good for–expansion of the University’s business park.

The motivation for such an action is unclear, as are the need for it and what the expansion would involve. But none of these needs to concern us here.  We want to talk about how the property ought to be used, in keeping with the restrictions on the land contained in the original transfer to WMU in 1977.  Public Act 316 (Sec. 1.2) said

The conveyance shall provide that Western Michigan University may utilize the property solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize Western Michigan University to utilize the property for some other public purpose.

The Colony Farm Orchard is at the upper left in this diagrammatic map which appears on the WMU website

To situate ourselves, the 54-acre property lies across Drake Road from the main body of the Asylum Lake Preserve.  The right-of-way for the expressway US-131 is the west boundary, Parkview Avenue is the south boundary, and Stadium Drive is the north boundary.  Actually, nine acres just south of Stadium Drive is owned by the Western Michigan University Foundation (the old trailer park land) but evidently would be included in the Business Park expansion, bringing the total to about 63 acres.

WMU has done very little with the land.  It allowed Consumers Energy and other utilities to use land for the very visible transmission installations in the southwest corner.  These service the current business park, but whether it was wise or prudent to use part of the protected Colony Farm Orchard for them is debatable.

Also, a large leaf composting operation for part of the city of Kalamazoo is located a little north of the utility transmission facilities.  A large-scale composting operation is better environmentally than landfilling yard waste, but whether this use meets the public park/recreation/open space criterion is doubtful. The utility installation and composting operation each have separate service roads coming in from Drake Road.

We should also mention that Michigan State University holds a lease that provides that its Department of Entomology has use of the orchard for as long as it “conducts experimental fruit pest research on the land.” (In preparation for selling the property as part of its business park operations, WMU has indicated that it will pay MSU up to $985,000 to cancel the lease.)

WMU’s main action in recent times has been to erect a fence along the Drake Road boundary making entrance difficult for anyone not willing or able to climb over it.  Access from the south next to the big Consumers Energy facility is possible–and perfectly legitimate since the justification for WMU having the land is, as we know, for public park, recreation, or open space.  But many people, seeing the fence and the locked gate at the composting entrance, would conclude that WMU wanted to prevent access to the property.

The role I’d like to see this property play is exactly what it’s doing now, but better.

What it’s doing now is, for one thing, buffering the main body of the preserve from the noise and noxious fumes of the expressway. That’s good, but it’s not the land’s most important function. The land functions ecologically as an integral part of Asylum Lake Preserve.

The Declaration of Conservation Restrictions adopted by the WMU Board in 2004 says that its first goal is to promote ecosystem integrity by, among other things, maintaining the Preserve as green space and wildlife habitat and protecting natural features from further degradation.  The existence of the Colony Farm Orchard next to the other property contributes to this goal.

The Asylum Lake property itself is not large.  At one time it was 274 acres, but that was before land was carved out for widening Parkview and Drake, for sidewalks on two sides, and for parking spaces. Biodiversity, the number of species, is strongly dependent on the size of a preserve. The Colony Farm Orchard site only a few tens of feet from the Asylum Lake property effectively adds 63 acres, bringing the total size of the protected area to something on the order of 320 acres.

Grape vines covering trees in abandoned orchard

How does adding these 63 acres add diversity? One way is by adding new habitats.  The old orchard itself, a dense thicket type of vegetation, is different from any vegetation on the east side of the preserve.  Also the area of springs lying partly on the Orchard property and partly on the south portion of the Foundation property is a different and rather unusual habitat.

Biodiversity on a preserve is lowered by local extinctions of species and raised by immigration of individuals of new species. Simply the additional acreage is important in preventing extinctions–or reversing them. Suppose that all three breeding pairs of the black-capped chickadee, a year-round resident on the Asylum Lake Preserve, die one winter from some combination of causes and their offspring also disappear by dispersing elsewhere or by death from predation, starvation, etc.  One species has been lost from the preserve.

Now suppose that on the combination of Preserve plus Orchard we start with six pairs.  The chance that all six and all their young will be lost in the same winter is perhaps half the likelihood that three will disappear.  Next year, the survivors may be able to breed and thrive and replenish the chickadee population.  This replenishment, or rescue effect, is an important way in which species diversity is maintained on larger preserves or ones located in close proximity to one another.

This is the role in biodiversity that the Colony Farm Orchard plays–not just for birds, but mammals and insects, turtles and frogs, and other organisms. It’s possible that the WMU business park may also function in this same way interacting with the restored grassland on the southwest side of the Asylum Lake Preserve for grassland birds–though probably not for birds of other habitats.

Another effect that the Colony Farm Orchard enhances is the role that the Asylum Lake Preserve has as a migratory stopover site.  Retaining habitat where migratory birds can rest and refuel on their migratory flights south and north is a new focus in conservation.  Recent studies have looked at what traits make good stopover sites.  For fall migration, fleshy fruits–eaten in late summer and fall even by insectivorous birds–are favorable.  The old orchard has these in abundance in the form of grapes, blackberries, and others.

For spring bird migration, insects, especially such forms as midges hatching from ponds and streams are important food sources.  The springs and spring-fed pond at the north end of the property would provide this steadily renewed food for the northward migrants.

Young acorns on bur oak at Colony Farm Orchard August 2009

The Orchard property has other habitat features that add to its value as a part of the Asylum Lake Preserve.  I’ll mention only one more here.  The western part of the property was within the historic Genesee Prairie.  The rest of it was bur oak plain, a closely related community.  This tells us that the spring area lying at the north end of the Orchard and the south end of the ten acres owned by the WMU Foundation was almost certainly prairie fen. In years of low water in the past, I have identified fen plant species in the wetlands at the west edge of Asylum Lake directly opposite. Prairie fen is a remarkably attractive and diverse ecosystem that The Nature Conservancy and the Michigan Natural Features Inventory have given high priority for protection in Michigan.

It would make good conservation sense to restore tall-grass prairie in a wide band along the western fence of the Orchard property and to restore prairie fen on the springy wetlands at the north.  Southwest Michigan genotypes of plants should be used.

I’ll try to make other specific suggestions as to how the land might be used in a later post.

American Woodcock in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. Minnesota. Photo by Paco Lyptic.

I saw an American woodcock at the Colony Farm Orchard Monday afternoon.  It flew up from a little patch of woods as I approached.  I only got a quick look, but woodcock are easy to identify, with the big head and the large dark eye nearly centered as you see it from the side.  The bird flies almost in the same posture as it walks, head up and the long beak angling down.

Seeing a woodcock in mid-August means the bird probably bred nearby in spring or early summer, or else was hatched nearby.  I have a feeling that woodcock would be unlikely to nest successfully on the Asylum Lake property across the road.  The habitat mix there is not quite as good for woodcock as on the orchard, but the main weakness of the Preserve is the high number of dogs.  They are supposed to be kept on a leash, but dogs like to run and owners are indulgent.  I suspect that nests of most ground-nesting birds are sniffed out by roaming dogs often enough that many are abandoned.

There is a much greater diversity of habitat at the orchard property than is obvious from Drake Road.  I have some thoughts about what ought to happen to this part of the Asylum Lake Preserve that I’ll try to deal with in a later post.

Field with invading trees at Colony Farm Orchard. Copyright ©Richard Brewer 2009.

Hardy, my friend since childhood, was doing a master’s degree with George Wallace at Michigan State and had arranged a ride for us from East Lansing to the Bio Station with T. Wayne Porter.  Porter was an invertebrate zoologist but also had broad natural history interests that included birds.

Also at the meeting were Sewall Pettingill, who most summers between 1938 and 1974 taught ornithology at the Bio Station; S. Charles Kendeigh who had filled in for Pettingill in 1946 and who would be my graduate advisor at the University of Illinois  a couple of years later; and Theodora Nelson of Hunter College, Pettingill’s assistant 1938-1940. At this meeting she led off the first papers session with a history of ornithology at the station.

These ornithologists were at colleges and universities, though the Michigan Department of Conservation also had some academically trained ornithologists. But Michigan at this time also had a large contingent of amateurs with strong and essentially professional interests in birds. Larry Walkinshaw was one of these.  Larry was at the 1953 meeting and in fact on the program not long after Teddy Nelson, giving the participants an introduction to northern Michigan birding areas.

All this history is the preamble to mentioning a new book, On the Wings of Cranes: Larry Walkinshaw’s Life Story. The biography was written by Walkinshaw’s son-in-law, Lowell M. Schake.  I reviewed the book for the Wilson Journal of Ornithology (formerly Wilson Bulletin) in the June issue 2009 (vol. 121, no. 2): 445-447.

Walkinshaw was a student of birds from boyhood, but when the time for college arrived, he decided it would be wiser to study teeth instead.  While at dental school at the University of Michigan, he often talked with Josselyn VanTyne, curator of birds at the Museum of Zoology.  Van Tyne was only two years older but was Larry’s mentor, encouraging his interest in ornithological research.  He did the same with others, notably Harold Mayfield (who also attended the 1953 meeting).

In 1929, Walkinshaw got his DDS and opened a dental office in Battle Creek not many miles west of where he grew up in Calhoun County.  Over the years until he closed his practice in 1968, he combined dentistry with ornithology in a way that did not slight one in favor of the other, though the combination was not wholly satisfying either.

In summer, Wallkinshaw would get up early, make a couple of hours of observations on whatever local bird species was occupying his attention, get to his office for his first appointment at 8 AM, put in a full day, and then spend much of the time after dinner making more observations or working on manuscripts.  He was dedicated not just to learning the details of avian life history but also to putting the knowledge into print.  By the end of his life in 1993, he had published 9 books and something over 300 articles, chapters, and reviews.  Many of these are research papers based on his painstaking observations of Field Sparrows, Sandhill Cranes, Kirtland’s Warblers, Prothonotary Warblers, and Empidonax flycatchers, among other species.

In Larry’s proposal of marriage to Clara May Cartland, he asked her if she thought she could love birds as much as he did.  Whether she did or not, her abilities in running the household, helping in the dental office, and taking care of the children were probably essential to many of Larry’s ornithological accomplishments.

Besides his basic research in ornithology, Larry was heavily involved in bird conservation.  He helped establish the Michigan Audubon Society’s Baker Sanctuary in Calhoun County, which brought back the Sandhill Crane as a nesting bird in southern Michigan.  His observations on crane life history were important in starting the species on its road to recovery throughout its range.  He was also heavily involved–much more so than the standard literary sources show– in recovery efforts for the Whooping Crane.  And his observations on Kirtland’s Warblers provided many of the life history and ecology keys needed to bring that species back from near extinction.

The book provides information on these and other ornithological and conservation topics along with facts about Larry and Clara’s life in Battle Creek and at the summer cabins they had on the Lake Michigan shore near Muskegon.

Not long after my review of the book appeared, I received an email from a Canadian birder with a Walkinshaw anecdote. As a teenager 58 years ago, Fred Helleiner along with a friend had stopped at Walkinshaw’s dental office, needing directions to Baker Sanctuary.  “Although we came in unannounced and decidedly scruffy, Dr. Walkinshaw’s receptionist was obviously expected to call him out to the waiting room whenever a birder arrived.  On that occasion, he interrupted the treatment that he was administering to his patient…while he spent twenty or more minutes with us in his ‘gentle and patient’ (to use your words) manner providing us with the information that we needed.”

Larry Walkinshaw was gentle and patient.  Helpful also. And he loved birds.  A lot.

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY PROPOSES DEVELOPMENT
FOR RESTRICTED PROPERTY – AGAIN

Mark Hoffman

Colony Farm Orchard, a narrow 54-acre tract of wooded open space, is one of three large and contiguous pieces of property along the southwest city limits of Kalamazoo that once sited an extensive farming operation for the Kalamazoo State Hospital from 1888 to 1959 and included a residential “cottage system” for patients that was phased out in 1969.  As the three properties were deemed surplus by the Michigan Department of Mental Health, they were transferred individually to Western Michigan University (WMU).  The Colony Farm Orchard was the last of the three transfers to WMU, with its enabling legislation enacted by the state of Michigan in 1977.  It is now threatened to be developed by Western.  1977 Public Act 158 (section 3) conveys the Orchard to WMU but limits the University to using the property “solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes, except that the legislature, by statute, may authorize western Michigan university to utilize the property for some other public purpose.”  The legislation also permits MSU’s Department of Entomology to continue its use of the Orchard for fruit pest research until they no longer need the land.  MSU began their research in the Orchard on apples, grapes, and cherries during 1963 – after U.S. 131 split the property and limited its productivity for the State Hospital.

Bordering the Colony Farm Orchard is a 274-acre tract known as the Asylum Lake Preserve.  This property was conveyed to WMU by the state of Michigan in 1975 with the identical restrictive language used to transfer the Orchard property, as stated above.  The Asylum Lake property, with its two connecting lakes, hiking trails, and prairie restoration, was further restricted by WMU Trustees in April 2004 with their adoption of a management framework and additional guidelines that designated it as a “preserve.”  The new status for the land resulted as a compromise with the Kalamazoo community in 1999 to generate support for the controversial development of a Business, Technology, and Research (BTR) Park on 257 acres of adjacent University property (former State Hospital farmland, south of Parkview Avenue, transferred to WMU in 1959 without restrictions). Furthermore a $1.5-million endowment was also established in 1999 to fund the maintenance of the Asylum Lake Preserve for passive recreational opportunities.

Beginning the process to strip the Orchard of its restrictions, WMU’s Board of Trustees, on July 2, 2009, approved an agreement that was negotiated with MSU for the termination of its long-standing lease that has allowed them to conduct fruit pest research on the property.  WMU Trustees also authorized expenditures, not to exceed $985,000, to help relocate MSU’s experimental operation that is presently on the Orchard.  Western next seeks to have the Michigan Legislature eliminate the  “public park, recreation, open space…” transfer-stipulations to enable the expansion of its University-sponsored BTR Park, located on adjacent land (see House Bill 5207, introduced July 16, 2009 by Rep. Robert Jones, Kalamazoo Democrat).  Officials from Western have also announced that after the Orchard is free of its restrictions, the University intends to sell parcels of the property to private businesses to recover the $985,000 spent to relocate MSU’s research.

As the development of the Colony Farm Orchard looms once again, Kalamazoo’s Asylum Lake Preservation Association (ALPA) is seeking to retain the restrictions that were enacted when the 1977 legislative conveyance took place.  While the Orchard itself remains wild and wooded, ALPA believes that developing this tract will also pose a serious risk to the sensitive ecosystem of the neighboring Asylum Lake Preserve and the extensive watershed that is encompassed throughout both properties.  Furthermore, the long and narrow Colony Farm Orchard serves to buffer the Asylum Lake Preserve from further commercial encroachment, while protecting the habitats from the high traffic volume on U.S. 131, which creates the western boundary of the Orchard.

ALPA’s continuing interest in this land was recently expressed through its pursuit to designate the Orchard as a selected site in Kalamazoo County – one with distinct characteristics for agriculture, recreation, history, unique habitats, and buffers.  Subsequently, the property was one of many distinctive natural areas included by a coordinated smart-growth initiative (Convening Our Community and Convening for Action) in their January 2003 publication, Smarter Growth for Kalamazoo County.  Kalamazoo College officials involved in this initiative compiled the booklet to report special places where “preserving them could be a starting point to smarter growth” (p. 26).  They further noted that, “[t]oo many of these sites lay in the path of development … [and] too few resources and incentives exist to encourage developers to incorporate smart growth principles that would not only preserve these sites, but showcase them” (p. 27).

The new threat over losing the Colony Farm Orchard to development is shaping up to be the repeat of a prior attempt to change the status of the restricted land.  Following a long and bitter fight from 1990-93, Western Michigan University withdrew its attempt to change the conveyance restrictions on the Orchard in May 1993 after it failed to convince a Senate committee that private / for-profit businesses constituted a “public purpose,” as stipulated in the 1977 conveyance legislation (1977 Public Act 158).  This decision followed three years of tumultuous community debate that started when WMU announced in April 1990 that it would begin developing the Colony Farm Orchard with its Business – Research Park.

Throughout the deliberations, the Asylum Lake Preservation Association and the Kalamazoo Environmental Council (KEC) united with neighborhoods and community leaders in Kalamazoo and Oshtemo Township to protect the three properties from the business and industrial development that WMU was proposing.  The KEC, at that time, believed that it was important for Western to “hold and maintain parcels of land containing natural ecosystems for purposes of research and instruction.”  And while the need to build upon this parcel of land was not demonstrated, especially in light of alternative sites that were available, the organization further believed that the sensitive ecosystem in this area could be destroyed by the development that was being proposed.  ALPA concurred at that time, and it has not altered its position.

ALPA is now seeking assistance and asking others to voice their objections to House Bill 5207 by letting state legislators know that WMU’s Colony Farm Orchard in Oshtemo Township needs to be retained for “public park, recreation, or open space purposes,” as the 1977 conveyance legislation mandates.

Bur Oak at the Colony Farm Orchard, a protected area threatened by expansion of the WMU Business Park

Following are brief descriptions of the major vegetation types in Oshtemo Township (Kalamazoo County, Michigan) about the time of settlement. This is the second and concluding installment of a talk given at the March 2009 meeting of the Oshtemo Historical Society.

Information is also provided about what settlement, agriculture, and development have done to original plant communities.  Some protection and restoration possibilities are mentioned under “Current Status.”  Major invasive species are listed. Invasives are plants or animals, usually non-native, that invade and spread, usually at the expense of native species.  Control of invasives may be necessary for conservation.

1. Oak Savanna and Oak Forest (together occupied 88% of Township)
These are treated together because they are similar except for crown coverage.  Areas where the canopy coverage was more than 50% are termed forest.

Tree species–The widespread oak savannas that the settlers usually termed “openings” were dominated by white oak.  Chinkapin (yellow chestnut) oak, bur oak, and hickory (mostly pignut) were  present but not common. Black oak was also present but was common only on the driest soils and was often associated with dry sand prairie. Shrubs included flowering dogwood, hazelnut, New Jersey tea, and shadbush.

Herbs–A great variety, depending on the specifics of the site and also its fire history.  The species ranged from herbs we would now think of as mesic prairie species to ones that now are mostly in forest, even beech-maple forest.

What happened to it?–Much of it was cut over for timber and charcoal which was used in large quantities by blacksmiths. Large areas were also cleared for agriculture, including orchards. More recently remnants are being lost to residential development.  Sites not cut over became brushy and denser owing to invasion of other trees and shrubs in the absence of fire.

Oak forest in Oshtemo Township shows recent invasion by white pine and red maple. Photo copyright 2009 Richard Brewer

Current status–No intact examples are left, but a fair amount of land exists occupied by more or less disturbed remnants.  In the past 30 years these have been heavily invaded by red maple and white pine.  Both species were almost absent from uplands in 1830.  Because of the dense shade these trees cast, less shade-tolerant herbs and shrubs are reduced.  To provide a demonstration of what most of the township was originally like, a few sites of considerable acreage should be set aside. Invading maples and pines should be removed and a continuing fire management regime should be started.

Invasives–Tartarian honeysuckle, Common privet, garlic mustard, dame’s rocket, and recently money plant.

2. Other-than-mesic Prairie
These prairie types ranging from wet to dry mostly tended to be associated with oak savanna on sites of appropriate soil moisture and fire history.

For example, on south- and west-facing slopes especially next to lakes or broad valleys occurred hill prairies, also called goat prairies.  These shared some species with the adjoining forest or savanna and some with other prairie types; they also had a few distinctive species.

Wet prairie occurred on lowlands associated with wetland herbaceous communities.

Current status–Few if any sites left because of development and absence of fire; any sites that contain a sampling of the characteristic species are worth preservation.  Searches should be made of the appropriate slopes for hill prairie remnants and of the few wetlands for wet prairie species.

3. Mesic or Tall-grass Prairie (Grand and Genesee Prairies were 2% of Township)
Tree species–Mesic prairies were treeless.  Bur oak might occur at the edge.

Herbs and grasses–Big bluestem and Indian grass were the most important tall grasses, but several other species of lesser stature were present.  Important herbs included bird’s foot violet, compass plant and two other species of Silphium, culver’s root, various asters, goldenrods, sunflowers, and legumes.

Indian grass, one of the dominant tall grasses in mesic prairie. Photo copyright 2009 Richard Brewer

What happened to it?–Mesic prairie was the first land settled and nearly all was plowed.  The only parcels that escaped were in the earliest cemeteries and perhaps some land along the earliest railroads.  However, some remnants of bur oak plains and white oak openings on better soils included plants that also were prominent on mesic prairie. In the past 30 or 40 years, disturbance and lack of fire have reduced or obliterated the few remnants in these categories.

Current status–All sites containing any combination of mesic prairie species are worthy of preservation; however, most sites dominated by mesic prairie species will be the result of restoration.

4. Bur Oak Plains (3% of Township)
This savanna was usually adjacent to mesic prairie.  It shared many of the same herbs and grasses and probably originated (and was eliminated) in the same way.  No remnants that include bur oaks and characteristic ground layer vegetation are known.

5. Beech-sugar maple Forest (6.5% of Township)
Trees–Beech, sugar maple, basswood, tulip tree, white ash, slippery elm (now nearly gone from Dutch elm disease), red oak, bitternut hickory.

A fall view of beech-sugar maple forest in the Mildred Harris Sanctuary (Audubon Society of Kalamazoo) in Alamo Township. Photo copyright 2009 Richard Brewer

In understory–Blue beech, hophornbeam.  Spice bush and red-berried elder are the most important large shrubs; running strawberry bush (genus Euonymus) and gooseberry also occur.

Herbs–A large variety including the spring ephemerals such as spring beauty, toothwort, large-flowered trillium, Dutchman’s breeches.  Non-ephemerals and summer-flowering species fewer; examples are nettles, putty-root, water-leafs, wild leek, May-apple, blue cohosh, doll’s-eyes.

What happened to it?–Mostly cut over and converted to agriculture.  Beech-maple forest in Oshtemo was the south end of the same patch that extended northeast all the way to Cooper Township, where relict stands persist in Markin Glen Park and the Kalamazoo Nature Center.

Current status–Virtually gone.  Elsewhere in Kalamazoo county, a few remnants were preserved by land owners because of their beauty and the spring flowers; some of these have been permanently protected.  If any patch of even five or ten acres still existed in Oshtemo Township, it should be conserved. In many preserved sites, the invasive garlic mustard is a serious threat to the herb layer.

6. Wetlands (0.5 present of township)

Small amounts of swamp forest and marsh were evident from the original land survey.  A few kettles with perched water tables held buttonbush swamps. As far as now known, no bog, tamarack forest, fen, or other specialized types of wetlands occurred.  Likewise, no floodplain forest was present.

Current status–If any of the seemingly absent types such as fen, bog, or wet prairie were found in the township, the sites would be worth conserving.  Perhaps the small wedge of swamp forest in the northwest corner should be considered for protection.

[Added 15 November 2009. Over the past week or two I noticed a tamarack tree in the wetland at the west edge of the Lilian Anderson Arboretum not far south of West Main (M-43) in Section 15.  In the fall, tamarack needles turn a gold color, so a tamarack is easily noticed at this time.  I finally stopped by yesterday, by which time many of the leaves had fallen and the few remaining ones were dull brown.  The situation where the tamarack is growing is consistent with the possibility of fen, though I have not noticed fen species at other places along the edge of the wetland on many other trips to the Arboretum.  The site is at the base of a slope where ground water feeds a sizable wetland northeast of Bonnie Castle Lake.  There are more wetlands across M-43 to the north.  I tried to walk around in the vicinity of the tamarack without sinking too deep, and I didn't see any obvious fen indicator species.  But it's not a good time of year.  I'll have another look or two next spring and summer.]

Conservation Overview

Little natural land is currently preserved in Oshtemo Township.  The two township parks are mostly devoted to active recreation.  A few years ago the Township lost an opportunity to create a contiguous protected area of at least 200 acres when it voted to convert most of the larger park (Oshtemo Township Park on West Main Street behind the township hall and the library) into an 18-hole disc golf course. A color map available at the township website gives a clear picture of how much of the park was removed from natural processes and devoted to disc golf.

Adjoining the Oshtemo Township disk golf park on the west is more than 130 acres of conserved land owned by Kalamazoo College.  The Kalamazoo College land has been dedicated as the Lillian Anderson Arboretum; however, only about 30 acres of the land is, in fact, permanently protected (by a conservation easement held by the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy).

Another protected tract is a short segment of the Kal-Haven Trail (owned by the state of Michigan) cutting across the northeast corner of the township.  Adjoining this section of the Kal-Haven Trail is about 100 acres owned by the Kalamazoo Nature Center as the result of a bequest from Mildred Harris.

A part of Western Michigan University’s Asylum Lake property lies in Oshtemo Township between Drake Road and U.S.-131 .  It is, to a degree, protected since it was conveyed to WMU by the state to be used “solely for public park, recreation or other open-space purposes unless otherwise authorized by public act.”  Part of the 55-acre site was used as an orchard by the Kalamazoo State Hospital’s Colony Farm from the 1880s into the 1950s.  The now-abandoned orchard supports a number of forest and thicket bird species. The land is also of historical and archaeological interest because of its use in the farm operations of the state hospital and also because of its location within the savanna complex immediately surrounding Genesee Prairie.  See the next (earlier) post for a current threat to the continued existence of this protected land.

Few other protected sites exist.  Most of the land holdings in the township are small parcels of 40 acres or less. Consequently, establishment of preserves large enough to be suitable habitat for birds and larger mammals will in most cases require acquisition (or protection by conservation easement) of two to several parcels.

Western Michigan University has the Asylum Lake preserve in its sights again.  This time the target is the 54 acres just across Drake Road called the Colony Farm Orchard.  This Oshtemo Township land is covered by the same state restriction as the rest of the Asylum Lake property; it is to be used “solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes” unless changed by statute.  Nevertheless WMU proposes to expand their Business Park onto it (according to the Kalamazoo Gazette).

The land with its old, abandoned orchard has value for wildlife and for the public as open space.  It also has historical value because it lies on or very near Genesee Prairie, one of the eight tall-grass prairies in Kalamazoo County at settlement.  WMU aims to persuade the legislature to overturn the restriction and plans to pay Michigan State University $985,000 to give up a lease to do insect research at the orchard. Wouldn’t a more rational approach be to use land remaining within the current boundaries of the Business Park, such as the soccer fields? And if more land is really justified, the $985,000 WMU has available to throw around would buy some other nice Oshtemo property nearby–possibly more than 54 acres.  As for the state legislature, its best course would be to convey the orchard property to Oshtemo Township in exchange for a binding pledge to let it remain forever undeveloped open space.

I posted the following essay to the earlier version of my website as Conservation Letter 1 on 28 April 2003. It had been submitted to the Gazette as a Viewpoint but was not published.  It, and the two updates, give a little of the controversial history of some land that was conveyed in 1975 and (Colony Farm Orchard) 1977 by the state of Michigan to Western Michigan University “solely for public park, recreation, or open space purposes.”

Mark A. Hoffman knows more about the history of the site and of the controversy than anyone else. His project paper submitted for the Master of Public Adminstration degree (2007) is comprehensive but not readily accessible. The full title is Asylum Lake and Colony Farm Orchard (Kalamazoo County, Michigan): The history, legislative intent, and analysis of their conveyances from the Michigan Department of Mental Health to Western Michigan University. Links to many contemporary news articles (especially 1999-2004) are available on the WMU Asylum Lake website.

Asylum Lake

Last Friday gave us a beautiful sample of spring weather. Late in the afternoon, I took a walk at Asylum Lake. Blue-winged teal and gadwall were on the water and a pair of wood ducks flew by. There were cardinals, goldfinches, titmice, and a few other land birds, but 4:00 PM isn’t the peak of bird activity.

I’m a fan of Asylum Lake, so I’ve listened when occasional members of the focus group set up by Western Michigan University to plan the future of the preserve have told me what’s going on. The members have such diverse backgrounds and interests that I’ve been slightly surprised that they seem pretty much to have reached consensus on what’s right for Asylum Lake.

What they recommend–as I understand it–is mostly what’s there right now (including the new prairie planting), with the addition of an assurance that it’ll stay that way except for natural processes.

Other people were also at Asylum Lake last Friday. A man and his son were fishing, several people were walking dogs, two young women were catching some rays on a grassy slope, several people were just enjoying the spring, like me. I counted 23 people during the hour I was there, all involved in suitable passive pursuits .

There may have been a few visitors I missed, because my path took me past all three of the larger parking locations for the preserve, and each had several cars. I thought 23 was a comfortable number, uncrowded but companionable. If there had been twice as many people (and dogs) or more commotion–bikers, for example–the shyer kinds of wildlife would probably find the site unsuitable. Probably I would too.

One aim of the focus group was to identify the values of the property that need to be preserved. It’s reassuring that the values they came up with basically correspond with what the citizenry has said over the past dozen years in letters to the Kalamazoo Gazette and public meetings.

We haven’t heard a lot from the public lately because most people think the issue was settled. In 1998, the city and university seemed to come to an agreement assuring that the Asylum Lake preserve would not be degraded or destroyed. It has now begun to seem that it was too early to relax.

A story in the Gazette toward the end of February foreshadowed what seems to be an attempt by the city to pressure WMU into agreeing to changes that few who know the site will see as appropriate. The city wants paved roads and a large paved parking lot, replacing vegetation and wildlife habitat with impermeable surfaces. It wants bike trails running here and there to off-site locations bringing in people with no interest in the preserve as a preserve. The city envisages a research/education center. Does it really make sense for public agencies to enter into competition with the Kalamazoo Nature Center?

It’s ironic, I guess, that after all the threats to the integrity of the site from WMU the threat now comes from the city. Most of us had thought that the city’s role was to watchdog the university.

Only someone with no knowledge of the past ten years of Asylum Lake history would think that the intrusions being promoted by the city would be welcome. Re-reading the dozens of Asylum Lake letters to the editor would be educational for them. So would sitting down with Dok Stevens’ charming little book Haven : A Treatise on Asylum Lake (Spunky Duck Press: Kalamazoo, 1993) and perhaps a good environmental science or conservation textbook.

The city’s on the wrong side now, but the time may come again when both are on the wrong side, as was the case with the first ill-considered plan for a research park, in 1990-1993. It would be nice if the university and city would hurry up and sign a paper saying that Asylum Lake will be protected, not exploited. Even if they do, the citizens who saved it before must not relax their vigilance. In the long run, the real protection will come from the people who care about Asylum Lake being willing to spend the time, energy, and money to do what it takes to thwart ill-advised, destructive schemes of the future coming from the city or the university, or both.

Note added 19 August 2003: One reason for the Gazette’s lack of interest in this Viewpoint may be suggested by the title of the front-page Gazette article of 9 August 2003: “Asylum Lake Fight: How a battle over open space nearly stalled Kalamazoo’s economic engine.” Some might say that Kalamazoo’s lack of forward movement hasn’t been engine trouble but the 1950s road map the drivers are still trying to follow. A Viewpoint by Mark A. Hoffman (24 August 2003) corrected some mistakes in the 9 August “Kalamazoo engine” article but could, in justice, have been considerably tougher.

Note added 15 July 2009: “It would be nice” I wrote, “if the university and city would hurry up and sign a paper saying that Asylum Lake will be protected, not exploited.”  This they did on 16 April 2004 when the WMU Board of Trustees approved two documents, one a Declaration of Conservation Restrictions.  The documents come as close to being a conservation easement as the somewhat peculiar nature of WMU’s possession of the land  allows.  Unfortunately, the 54-acre Colony Farm Orchard was not included in these restrictions.  My conclusion from April 2003 is still relevant:  “In the long run, the real protection will come from the people who care about Asylum Lake being willing to spend the time, energy, and money to do what it takes to thwart ill-advised, destructive schemes of the future coming from the city or the university, or both.”

An eddy that curled off the main current, however, is what I want to talk about here. A couple of biologists set forth the view that baseline documents ought to include sound, detailed information on the biological basis of the conservation purposes of the easement. These are a part of the justification for the use of government money to buy the easement or, in the case of a donated easement, justification for a charitable deduction for income taxes.

One contributor to the discussion made the point that many farmland conservation easements do little other than remove development rights. Since the basis for such easements is keeping the land available for agriculture, the plants and animals and natural features of the property are irrelevant.

Black River Sanctuary of the Michigan Nature Association, Van Buren County, copyright Richard Brewer 2009

I responded on the listserv that if a land trust is considering a conservation easement on a farm that includes natural ecosystems worthy of protection, the conservation easement should protect these by appropriate restrictions. If the donor is unwilling to allow this protection, I said, the land trust should walk away from the deal. If the property has no conservation value other than maintaining land for crops, the land trust ought to consider whether it couldn’t spend its time better on another project with greater values.

Why, the person posting the farmland observation asked, is the protection of productive agricultural land from development a lesser conservation value than the protection of other conservation values?

It’s a fair question, but a full answer would take a while. I’d make a start on an answer this way: Consider three 120-acre parcels of land for which a conservation easement is contemplated. Parcel A is nearly all relatively undisturbed natural vegetation. Parcel B is prime agricultural land almost completely occupied by row crops. Parcel C is mostly prime farmland but also includes patches of other soils occupied by relatively natural vegetation and a section of stream.

Here’s a partial list of conservation values for Parcel A, some obvious and others a little more obscure: scenic beauty; providing a model or subject for art, literature, landscape architecture, etc.; fulfilling an innate human need for wildness; roles in biogeochemical cycling; soil development and renewal of fertility; purification of air and water; tempering floods and droughts; homes for pollinators and game animals; protection of soils and shores from erosion; maintenance of biodiversity with its many practical and aesthetic effects; sequestering carbon hence moderating global climate change; a classroom for many types of education; providing wild foods such as mushrooms, berries, and nuts.

What is the conservation value of the Parcel B? We know that it may have a conservation purpose because that is the way that the IRS tax code is written: One of the purposes that can justify a charitable deduction for a donation of land for conservation is “the protection of open space (including farmland and forest land) where such preservation is a) for the scenic enjoyment of the general public, or b) pursuant to a clearly delineated federal, state, or local governmental conservation policy and will yield a significant public benefit.”

It’s possible that the general public, or some members, may enjoy the scenery provided by 120 acres of tall corn in Illinois or 120 acres of peppers poking up through shiny black plastic in California. There may well be more-or-less clearly delineated government policies that encourage farmland protection for more-or-less sensible reasons (mostly listed in Chapter 12 of Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America).

The public benefit argument is a little tougher. Do the words refer to the existence of any public benefit, or do they mean that a net benefit remains when we add up the pluses and subtract the minuses?

The minuses don’t get a lot of attention anymore, though some of the early commentators on agricultural easements worried about them. Let’s run through a few. One is all but universal: the loss of native vegetation and the accompanying birds, mammals, insects, soil organisms, and all the rest. Two others are extremely widespread: loss of topsoil to erosion and pollution of air, surface water, and ground water from pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Others are more localized; examples are soil salinization, spread of antibiotic-resistant diseases from feedlots, groundwater depletion, and loss of fauna from streams and wetlands caused by water diversion from streams to agriculture.

So it’s not so clear what the net might be, especially when we consider that some of the pluses aren’t really so plus when looked at closely. For example, saving land from development may be listed as one of the pluses, but in some of the less scenic parts of the West the threat of development any time soon is quite remote.

It’s worth mentioning that some agricultural uses may allow elements of the native biota to persist. Examples are grassland birds nesting in hayfields in the East and native flora, birds, and mammals persisting on some grazing lands in the West. These are conservation pluses, but they are tenuous and temporary. Nowadays hayfields are cut several times a year starting early, so that many of the grassland birds attracted to them fail to produce young. Some of the western grazing lands are susceptible to sod-busting, that is, conversion to croplands that will be home to few if any members of the native biota.

A conservationist might think that a conservation easement over farmland which possesses such conservation values should protect them. Why not write the conservation easement so that no hay can be cut on a field in Michigan or Massachusetts before the middle of July? Why not specify that if grazing is halted on an easement property in Montana or the Dakotas, the grassland must not be plowed to plant wheat but instead must be allowed to undergo the rather quick recovery to near-natural vegetation possible on this land if not too badly overgrazed?

And shouldn’t the conservation easement for Parcel C–mostly farmland but some natural–include restrictions that will protect the conservation values of the natural lands? Possibilities are control of purple loosestrife in the marsh, limited single-tree harvest in the woodland, and no livestock on the steep slopes or anywhere near the river.

Some conservationists might ask these questions but not many land trusts will. Rather, a high percentage of today’s land trusts take pride that the farmland easements they write do nothing that will hamper the land remaining in agriculture, no matter how destructive and noxious the activities referred to as agriculture become.

Some people think that the best road to retaining biodiversity and other conservation values in the landscape is to set aside preserves and sanctuaries where human activity is sharply limited while allowing the rest of the countryside to go wherever agriculture, development, and commerce take it. Some think that preserves won’t do the job and that instead we must educate (and regulate) the public so that all the landscape–farms, housing developments, factory lands, etc.– is managed in ways that retain at least patches of natural diversity.

Agricultural easements that take the approaches described in the last few paragraphs would be a modest start down the second road.

The landtrust-L website started by Tom Zeller of IU (and the Sycamore Land Trust) has for several years been an excellent source of information about land-trust operations. It’s probably the best place to go to ask (and answer) nuts-and-bolts types of questions. Those interested in land trusts can subscribe by emailing listserv@indiana.edu the message: subscribe landtrust-L.