Big trees in Mildred Harris Sanctuary. Photo 6 March 2011 by Richard Brewer

I’m leading a field trip to a beech-sugar maple forest this spring.  We’ll look at the spring flowers and as we stroll around also talk about what mesophytic forests are like, why they are where they are, what the interactions among the organisms are, and other such natural history and ecology topics.

The specific site where we’ll gather is the Mildred Harris Sanctuary north of Kalamazoo.  It’s owned by the Michigan Audubon Society and has been stewarded for many years by the Audubon Society of Kalamazoo.

The trip is sponsored by the Southwest Chapter of the Michigan Botanical Club as part of its 2012 project concentrating on natural features and conservation in Oshstemo Township (known to some as the Occupy Oshtemo movement.

I’ve led a trip along these lines several springs in past years, to one or another of the remaining examples of mesophytic forest in southwest Michigan.  But there’s a difference this year.

Most such trips for spring ephemerals led by me or others have been held in mid or late April or even early May.  This year the president, Tyler Bassett, of the Southwest Chapter of the  Botanical Club and I had agreed on Saturday April 21 as the date. Then the second week of March arrived.  The beginning of March had temperatures fairly close to the historical averages–30s as highs and 20s as lows.  March 6 started a run in which day after day had highs at least in the 60s and often the 70s.  March 19 to 22, had a run of highs in the 80s. The last freezing temperatures came far back in February.

Looking at what was happening to the flora, Tyler and I decided to move the date of spring wild flower trip up by two weeks, to Saturday March 7.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer, but seventeen days with temperatures between 60 and 85 in the middle of March may make it necessary for Michigan nature organizations to revise their field trip calendars.

Here’s an idea, a sampling, of what’s been happening this spring:  As mentioned in my last post, I heard wood frogs in Oshtemo Township 12 March and by the next night, they were joined by a few spring peepers.

By the night of 15 March, both these species as well as chorus frogs were in full voice. On the 15th, the high temperature was 79 and the low 55, compared with historical averages of 45 and 27 degrees.

As to the plants, on a visit 14 March to Newton Woods at Russ Forest, two friends and I found spring beauty up, a broad-leaved sedge with flowering stalks, and harbinger of spring close to full bloom.

Spice bush in flower. Photograph 18 March 2012 Oshtemo Township by Richard Brewer

In Oshtemo Township, spice bush was in full bloom by 18 March, a golden haze over the edges of the kettles where the frogs had gathered.  Bloodroot was in bloom 19 March.

On 22 March, I visited a rich beech-maple forest in Pavilion Township.  All of the following (in the order I came across them) were in bloom:

Spring beauty, Dutchman’s breeches, Yellow violet, harbinger of spring (nearly done), blue violet, Carex plantaginifolia (nearly done), toothwort, purple spring cress, wood anemone, and skunk cabbage.

Several other species were up and some had obvious flower buds.

So we’ll gather this year April 7 at the Harris Sanctuary which is in the southwest corner of F Avenue and 8th Street.  It’s about 3 miles north of the trail-head of the Kal-Haven Trail (which is on 9th Street).  F Avenue is a gravel road–a Natural Beauty road, in fact.  Attendees should park on the north side of the road.  Be there by 10 AM.

Harris is on the Kalamazoo moraine, so there will some mild hill climbing. We’ll finish about noon.  Bring a sandwich and have lunch sitting on a log if you wish.

The technically minded may notice that the Harris Sanctuary is not in Oshtemo Township.  But it’s pretty close.

Three-quarters of a mile north.

North Pond. Photo 12 March 2012 Oshtemo Township by Richard Brewer

With temperatures in the 50s and 60s the last few days–and predicted as mid-70s today–spring is advancing fast.  Wood frogs were calling in the larger pond Monday, March 12.  By yesterday, they were in full chorus in both ponds and by last night, a few spring peepers had joined in.

Among the bird arrivals I’ve noticed (since we’ve been back), Red-winged Blackbirds were numerous Monday morning, and I saw two American Robins along our road, where none had been all winter.

Black-capped Chickadees were giving their spring, “fee-bee” song Tuesday morning.

But there has been little in the way of wild flower action, at least in the oak woods.  Honey bees were visiting the non-native winter aconite, which is in full bloom.

Leslie A. Kenoyer in the greenhouse at West Hall, WMU East campus. Photo courtesy Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collection

The essay that follows is a radio address by Leslie Alva Kenoyer, who served from 1922 to 1953 as Professor and Chairman of the Biology Department at Western Michigan University –at that time Western State Teachers College .  The piece is dated April 16, 1935.  It was written for Western’s Radio Hour, which was evidently a continuing feature on station WKZO.

NEWTON WOODS 

Leslie Kenoyer 

“Woodman, spare that tree, Touch not a single bough.”

 The sentiment that inspired this poem has not been firmly enough established in the minds of southern Michigan people to save from destruction any more than the most scattered remnants of our once beautiful and glorious forest lands. Some fifty thousand years ago the great continental glacier receded from what is now Michigan leaving a raw and barren glacial clay, streaked here and there with sand and gravel. Such soil, in the cool climate then found here, could support only a meager arctic vegetation, consisting of such low, spreading plants as we find today in our cold bogs. The rain and sun gradually brought about favorable chemical changes in the soil and the plants gradually decayed to form humus, hence, in the course of a few centuries, the scant arctic vegetation was replaced by larger shrubs. Centuries later trees occupied the ground, starting with the poplars and developing from stage to stage to dense shady forests of beech and sugar maple. such as covered much of southern Michigan 110 years ago when the government divided our land into townships and sections.

It was inevitable that the trees should succumb to the lumberman’s axe, when the land was cleared for farm homesteads, but it is particularly unfortunate that their removal should have been so complete. Indeed we have here and there a small woodlot to serve as a rather meager sample of the forests that were. but larger tracts are now exceedingly scarce. One of the finest and most extensive remaining areas is Newton Woods in Cass County, adjoining the road from Decatur to Cassopolis, and not far from the village of Volinia. Here are several hundred acres of practically virgin timber, including large blocks of both the beech-maple and oak-hickory types of timber. The trees of this forest were large long before southern Michigan was surveyed and opened to the settler. Among them is an elm which now lifts its head to the majestic height of 150 feet and has a circumference. three feet above ground of 24 feet [91-92 inches in diameter]. Some believe it to be the largest tree now standing in Michigan. There is also a magnificent group of giant tulip or whitewood, the largest of which is 145 feet high, 90 feet to the first branch and 30 feet in circumference [114-115 inches in diameter]. It takes three to five centuries to grow such trees as these.

Ten years ago we could see from our college campus, at a distance of eight or nine miles, a stately elm, towering far above the other trees. Suddenly this tree ceased to be seen, and we learned that it had been sold for $100 for the manufacture of barrel staves. On visiting the stump and counting the rings of growth, I found that the tree was considerably over 400 years old. It was a sapling when Columbus crossed the Atlantic in his puny sailing vessels. Probably the barrels have worn out and the $100 has been long since spent and forgotten, but it will take 400 years to grow another such tree.

When a forest is cut, it is not only the trees that go. The shrubs and the herbs, the orchids and other rare plants, the mosses and lichens that form the turf, will not live when deprived of the shade of the trees. The disappearance of this ground cover permits the erosion of the soil, which represents the accumulation of many thousands of years. The insects, the birds, and the beasts are dislodged from their accustomed haunts, many of them to perish. Hence the restoration of a denuded area cannot be accomplished by the mere planting of trees, nor does a planted forest ever prove a satisfactory substitute for a destroyed native forest.  The old conditions will not and cannot be restored, once the forest is gone.  How, then, will the next generation know anything of the beauties and glories of the forest with its wonderful variety of plant and animal forms  This is a question which our generation must answer.

A part of the Newton Woods is now in the hands of a lumber company and some cutting has already been done, but there is a chance that it may yet be rescued if the public will take sufficient interest in its preservation. The lumber firm is kindly witholding operations in view of an aggressive campaign that is now being sponsored by the Michigan Academy [of Science, Arts, and Letters], the Michigan Forestry Association, and other organizations and individuals who feel that the value to the people of such reserves for the continuation of our wild life is one that cannot be measured in mere dollars. The present leader of this movement is Shirley W. Allen, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Professor Allen would like to hear from all who are interested in finding some means to save the tract.  It is well to bear in mind that our present state parks are mostly in northern Michigan remote from centers of population. Here is a real wilderness with immense trees, a small stream, a profusion of wild flowers, birds, and other natural beauties easy of access to a million people.  We cannot blame property owners for wishing to realize from their investments, but we deplore the fact that the people are not awake to the desirability of keeping the few remaining bits of out landscape as nature gave them to us, free from the artificial modifications imposed  by farm and city development.  With an awakened public, our officials and our public-spirited citizens of means would put forth the necessary efforts to save from the general destruction these remnants of wild nature for the instruction and enjoyment of generations yet to come.

Kenoyer’s comments on post-glacial vegetation change hold up well enough as a broad pattern.  However, the quoted estimate of 50,000 years ago since the last ice sheet melted from southern Michigan is too high. Something on the order of 15,000 years would be closer to the interval based on current evidence.

I like Kenoyer’s plea for protecting natural areas “for the enjoyment and instruction” of later generations.  If I were to revise it I might write “enjoyment, instruction, and health of our own and later generations.” But Kenoyer’s plea for land conservation was accurate and eloquent exactly as he wrote it and, in 1935 on a radio broadcast, far ahead of its time.

The script of this and a few other of Kenoyer’s radio addresses, preserved by Biology Prof. Frank Hinds, have been deposited in the WMU Archives and Regional History Collection

Kenoyer received his Ph.D. in 1916, evidently done in some sort of joint arrangement between the University of Chicago and Iowa State University.  He is credited with receiving the first Ph.D. granted by  what was then The Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.  Kenoyer’s thesis research dealt with environmental influences on nectar secretion.  This and his research interests as shown in later life seem clearly in line with the work being done at Chicago by Henry Chandler Cowles and the other faculty and graduate students.

Kenoyer was born in 1883 in Dover, a small community in north-central Illinois. After completing his Ph.D., he taught botany in India for six years, then spent a year at Michigan State before coming to Kalamazoo.  He became head of the Biology Department soon after arriving, when LeRoy H. Harvey died.

Newton Woods was saved by a donation of  land (580 acres) and an endowment by Fred Russ in 1939 .  The story is complicated (and deserves a thorough treatment by someone), but there is a rough correspondence between the “Newton Woods” of the 1930s and Fred Russ Forest managed by Michigan State University.  MSU applies the name “Newton Woods” to 40 acres of old-growth hardwood, the only part of the forest that is protected from timber cutting.  E. Lucy Braun in her monumental study Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America (1950. Blakiston, Philadelphia) sampled two distinct areas at Russ Forest, probably in the early 1940s (pp 318-320).  One was beech-sugar maple with American elm, black walnut, tulip tree, and several other species well represented. The other was dominated by white oak with sugar maple second and red oak and black walnut tied for third.  Evidently, the oak-maple stand is what MSU terms “Newton Woods.”  

Whether Kenoyer and some of the other individuals and groups who worked to preserve Newton Woods 75 years ago would  be wholly be satisfied with the outcome is not certain.

Photo by Richard Brewer

In the preceding post, the question of why President Obama rebuffed the stronger ozone standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency was left unresolved.  Now we have the answer.

The Kalamazoo Gazette for 2 November 2011 reprinted an article from the Washington Post by Ned Martel. The Gazette reprint was titled Upton Changing for good of GOP? Longtime moderate shedding conciliatory ways at key time for his party.

The topic was the supposed slide to the right by Fred Upton.  Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune, has served as the U. S. Representative from southwestern Michigan since 1987.  He’s had something of a reputation as a moderate since his first campaign in 1986.  In fact, Howard Wolpe, a Democratic icon from Kalamazoo, recounts how he advised Upton in that campaign, the 1986 Republican primary in which Upton beat the conservative incumbent, Mark Siljander.

Maybe Fred has changed his stripes, as Wolpe and others have suggested.  But I’m doubtful; the bulk of Upton’s voting record has always been that of a conservative Republican. Occasional deviations from the Republican party line may well have been sanctioned by the Republican leadership on a few bills where it was clear his vote would make no difference–that is, on issues where the Republicans were already certain to win by a large margin or lose by a large margin.

An alternative interpretation of Fred’s move is that in recent years, with the various changes in Congressional districts and boundaries, Michigan’s 6th Congressional district has so many Republicans he no longer needs votes from the blue sections and can stop pretending.

Whether it’s a real change or just the end of dissimulation means little–except possibly to some of the moderates or liberals who voted for Fred in earlier elections.

This is a long preamble to the crux–the answer to our question.  According to the Martel article, Upton “pushed the president to jettison some tough ozone-reduction plans.”  We learn further that “at a September joint session of Congress, EPA Adminstrator Lisa Jackson caught sight of Upton. ‘She was smiling till she saw me,’ Upton recalled with relish.”

And there we have it.  Fred pushed, Obama jettisoned, and Lisa smiled no more.

Automobiles are a less serious contributor to ozone production since catalytic converters have been required. Photo in downtown Milwaukee, WI by Richard Brewer

President Obama made two serious mistakes early this fall. First, he told the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw new, stronger, standards for ozone levels in the lower atmosphere that were intended to replace the standards held over from the Bush administration. Ozone (O₃) is an atmospheric pollutant dangerous to human health because it’s highly reactive in lung tissues. It’s involved in various respiratory diseases but evidently also in other sorts of human pathology; for example, it’s believed to contribute to the development of atherosclerosis. But ozone in the lower atmosphere also has many bad effects besides just our own health and life span.  It damages plants, lowering photosynthesis and growth and is implicated in die-offs of forest trees.

Ozone is produced in the lower atmosphere by reactions between nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight. The nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds come mostly from power plants, various sorts of factories, automobiles, gasoline vapor, and chemical solvents.

There are interactions between ozone production and temperature and ozone effects and temperature, such that we get more ozone produced and stronger effects when temperatures are high. These are one of many kinds of interactions that may make global warming an even greater calamity than most of the early predictions claimed.

President Obama’s second mistake was his reason for turning down the new, science-based ozone recommendations. He said he wanted to reduce regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty. But tough regulations strictly enforced are what can make capitalism work. The last few years have shown us repeatedly how things go astray when politicians manage to weaken and thwart regulations.  Weakened regulations together with the unwillingness of federal agencies to enforce existing regulations were the main causes of the financial fiasco of 2007-2009 and the recession that came with it.

Michigan has been on the deregulation bandwagon right along.  In the DooDah parade of deregulation, it may even have been ahead of the bandwagon.  We had a governor a few years ago whose slogan was “Less enforcement, more compliance.”  Such a proposition if it were sincere would be fatuous, but considering everything, just calling it preposterous or ludicrous will probably have to serve.

President Obama seems to have accepted the argument of the extreme political right that there is a conflict between “the environment” and “the economy.”  For most Americans, the right wing lost on that issue 30 or 40 years ago. Some corporations tell us if the nation doesn’t give them lax environmental rules they’ll take their jobs overseas.  Since such corporations show little national loyalty, some have.

But the balance sheet we need to look at is the overall gain to our nation in terms of clean air and water, healthy citizens, healthy communities, and healthy ecosystems  compared with the cost of meeting any given environmental standard. Time after time we’ve seen that the costs of meeting new standards turns out lower than the company’s forecast, that new jobs are created connected with the improved technology needed, and that the overall national cost/benefit ratio is heavily in favor of the tougher standards.

Anyone who’s been paying attention anytime these past 40 years knows that.  Why doesn’t the President?

President Obama has another environmental decision coming up soon.  This is to accept or reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would carry a form of crude oil processed from Canadian tar sands from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.  I hope to write more about this a little later.

Turkey Vulture in flight. Photo Kalamazoo MI by Tim Tesar. Used by permission.

trees, followed by a Blue Jay.  I had just seen crows along the road, so it was evident that this bird was much larger than a crow and larger than any buteo.  It was, in fact, a Turkey Vulture, the first I had seen actually within the woods in the 15-plus years since I arrived.

What, I wondered, was it doing here?  Then the answer struck me.

The folk wisdom in southern Illinois, where I grew up, was that vultures, or buzzards, find carrion by the smell of rotting meat.  But birds in general have a poor sense of smell, and the olfactory lobe of the brain, which is associated with smell, is large in mammals like us, but small in most birds.  Then too, John James Audubon, an excellent naturalist as well as painter of birds, did a few trials in the early part of the 19th century, trying to assess how vultures found food.  His observations of vultures failing to find hidden carrion led him to the conclusion that dead carcasses were located by sight. “The power of smelling in these birds had been greatly exaggerated,” he wrote.

Other observations didn’t always agree with Audubon’s conclusion. By 1964, an article by Kenneth E. Stager of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum summarized his and other studies that pretty well established the main features of how vultures find their meals.  In broad outline, Aububon wasn’t wrong, but he had worked mainly with Black Vultures (Coragyps atratus), which do locate food visually, either by spotting it themselves or watching Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura).  Turkey Vultures, it turns out, have a well-developed sense of smell which they can use to find even small animals that are not visible from the sky. They also have large olfactory lobes.  Of course, they are not above gliding down to a dead animal they see lying out in plain sight.

There are some other details that may or may not have been decided in the last few years, such as whether either or both vultures can use the sight (or the sound) of carrion-feeding insects going to a dead animal as a clue to the corpse’s presence.

Earlier this morning before 9 AM, when I was walking down the driveway to get the newspapers, I had caught a strong smell of carrion. I left the driveway and only a few steps into the woods found a dead raccoon. I didn’t examine it carefully and have no idea how it met its death.  When I had walked past the same spot several times yesterday, I had not smelled a dead raccoon. It was not there, or it was too fresh.

Finding a Turkey Vulture near a dead raccoon that it could not have seen from the sky doesn’t qualify as an important piece of evidence on the topic, Nevertheless, I was pleased that an observation of my own, right here in Oshtemo Township, is so nicely congruent with modern thinking on how the Turkey Vulture finds its food.

When I pulled up at the front door, I looked back and the Turkey Vulture had already returned to the trees above the dead raccoon. I ducked into the house, not wanting to interrupt the bird’s meal any longer.

Dead raccoon. Photo 8 October 2011 Oshtemo Township by Richard Brewer

A few hours later, I checked the carcass.  The skull, vertebral column, and limbs had been stripped clean, and the skin was clean and much of it was inside out.

In beech-maple forest, the canopy is continuous and dense except where a tree has recently been lost. Photo 29 August 2011 Pavilion Township by Richard Brewer

The orchid is three birds orchid (Triphora trianthophora).  It’s known from Kalamazoo County and in fact from much of the eastern U.S., but in most places it has become rare. It is now considered threatened, endangered, or extirpated in most states. The last record in Michigan was evidently in 1981, from Berrien County.

It’s possible that three birds is gone from Kalamazoo County and Michigan. Perhaps the observations in the 20th century just caught the tail of a population dwindling toward extinction–in this region; three birds seems a little more numerous in the South.  However, there are some reasons why not many people are out looking in the beech-maple forests when it’s visible, and also some reasons why, even if you’re there, three birds isn’t necessarily easy to spot.

First, almost nothing else is in flower in the mesophytic forests at this time of year, so there’s not much to look at.  The many species of spring ephemerals that covered the ground in April and May are gone.  A few species that flower in summer are now in fruit, and it’s pleasant to be able to see the doll’s-eyes and blue cohosh.  But, in general, the beech-maple forests of late summer are dark, and the ground is obscured in many places with seedlings and saplings,

Doll's-eyes (Actaea pachypoda) in fruit in beech-maple forest. Photo Oshtemo Township 17 August 2009 by Richard Brewer

mostly sugar maple, or with thick foliage of ferns, wood nettle (Laportea), wild ginger, and a few other herbs.

Three birds is a short plant, 6 inches or thereabouts, so I imagine in the shade and under the foliage, it’s not easy to see. Nevertheless, considering how important rediscovering the species would be, if you can get to a beech-maple forest in the next few days, you ought to give it a try.

There is much yet to learn about the habitat and life history of three birds.  Within its mesophytic forest home, it’s said to favor sites where there’s a build-up of leaf litter and humus.  Probably this means small depressions.  Leaves accumulate other places, such as between two large fallen trunks, but I’m not sure if that microhabitat would be long-lived enough to allow time for the orchid to invade.  But maybe it would. From observations of the Michigan botanist Fred Case in his Orchids of the Western Great Lakes Region (Cranbrook Institute of Science, 1987), I suspect that most dispersal is through underground tuberoids that are dug up, carried off, and stored in the duff and litter by red squirrels, or perhaps chipmunks.

Late in the summer, fleshy stems sprout rapidly from the underground tuberoids.  Each plant bears only a few leaves which are oval, alternate, and clasp the stem.  Usually there will be a few stems in a clump. Not long after the plants appear, one or occasionally more of the buds open.  Flowering is possibly triggered by a couple of chilly nights in a row.  It is reported that most of the plants in a given area produce their first blooms at the same time.  After a day or so, the first set of blossoms shrivel, and in a few days, a second round of flowering may occur, and perhaps a third.

The flowers (often three per plant) are recognizably orchids but small, perhaps about an inch wide and an inch tall and are mostly whitish or pinkish with a greenish bearded stripe on the lip.  The fruits last for a couple of weeks before slits develop that allow the release of the spore-like seedsin the following days.  Although the plants are not at their showiest when they’re in fruit, this is the probably the longest period of their above-ground life.  You can see how the plant looks with fruit at this Connecticut Botanical Society site with photos by Eleanor Saulys.   The same site shows some plants in flower. Many more photos of flowering plants by Jim Fowler are shown at the North Carolina site  linked to earlier.

So, have a look at the photos and head for the nearest beech-maple forest.  If you find three birds orchids, please tell us about it in the comments section.  But don’t mention exactly where you found them. (If you do give information that might allow someone to locate them, I’ll edit your comment to remove those details.)  Rare plants, especially such things as orchids, have been known to disappear from sites that become known.  However, you should let the Michigan Natural Features Inventory know.  They’ll be tickled that three birds is not extinct in Michigan.–as will we all.

Dunelands near Saugatuck, Michigan. Photo 6 August 2007 by Richard Brewer

At a time in southwest Michigan when protecting all our remaining natural lands and waters would make sense for human health and economic viability, threats continue.

This morning I received the message copied in boldface below from the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance.  It is their updated look at the controversy involving the Lake Michigan sand dunes and beaches north of the mouth of the Kalamazoo River at Saugatuck, Allegan County, Michigan.  Background information is available at the Alliance’s website .  A December 2010 Wall Street Journal article, A Billionaire’s Dune Duel, is also informative. Some history, including the hope to have protected public lands from the Oval Beach north through Saugatuck State Park, is given at the website of the Concerned Citizens for Saugatuck State Park.

We want to take a moment to alert you to what is currently happening to defend local zoning in the Saugatuck area.

• On July 22nd the Saugatuck Township Board appeared to ignore four hours of testimony by many well-informed township residents asking them to consider all other possible solutions to the proposed settlement between Aubrey McClendon and Saugatuck Township to the on-going federal lawsuit. The Township Board unanimously passed the settlement.
• On July 29th three local groups – Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance, Laketown Alliance for Neighborly Development and the Kalamazoo River Protection Association – file  a request for Judge Maloney to hold a fairness hearing. A fairness hearing, which is common in many different types of cases that affect communities or large numbers of third-parties, is used to ensure consent decrees are fair, reasonable and legal, and in the public interest.  Our belief is that the proposed consent decree does not meet these standards and should, therefore, be rejected by the court.
• On July 29th the National Trust for Historic Preservation also file a request for a fairness hearing. The National Trust is represented by Kalamazoo-based law firm Miller Canfield.
• On August 1st several Township residents who live close to the McClendon property also file papers requesting a fairness hearing. The neighbors are represented by Grand Rapids-based law firm Varnum.
• On Monday, August 8th additional neighbors, one of whom is completely surrounded by McClendon’s land, sign onto the request for a fairness hearing filed by Varnum.

We have taken this step (filing for a fairness hearing on July 29th) as we believe that this proposed consent decree is illegal because it circumvents local zoning laws, violates the State-mandated rezoning process, and blocks the Saugatuck Township Board’s oversight of the development.

To put it simply, the fundamental problem with the proposed settlement is that it includes provisions that neither Mr. McClendon nor the Township Board has the legal authority to do on their own. That is, they have overridden local zoning regulations without a proper process and they have approved a commercial development that is not permitted under current zoning and would also have not been permitted under the property’s previous zoning.

Under Michigan law, zoning ordinances should be based on the applicable master plan. The proposed consent decree, however, permits commercial-type uses that are clearly prohibited by the Township’s zoning ordinance and the Tri-Community Comprehensive Master Plan. It does this without any proper process or prior consultation with the Cities of Saugatuck and  Douglas, the two other jurisdictions that participated in the development of this Master Plan. Additionally, under this settlement, the Township has contracted away its legislative powers now and in the future in violation of Michigan law.

Furthermore, the Township Board reached the decision to accept the settlement under duress. This proposed settlement is not a “compromise” as touted by the McClendon team. It is, in fact, a “take it or leave it” offer, made after the Township was forced to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal expenses, and then threatened with never ending legal expenses in the future. Only then did the Township capitulate to Mr. McClendon’s demands.

We appreciate the pressure the Township Board has been under and the difficult decision they were faced with. But this settlement sets a dangerous precedent because it suggests that there is one set of rules for investors with deep pockets who are willing to threaten the Township with bankruptcy and another set of rules for everyone else.

With the various requests for a fairness hearing, the community is stating publicly and before the Court that this proposed consent decree is unfair and illegal and should be set aside by the court.

We understand that many in the community are concerned about the costs of further litigation and the unfortunate divisions that this development proposal has caused in our community. As a practical matter, we agree that a fair settlement should be negotiated. That is why we are also calling on the township to propose to Mr. McClendon a mediation process, such as proposed by former Senator Birkholz, in order to reach a fair and legal settlement. We understand that Mr. McClendon owns the property and has a right to develop it. We only ask that it be developed in a manner that is consistent local zoning laws.

Many of you are asking how you can help. Thank you!  One important thing everyone can easily do is send this update out widely, post on facebook, and remind people that this issue is far from over.

Also, please keep repeating these three points:

1. The Coastal Allliance supports all property owners’ rights to develop their land legally and appropriately.

2. The Coastal Alliance supports locally determined zoning.

3. Aubrey McClendon sued Saugatuck Township to rewrite zoning laws. It’s worth noting that the Master Plan, from which these zoning laws originated, was unanimously approved by Saugatuck Township, Saugatuck City, and Douglas.

–Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance   P.O. Box 1013 , Saugatuck, MI 49453, (269) 857-1842,      http://saugatuckdunescoastalalliance.com

Button found 14 April 2011 and reused

Wetland wilderness, however has not fallen quite so far…. Although many surviving wetlands have indeed suffered irreversible changes… it is remarkable how many of them remain relatively pristine. Most American wetlands have existed as such since the retreat of Pleistocene glaciers.  Some of their plant populations may, in many cases, be directly descended from the original wetland species of their locales.  The pleasure and adventure of experiencing a bog or marsh of native vegetation may bring us as close to experiencing true American wilderness as most of us may ever come.

–John Eastman

John Andrew Eastman was an American naturalist and writer and a Kalamazoo resident.  Of many publications, probably his most influential were three books, The Book of Forest and Thicket, The Book of Swamp and Bog, and  The Book of Field and Roadside.  They are field guides of a special, ecological sort.  Arranged by species of plant, they deal with the interactions of each species with its associates–consumers, parasites, competitors, mutualists–and with the physical features of its habitat.

The quotation is from the Introduction to the Swamp and Bog book and makes a point about many existing wetlands of North America that no one else has stated as directly:  Unlike most upland sites, wetland sites, if not destroyed, often preserve conditions and ecosystems with direct genetic connections to the landscapes encountered by the earliest European settlers–and, of course, by American Indians before them.

Many wetlands have another conservation connection: Pollen and other remains of plants and animals preserved in their sediments are the main evidence for reconstructing the vegetational and climatic history of the region surrounding the wetland basin.  Not mentioned in the Introduction, this important role is alluded to in the book’s entry on Mosses, Sphagnum (p.130).

Eastern Towhee breeding habitat is forest edge with brushy patches and usually including areas covered by leaf litter. Nests are often on the ground under brush. Photo in Oshtemo Township MI 7 July 2011 by Richard Brewer.

My hearing is not as good as it was ten or twenty years ago, mainly for high notes.  That’s one reason I was pleased to hear an Eastern Towhee singing today when I walked down to get the newspapers.  It took me a moment to identify the song.  One problem with losing the high notes is that, though you can still hear many songs, some may be hard to recognize when you’re hearing only the medium and low notes.

There was another reason I had to listen for a couple of repeats to identify this song.  The towhee song is traditionally rendered as “Drink your tea,” with the first note high, the second lower, and the third a trill, so it’s something like “Drink your tea-ee-ee-ee-ee.”  It’s an easy song to learn, even for those of us who aren’t particularly musical.

This bird, however, was singing “Tea your tea,” or “Tea-ee-ee-ee-ee your tea-ee-ee-ee-ee.”

I thought this version would probably serve the male’s territorial defense needs.  My wife, however, was doubtful that it would be as successful in attracting female towhees as the more conventional version.

Aretas Saunders, who probably qualifies as the first serious student of North American bird songs, commented in his little Guide to Bird Songs (Doubleday & Co.,1951 revision of the 1935 original) that unusual songs from Towhees are not uncommon.  One variant I’ve heard a handful of times is a two-noted version, just “Drink tea.”  Saunders mentions this variant, among others, and notes that when it occurs the introductory note is usually the lower one. In other words, it’s the first note (“Drink“) that’s omitted.  If that’s so, then I guess what the bird is actually singing is “Your tea.”

The name “towhee” comes from the bird’s voice, but not from the song.  “Towhee“  is one way to represent one of the common call notes of the species.  To me, it generally sounds a little more like “T’wee.”  ”Chewink” is another representation of the same call note.  In earlier, less standardized times, “Chewink” was used as an alternative name for the species.

Saunders began to notice a deterioration in his ability to hear the high notes of bird songs around 1938 when he was in his mid-fifties.  For me, the inability to hear bird voices like that of the Blue-winged Warbler if I’m more than a few feet away  is a matter for regret. For someone like Saunders, such losses must be much sadder.

Hazelnut catkins in Oshtemo Township, Michigan. Photo 10 April 2011 by Richard Brewer

Early this April, I saw a tall skinny shrub without leaves but with catkins.  It reminded me that early last fall I had come across a clump of similar skinny trunks that bore pointed, toothed leaves.  The leaves were more or less like leaves of several groups of woody plants–birches, elms, hornbeams, and conceivably a few others.  I had been puzzled by the plant and hadn’t identified it for sure but had narrowed it down to a handful of possibilities.  One of the possibilities had been American hazelnut (Corylus americanus).  The books I was using commented that catkins are produced in the fall but don’t open to produce pollen until the following spring.  These catkins weren’t quite open yet, but seeing them there tilted me toward thinking that the plants must be hazelnuts.

The plant was in a handy place to observe, so I was able to keep track of it over the next couple of weeks as the catkins lengthened and then opened, shedding pollen.

Hazelnut catkins, Oshtemo Township, Michigan. Photo 11 April 2011 by Richard Brewer

The pistillate flowers of hazelnut are tiny buds, but recognizable by the thin red styles–ready for pollen–poking out the end. The styles are easily seen with a lens. The hazelnuts when they ripen in the fall look like the European filbert of commerce, but smaller. They’re also similar in taste.

The first time I saw hazelnuts I was probably six or seven years old.  My parents took me along when they went hazelnut picking one day in the fall.  The spot wasn’t far from where we lived east of Murphysboro, Illinois, probably a quarter of a mile down the county road toward Route 13.  I enjoyed eating the nuts at the time but never became a big filbert fan.

I’ve seen hazelnut fruits in the wild in Michigan a few times, but never in these woods.  Two possibilities occur to me.  The first is that the woods are too shady, especially with the increasing abundance of red maple, for the shrubs to accumulate enough energy to produce fruits.  The second is that the nuts are so attractive to the squirrels, woodpeckers, and jays that they have always been eaten (or stored)  before I chance to wander by in the fall.

Hazelnut in oak woods--former oak openings--in Oshtemo Township. Photo 21 June 2011 by Richard Brewer

Now that I’m attuned to the look of hazel even without catkins or hazelnuts, I’ve seen several clumps  in both drier and wetter parts of the oak woods. Most of the clumps are between knee high and waist high, only a few head high or taller.

Since I’ve been in Michigan, I’ve associated hazelnut with the edges of prairies, and I think that’s apt.  But now I’ve begun to understand (1) its remarkably wide ecological amplitude and (2) how widespread it must have been in almost every permutation of prairie and savanna that existed in pre-settlement southwest Michigan.

One indication of hazelnut’s wide habitat occurrence can be drawn from John T. Curtis’s The Vegetation of Wisconsin. This excellent book has a species list in the back (after the Literature Cited and before the index), that gives the plant community where the species most frequently occurs and also given  the number of plant communities in which Curtis found the species in his studies. The community in which the species was found most often–the modal community–is presumably the most characteristic community; the number of communities from which the species is recorded is a measure of ecological amplitude of the species.

The book recognizes 34 plant communities. American hazelnut was reported most frequently from dry forest, but it occurred in 20 other communities, or  62 per cent in all.

I didn’t go through the species list line by line, but I did check on some species that I think of as occurring in a wide variety of situations. There were a few species in the 15-18 community range and at least one species that occurred in the same number of communities as hazelnut–21.  This was Cornus racemosa, gray dogwood.  Vitis riparia, river-bank grape, had a 22. There were only two species clearly ahead of  the hazelnut, dogwood, and grape.  These were Va. creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia, 1n 25 communities and poison ivy, Rhus radicans, in 26 (76%).  It may not be accidental that all five of these species are woody and have animal-dispersed seeds.

Hazelnut’s broad distribution more or less centered on dry forest fits well with the conception of oak openings that Kim Chapman and I expressed in an article (“Prairie and Savanna in Southern Lower Michigan: History, Classification, Ecology”) in the January 2008 Michigan Botanist.  We see oak openings in the pre-settlement landscape as a diverse community, the composition of which varied in space–different in low and high spots, north slopes and southwest slopes, sandy sites and gravelly sites. But it also varied in time at any given point based on the  latest disturbance (fire, tornado, insect infestation) and how recent it was, but also on the historic frequency of disturbance.  A north-facing slope running down to a pond in a small kettle might have included a set of plants much like mesic forest.  A gentle loamy slope after a few years of near-annual fires might have been covered with dry-mesic prairie.

This is oak openings in the sense of Michigan pioneer botanist Ruth Hoppin’s description (quoted on pages 7-8 of Chapman and Brewer). In this view, most of the prairie and savanna types are just different faces of one big community type.  Mesic prairie and bur oak plain, I would say, are different and so, of course, is mesic forest.

Hazelnut seems to have the life history traits to be a near-perfect fit to the oak openings habitat as it was.  Hazelnut can get around readily by the nuts being carried, and often buried, by mammals and birds. Over short distances, it spreads readily by rhizomes. It tolerates a wide range of light intensities though it tends to decline in deep shade.  It tolerates fire, but only up to a point. Most of its rhizomes and roots are in the upper six inches of soil.  Light fires kill the above-ground parts of the plant but stimulate vigorous sprouting from the rhizomes.  Fires hot enough to consume the litter often kill the underground parts.  Hence, hazelnut might be at least temporarily eliminated by fire from certain habitats where hot, litter-consuming fires occurred.

I suspect most of the hazelnut plants I’ve been finding in the Oshtemo oak woods are just hanging on, waiting for the fires the openings used to have, the fires that would stimulate sprouting and open the canopy to enough sunlight to yield a good crop of nuts. One more reason why few of the hazel bushes grow tall may be the high populations of deer these days.  Hazel is a favored browse plant of deer, so high populations may keep it pretty well clipped.

Large garlic mustard 23 April 2011 pulled and placed on forest floor. Photo by Richard Brewer

I need to give the results of the small trial mentioned a month ago, when I put out eight garlic mustard plants (four small and four large) that we had pulled up early in the spring on 23 April at the Audubon Society’s Harris Sanctuary.

I spread them out on the floor of an oak woods on a patch from which I had removed the leaf litter.

Large garlic mustard plant 29 April, six days after pulling and placing on forest floor. Photo by Richard Brewer

The upper parts of the larger plants remained plump and green for several days and flowers that had not been evident when the plants were pulled appeared on the large plants. (No flowers were seen on the small plants.)  Also, the tops turned upward and the roots turned down.  But soon the plants began to shrivel and darken.  The photo to the left is a view of one of the larger plants on 29 April. By 29 May, the plant bodies, including any flowers, had decomposed, with little structure still evident (see photo below).

Remains of large garlic mustard 29 May 2011 about one month after pulling and placing on forest floor. Photo by Richard Brewer

On the basis of this small trial, it seems unnecessary to remove plants pulled early in the spring.

By early June, most of the second-year plants growing in the woods and on the roadsides have green fruits. It seems possible that large specimens pulled or clipped and tossed on the ground from late spring on might be able to draw enough water and energy from the fleshy leaves and stems to produce viable seeds.

Certainly, many of the invasive species websites tell us that only bagging and hauling the plants away from the control site can head off seed production and dispersal. The evidence is scant, but one study  (K. Solis, 1998, Restoration and Management Notes 16:223-224) seems to show that even plants pulled in the flower bud stage can produce viable seeds.  A serious, well-designed study of adequate sample size would be welcome.

Garlic mustard plants in fruit along an Oshtemo Township roadside. Photo 15 June 2011 by Richard Brewer

Audubon sign at Mildred Harris Sanctuary, Kalamazoo. Photo April 2011 by Richard Brewer

I spent the early part of the morning in the beech-maple forest.  It’s still early spring  and none of the spring wild flowers are blooming yet. A few things are up, notably wild leek.  It’s abundant in this sanctuary. The flowers don’t appear till June, long after the leaves are gone.  A few of last year’s flowering stalks are still upright–dry and pale tan–and a few of these still retain a black, shiny round seed.   Never more than one on any I noticed.

I saw quite a few patches of bedstraw, Galium aparine.  This early, they are short thin stems with whorls of miniature leaves.

A fair number of toothwort (Dentaria laciniata) plants were up and had buds.  Maybe they’ll be the first plants to flower here.  In a beech-maple forest in Pavilion Township I visited last weekend, harbinger of spring was in full bloom, but the species doesn’t occur at Harris.

Beech-maple forest at Mildred Harris Sanctuary. The green is wild leek. Photograph April 9, 2011 by Richard Brewer

In 40 minutes or so of walking, I found only one small patch of garlic mustard.  This includes my visiting 20 or so flagged sites where we had found and pulled garlic mustard in past years.  The new patch was not near any of the old ones.  But someone else might have spotted other plants.  The garlic mustard is short, just basal leaves; some other plants might have popped out for someone with good color vision.

I then picked up trash along the two roads that adjoin the sanctuary and walked back to the car through the field half of the sanctuary.  One plant species was in bloom in the field–a low member of the mustard family with small, very small, white flowers.  With its four white petals, it was pretty obviously a mustard, but I couldn’t satisfy myself just what the species was.  Probably in a week or so, when some of the flowers give rise to fruits, it’ll be easier to key out. It seemed to be a weed of the old hayfield–none in the woods.

I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to birds, but turkey gobbling was coming from two directions when I went into the woods.  They quieted down before 9:30 AM.  Red-bellied Woodpeckers and flickers were making noise and there was evidence on some of the dead trees of Pileated work.  As I was walking alongside the field a pair of Wood Ducks flew over making the distinctive upward-slurred “Ooh-eek.”  I’ve read that it’s the female that makes this call, but the two birds are usually together when I hear

Field at Harris Sanctuary, looking north, woods to left. Photograph 9 April 2011 by Richard Brewer

it and I’m not sure that the male never produces it.

And there were Tufted Titmice singing in the woods and Field and Song Sparrow singing at the edges of the field.  And a few more I haven’t listed.

Back Tuesday for our second stewardship work day.

The second work day is Tuesday, April 12, hours 5:30-7:30 PM.

Anyone who has an interest in the sanctuary and its management is invited to join in the effort on one or both dates.

The other two spring workdays are Saturday April 23, 9-11 AM and Wednesday April 27, 5:30-7:30 PM.

The Mildred Harris Sanctuary is located in the southwest corner of F Ave. and 8th St. in Alamo Township, Kalamazoo County.

What we can accomplish depends on how many people show up.  On this first work day of the year, someone should walk the roads that border the 40-acre property and pick up any debris that has built up over the winter.  When Katy and I visited Thursday morning, there seemed to be no major accumulation.

One change last year in our approach to management included brushhogging along the edge of the forest.  The preserve is roughly 50:50 beech-maple forest (west side) and grassland (old hayfield, on the east side). The one place where garlic mustard is abundant is in the areas along the forest edge occupied by dense growths of raspberries and blackberries or multiflora rose.  Large segments of these all but impenetrable thickets have been mowed down enough that they are not quite impenetrable, hence open for garlic mustard control.

One major task that we will begin Saturday will be attacking the somewhat exposed garlic mustard.  This will be by spraying, daubing with glyphosate, and pulling.  The second and third will be done by the volunteers who show up.

Someone can walk through the beech-maple forest looking for garlic mustard plants, which will mostly be visible as basal clumps of leaves.  In the woods itself only occasional individual or small clusters of plants will be found. Flagging any plants spotted can be followed up on later trips by careful pulling with the pulled plants carried away in bags.

In the brushhogged strip along the edge of the wood, the stubs left over from the larger trees and clubs could be lopped off at ground level to reduce the likelihood of tripping and falling by stewards and other visitors and daubed with glyphosate to discourage resprouting.

Brushhogging was also done in the field.  About one-third of the field was mowed last summer.  We will be interested in how many of the woody invaders resprout as the spring and summer go along.  It’s possible that brushhogging one-third of the field every year, so that the whole area is mowed every three years could keep the shrubs and trees stunted enough that the field area remains effectively a grassland.

One more task that we need to tackle sometime this year is the Mildred Harris Sanctuary sign.  It needs, at a minimum, repainting of the routed letters.  A thorough renovation of the sign, including repainting is another possibility.  A third, if there should be a woodworker with skill at routing, would be a totally new sign.

Katy and I will see you at 8th and F Saturday morning and/or Tuesday early evening. Park around the corner on F Ave. Bring work gloves and any tools you favor.  We’ll have some lopping shears, glyphosate, vinyl disposable gloves, and plastic bags.

Fringed gentian in fen at Harvey Ott Preserve, Calhoun County. Photo September 1994 by Richard Brewer

I first learned of the Harvey Ott Biological Preserve about 1967 from the study of the preserve’s forests by Tony Catana, then in the Biology Department at Albion College.  I have visited the preserve a good many times since, most frequently in the period after the timber cutting regrettably authorized by an earlier Calhoun County Board of Commissioners. In September 1994, I brought my ecology class from Western Michigan University to study the destruction, and over the next several months, directed a detailed study of the logged site by a graduate student.  In 1994 and 1995 I sat in on some of the meetings of the ad hoc committee that produced a management plan and policies for the preserve.  The plan and policies that were developed weren’t bad.  They would make a good starting place for a stricter and more comprehensive document for the future.

My opinion is that a bicycle trail of any sort, let alone a wide asphalt trail, would be harmful to the native plants, animals, and ecosystems of the site.  Damage would come from construction and would continue during later use of the trail.

I also believe that such an intrusion is contrary to stated aims for the preserve in every stage of its history and under every owner.   This includes ownership by Calhoun County.  To finance purchasing the preserve from Albion College, the County  applied for a federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant.  Its application stated, “The property was originally purchased by Battle Creek College for a nature-biological study area.  The full intent of Calhoun County is to continue with the preservation….”  The Site Management Plan prepared by the ad hoc committee in 1994-1995 stated, “It is the intent of Calhoun County to maintain the Preserve as an area for passive, non-destructive, recreational, educational, and aesthetic use.” In the Plan, bicycling (and horseback riding, among other things) is specifically prohibited.

In my opinion the plan brought forth by the Trailways Alliance was not well designed.  It’s hard to believe that the group has spent eight years planning and promoting the trail without doing environmental due diligence.  Not only have no studies of the Ott Preserve been done, but it appears that no studies have been done anywhere along the proposed route.  What rare plants or animals or important natural features will be impacted?  But also, what contaminated or otherwise dangerous sites would the projected route take hikers through?

I am a supporter of trails.  Rail-trail conversions around the nation have nearly always been environmentally and socially beneficial.  The same can be said about many other sorts of trails–trails that were thoughtfully routed, carefully designed, and competently executed.  I do not consider trails that invade preserved natural areas to be in this category.  In fact, designing a trail by poaching on  protected public or other conservation lands seems to me a disservice to the citizens of the region– as well as showing a certain lack of initiative.  Optimal trail design would include, among other criteria, a route that eliminates or minimizes damage to preserves, parks, and other sensitive areas.

If the choice is between a hard-surfaced trail running through the preserve and no trail, then no trail is the responsible choice without question.

The only compromise I can see that would be respectful of the values of the preserve and meet the clear duty of Calhoun County as stewards of the preserve would be a trail that stopped outside the preserve, perhaps at a bicycle-parking area, also outside the preserve.  From the bicycle-parking area, a short foot trail to the preserve boundary could allow access to the foot trails of the preserve. Providing a way to get to the Ott Preserve without the use of a car is one good feature of the Trailways plan and probably worthy of retaining–but only if the preserve itself is absolutely protected.

Additional comments:  My impression is that the Calhoun County Board has done a good job of listening.  Perhaps they will adopt some sort of compromise position. But there are an infinite number of possible routes between the northwest parking lot of the Ott Preserve and the stoplight on Michigan Avenue (route mentioned in 12.A in the  Commission agenda for 7 April 2011).  Some of these might be almost totally protective of the Ott and some might be damaging.  It would be desirable that the route to be taken should be nailed down and described in any resolution adopted in the April 7 meeting.  Also spelled out should be the principles to be followed for any trail section where the precise route can’t be currently stated (for example, no alteration of existing land contours).

These requirements are essential considering that any construction is likely to be some little time away, probably several years. Public memories dim.  The trail advocates have fought doggedly for their vision of a 14-foot-wide bicycle path down the middle of the Ott. When construction begins, three or four or five years from now, a strong pull could exist toward dealing with any ambiguities in the statement of route by following the “bicycle-trail-through-the-Ott” game plan familiar to the Trailway Alliance and its allies in county government.

Main esker trail, looking down toward bridge, Harvey Ott Biological Preserve. Photo February 2011 Richard Brewer

The Calhoun County Commissioners will be the ones voting on the trail.  They may give more weight to messages from their constituents; nevertheless, it will be of value to them to know if the threat to the Ott Preserve is a matter of concern to conservationists and nature lovers elsewhere.

Most of the information that follows is from the Say “No” to Pavement: Protect Ott Biological Preserve organization and was supplied by Sophia DiPietro. Comments in italics are mine.  Besides earlier posts at this website, information on the proposed trail through the preserve and its drawbacks are most readily accessible at the Facebook page Say “No” to Pavement: Protect Ott Biological Preserve, especially the Wall and Info sections.

Upcoming Public Meeting–All are invited.

Ott Biological Preserve Proposed “Trailway” Public Forum Thursday, March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day) 5:30pm – 8:30pm

County Commission Chambers (3rd floor County Building)
315 W. Green St.
Marshall, MI

The County Building is near the center of Marshall .  Green is  the main east-west street and the county building is half a block east of Kalamazoo Avenue, the main north south Street.  (As a landmark, Schuler’s Restaurant is in the next block east on Green.)

This is one meeting you won’t want to miss! Don’t like the thought of the proposed “smooth-surfaced highway” through Ott Biological Preserve? This is YOUR time to speak up. There will be at least one presentation by the trailway alliance promoting their trail, and at least one presentation advocating for the protection of Ott. There will be a question/answer period and hopefully full opportunity for local citizens to make their voices heard against this trail proposal.

Come prepared! Make some notes as to why you feel Ott should remain free from development! County Commissioners need to hear from you! A regularly scheduled County Commission meeting follows the forum at 7pm

The Commission NEEDS to hear your opposition to trail development in Ott Biological Preserve. Send POLITE letters either snail-mail or email (scroll to bottom for emails group).

Calhoun County Board of Commissioners

Julie Camp (Republican)(re-elected)
8934 5 Mile Road
East Leroy, MI 49051
Fax: (269) 781-0140
juliecamp5@gmail.com

Terris Todd (Democrat) (re-elected)
135 Irving Park Dr.
Battle Creek, MI 49017
todd4calhoun@yahoo.com

Jim Haadsma (D) (re-elected)
146 South Lincoln Boulevard
Battle Creek, MI 49015
jhaadsma@mccroskeylaw.com

Mark Behnke (R)
474 Country Club Drive
Battle Creek, MI 49015
mbehnke@behnkeinc.com

Steve Frisbie (R)
148 Pheasantwood Trail
Battle Creek, MI 49017
sjfriz@gmail.com

Blaine VanSickle (R)
16828 21 Mile Road
Marshall, MI 49068
No email

Art Kale (R) (Chair)
3101 Country Club Way
P.O. Box 672
Albion, MI 49224
arthurkale@gmail.com

Compiled email contacts for pasting into email
(NOTE: Commissioner VanSickle does not have an email address):
arthurkale@gmail.com, sjfriz@gmail.com, mbehnke@behnkeinc.com, jhaadsma@mccroskeylaw.com, todd4calhoun@yahoo.com, juliecamp5@gmail.com

For Calhoun County residents, to find out who your specific county commissioner is, check out the county website for more info: www.calhouncountymi.org/Departments/BoardOfCommissioners/OverviewBOC.htm

Parks/Road Commissioners who have pursued this trailway jointly with the nonprofit Calhoun County Trailway Alliance (and therefore may not be objective to concerns):

Christopher Vreeland
119 North Grand Street
Marshall, MI 49068
Fax: (269) 781-6101
Email: cbv@vreelandlaw.com

Scott Brown
504 Lincoln
Albion, MI 49224
Fax: (269) 781-6101
Email: sbrown@calhouncrc.net

Hugh Coward
546 Sylvan Drive
Battle Creek, MI 49017
Fax: (269) 781-6101
Email: local340ironworker@sbcglobal.net

Eric Tobin
520 S. Avenue C
Athens, MI 49011
Fax: None
Email: orionet@aol.com

Email Group:
cbv@vreelandlaw.com, orionet@aol.com, local340ironworker@sbcglobal.net, sbrown@calhouncrc.net

Main Esker Trail, Ott Preserve. Photo February 2011 by Richard Brewer

Last Saturday, I took a walk with about twenty other people at the Harvey Ott Biological Preserve. This is where the Calhoun County Trailway Alliance wants to put a 10-foot wide paved cycling trail. Tom Funke, Director of Conservation for the Michigan Audubon Society, led the excursion. MAS owns about 20 sanctuaries. Tom is a Western Michigan University grad (Biological Sciences and Environmental Studies) who is well acquainted with the Ott Preserve, having spent his immediate post-graduation years in Battle Creek and having been a board member of Friends of the Ott Preserve. The Friends is a non-profit conservation group formed soon after the 1994 timber cutting in Ott but just now being reactivated after a dormant period following several tranquil years at the Preserve. We entered at a parking lot at the south end on land donated  by the Sutarek family as an addition to the preserve after the logging. I was glad to get a chance to walk a part of the proposed trail, though exactly where the trail is  supposed to go needs to be made clearer, at least to me. If I’m reading the available material correctly, the trail goes out of its way to invade the Ott Preserve, potentially bringing traffic whose interest is not the Preserve but mileage on the Calhoun County or North Country Trail. If things go on as they have been, the public may not get a full picture of the specifications for the trail until trail advocates and associated government agencies have settled everything among themselves.  Some comments by the trail advocates seem to suggest–maybe are meant to suggest–that that point may already have been reached.  We read comments like “Both of these entities could pull their funding for the project if the approved route… is changed.” and “If we change the plan or encounter significant delays in implementation, we could lose dollars committed to Calhoun County….” It does seem clear that part of the route in the preserve is projected to follow the existing main esker trail.  We reached this trail after traveling over other sections of the existing foot path, which included an unpaved dirt section, a Trek boardwalk, and an iron bridge.  I’m uncertain what the plans are for these sections of the path.  Are they flat enough, smooth enough, wide enough, and with a strong-enough base to be incorporated in the proposed trail?

Width of the Main Esker Trail, Ott Preserve. Photo February 2011 by Richard Brewer

The main esker trail begins not much past the bridge.  Currently this foot trail–shown in the first two photos–runs on the side of the esker and is less than five feet wide, or in other words, less than half the width of the proposed paved rail.  To the 10-foot paved trail would be added additional 2-foot-wide unpaved right-of-way strips on each side. The resulting 14-foot trail would mean a major remaking of this land. If it actually followed the current trail (which the trail advocates’ literature suggests), a much larger shelf than seen in the photo–three times as wide as shown, maybe more–would have to be cut in the side of the esker.  If, instead, the trail followed the top of the esker, a great deal of grading and filling would be needed to produce a flat, level surface for a 14-foot right of way. It seems clear that much more land in the preserve than just a claimed 2 acres (1.7 miles long X 10 feet wide) would be disturbed in the construction. Eskers are interesting land forms. They are formed toward the front of a sheet of glacial ice at a time when the front is just sitting there or wasting away at the end of a glacial advance.  Running water carrying rocks, gravel, sand, and silt forms channels through the ice–below it, on top of it, or even as a tunnel within it.  The rivers in these narrow. meandering channels deposit the sediments they’re carrying. The result, when the glacier has melted back, are ridges–eskers–of water-sorted, but mostly coarse, material. Aside from damages to the plant cover from construction, the existence and use of such a trail would have continuing harmful effects on the vegetation and wildlife. A broad, paved trail forms a barrier to travel for many small animals, fragmenting their populations. Birds and mammals move away from a trail when people go by, especially noisy people; hence the amount of usable habitat is reduced. Construction and maintenance equipment bring in seeds of invasive plants. Besides these unfortunate biological effects, there are other reasons to be sorry to see the esker whittled away.  It’s a specific habitat for organisms, but it’s also a distinctive landform, interesting in itself. An esker is worth protecting. About forty years ago, the city of Portage refurbished Ramona Park on Long Lake in Kalamazoo County.  One feature of Ramona Park was the presence of a couple of drumlins.  Like eskers, drumlins are glacier-produced hills, but they’re usually small, stream-lined, and symmetrical.  Frequently they’re tear-drop-shaped in outline, in which case the pointed ends show the direction the ice sheet was going toward. In fixing up the park, the Portage park department got rid of the drumlins–bull-dozed them flat and used the till to fill in some low spots.  I’m not sure whether the Portage politicians and bureaucrats didn’t know that the little hills were drumlins or didn’t care.  Possibly they knew very well and flattened them with sincere regret after an environmental assessment and a careful weighing of all economic, environmental, and societal costs and benefits.

An Absence of Drumlins, Ramona Park, Portage. Photo February 2011 by Richard Brewer

Anyway, the drumlins are gone, replaced with playing fields, parking lots, and lawn. I think the citizens of southwest Michigan got skinned.

Preserving landforms–eskers, drumlins, waterfalls, caves, cliffs–is slightly different from preserving ecosystems or flora and fauna, though they go together.  But after all, the land is where Homo sapiens has always lived.  It’s pretty common for certain unusual landforms to be preserved. Waterfalls, caves, and natural bridges usually get protected, one way or another.  There are a few land trusts that specialize in caves, and there could certainly be others that specialize in, say, springs or serpentine soil. But we should recognize that humans have always altered, even damaged, the land they occupy. This includes eskers. Eskers are often associated with swampy or marshy areas, as at Ott, and for as long as humans have lived in the glaciated parts of the world–about 40,000 years for Europe, perhaps 15,000 years in North America–they have probably used eskers, where available, as a dry path.  Almost certainly, the local Indians trod the Ott esker, and there’s no reason for us not to do so still.  But we ought to tread as lightly as possible, not with bulldozers and asphalt.  I expect my ancestors in Europe as well as the Potawatomi here in Michigan walked single file.  That’s probably still good enough for us when we’re in a preserve.

Beaver Dam, Ott Preserve. Photo February 2011 by Richard Brewer

Altering our living space is not a uniquely human thing; every organism does it—pigs rooting up spring wildflowers and buffalos enlarging their wallows are just obvious examples.  The difference between us and other organisms is that we are, or ought to be, aware of the damage we can do.  We can mend our ways rather than wait for destruction and catastrophe to take their toll on us.  Instant gratification without considering environmental consequences is behaving like every other member of the animal kingdom.  Thought which may lead to prudential restraint is what we do that is human.

Slash in Ott Preserve after timber cut in 1993-4. Photo March 1994 by Richard Brewer

Preserved natural areas are vulnerable.  I don’t mean they’re delicate.  It’s true that some will need a particular kind of management, such as prescribed fire, and some may not tolerate a lot of human traffic, but good-sized natural areas–a few hundred acres–are often fairly robust.  They’re vulnerable not because they’re fragile, but because there are always certain people who look at preserved land and think it’s not utilized. It’s just empty land, a land bank waiting for their higher and better, destructive use.

The vulnerability is complete when the appetite for a quick, cheap, and easy fix is joined with one more factor:  The organization charged with defense of the conserved land is not up to the job.

We have seen this vulnerability several times in southwest Michigan.  One recent case is the Colony Farm Orchard at Western Michigan University, described in a number of earlier posts at this website.  Land bought with tax-payer dollars was given to WMU by the state with the restriction that it be kept as open space for public use.  But a little more than 30 years later, in 2009, WMU persuaded the Michigan legislature and governor to strip the restriction from the Orchard.  The land is currently open to any kind of development.  Though WMU claimed expansion of their BTR park–to create jobs–as their justification, no such restriction remained in the bill signed by then-governor Jennifer Granholm.

Another example is Jean Klock Park on the Lake Michigan shore at Benton Harbor. It’s a particularly sad case. In 1917, John Nellis Klock and his wife Carrie gave the city 90 acres of coastal marsh and sand dunes, including nearly 3000 feet of lake frontage and beach. It was, as far as I can determine, the first Lake Michigan natural land protected for public use.

Given as a memorial to a daughter who died young, the land was meant to be for the benefit of the people of Benton Harbor but especially for the children.  The city proved a good steward for nearly 70 years. Then, in 1986, the city tried to add a large part of the park to its Downtown Development Authority.  This threat was rebuffed, but another surfaced in 2003 in the form of a proposed luxury housing development.  Although this specific proposal also failed, the settlement reached set the stage for a successful attack within two years in the form of the Harbor Shores development which includes a Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course that has subsumed a large area of the park’s best dunes.

The machinations that resulted in the degradation of Jean Klock Park are probably not yet totally revealed, but even so it is difficult to summarize the operation in a few paragraphs. Several people and agencies that might be seen as having protection of the park and its natural features as part of their job or mission, instead acted to undo the protection.  Among them were the Benton Harbor city commission, Governor Jennifer Granholm (again), U.S. Representative Fred Upton, Michigan’s Natural Resources Trust Fund board, and the U.S. Park Service.  There were, of course, also some conservation heroes fighting the development.

Loss of areas that we have every reason to think of as protected in perpetuity is not restricted to Michigan; attacks are regrettably widespread.  A current example is the pristine Izembek National Wildlife Refuge at the end of the Alaska Peninsula in southeastern Alaska.  The U.S. Congress provided pork-barrel funding to build a 9-mile road between King Cove and Cold Bay, two villages with a combined population of fewer than 900 people.  The road would run through designated wilderness including wetlands that are sites for feeding, nesting, or molting of black brant and Steller’s eider, among other arctic tundra species.   Construction is awaiting an environmental impact statement.

The current attempt to put a wide, paved trail through the best parts of the Harvey Ott Preserve in Battle Creek, Michigan, may not be as globally important as a road in a 400,000+ acre refuge containing wetlands of international importance. But otherwise the situation is fairly similar.

The Ott situation is especially unhappy because Ott has been through this before, about 15 years ago. The Calhoun County Commission sold about 300 trees, mostly large oaks, out of the preserve.  The catastrophe was not as complete as it could have been, because as the result of heavy citizen opposition, the commission canceled a second clear-cut that would have removed the rest of the upland forest in the preserve.

The 1993-1994 Ott timber sale had no redeeming features.  It happened mostly because the Calhoun County Parks Department was broke. On the other hand, a trail for hiking and biking can be a good thing.  (Trails and trail conservancies are given a thorough discussion in chapter 13 of Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America.) Certainly the existing foot paths in Ott are, to a point, good things.

One justification I’ve heard for running a trail through Ott is as a connector for the North Country Trail. If a connector is needed, it’s unlikely that a satisfactory route would need to invade the Ott Preserve.  I suspect that Ott has been chosen mostly because those pushing the trail see Ott as being unused, empty, not utilized.

I suspect they also see it as free land.

If the best route–avoiding the Ott Preserve except perhaps for a small spur–would involve private land, private land can be acquired by purchase or the right to use the land as a trail can be acquired as an easement.

Sometimes the right thing to do is a little harder than the expedient one.

It’s possible that a new trail for Calhoun County could be a good thing.  A new trail through the Ott Preserve wouldn’t be.  Ott is utilized.  It’s a preserve.

Shrubby cinquefoil, a characteristic fen species. Photo at Vanderbilt Fen October 1988. Copyright Richard Brewer

The Ott Preserve at the east edge of Battle Creek was the subject of an attack several years ago.  The 260 acres had been preserved early in the 20th century through joint efforts of local naturalists and John Harvey Kellogg.  In 1977, Calhoun County bought the preserve using money from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.  Fifteen years later, the 1993 County government, ignorant of what the Ott Preserve was about, agreed to sell 305 large trees, mostly oaks from a southern upland section of the preserve.  Battle Creek citizens and conservationists throughout the state protested and the County Commission backed off from a second cut that would have logged the rest  of the preserve.  There is more about the events of 1993 in Chapter 4 of Conservancy: The Land Trust Movement in America.

Serious damage had been done, but the oak forests of the upland ridges (eskers in geological terms) were saved and the wetlands that include the unusual type of vegetation referred to as fen were not seriously damaged.  Now another 15 years has gone by and a new threat has shown itself.  A group has proposed running a wide, paved trail through the preserve.  Part of the justification appears to be to provide a link with the North Country trail.  Pedestrian trails already exist within the Ott Preserve.  Much is still unclear about the current proposal including justification, alternatives, funding for construction, ability to pay for maintenance in the long term, immediate and continuing impact, and acceptability to the citizens of the county and the region.

The following comments on this current threat to the Ott Preserve were prepared by Sophia DiPietro, an advocate for the preserve and member of the Protect Ott Coalition. They were published in slightly different form in the Battle Creek Inquirer Sunday 6 February 2011 with the heading “Ott is natural gem worth preserving.” The Enquirer website includes several useful comments by readers in addition to the article.

Don’t Allow Degradation of the Harvey N. Ott Preserve

By Sophia DiPietro
The nonprofit Calhoun County Trailway Alliance has proposed a nearly $2 million, 14-foot-wide “smooth-surfaced” trail-to-nowhere through the heart of the 100-year-old Ott Biological Preserve, and throughout Calhoun County. The Trailway Alliance says their aim is to “enhance the quality of life and environment for present and future generations.” As an outdoor enthusiast and healthy lifestyle advocate, I am in favor of outdoor recreation; but at the expense of damaging the natural features of Calhoun County’s only preserve? No way!

Ott Biological Preserve is the most biologically diverse and pristine natural area that Calhoun County has. It is a living piece of Michigan’s geologic history. Ott’s unique 10,000 year-old glacially-formed eskers were once the streambeds of ancient rivers. They wind nearly one mile throughout the Preserve. Unlike the existing trail that follows these eskers, the “hard” engineering required to level out inclines, and to cut and dig a “smooth” or paved ten foot-wide trail (with two feet of clearing on each side,) would compromise the esker. In the blink of an eye our rich geologic history will be replaced with the everlasting footprint of heavy machinery. Downslope lies a globally rare prairie fen wetland habitat (fewer than 2000 acres occur in Michigan,) and three spring-fed kettle lakes– former sites of large ice block melts. These sites could receive inputs of sediment via erosion from construction disturbance and from pavement runoff. These vital headwater ecosystems are habitat to state and federally listed threatened plants and animals. They provide us with floodwater control and groundwater supply filtration that enhances our water quality. Ott provides breeding grounds, shelter, and food to mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds.  Some may not survive, while adaptable ones may become “nuisances” in adjacent neighborhoods.

Ott’s trails are currently used for hiking, jogging, nature photography, birdwatching, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, quiet reflection and educational studies. Since the first 105 acres were purchased in 1911, the land has been used as an outdoor classroom, especially for advanced college research. The notion that Ott is not used enough is false, and a “preserve” is no place for 10-speed bicycles, skateboards and rollerblades. In fact, any asphalt, gravel, or other “smooth” development of the trails will eliminate cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing and winter hiking in the Preserve, since non-dirt surfaces are not appropriate for these sports. The proposed smooth impermeable surfaces would retain water in puddles, refreeze into ice and create a slip-and-fall danger. This would effectively take the Preserve out of use for the cold months, when many people are even more active in Ott.

Luckily, an alternative route through Ott exists that is more economical, more handicap accessible, and scenic but with fewer negative impacts. Providing an independently conducted environmental evaluation would give this route a green light, the trail would follow an already-cleared Consumers Energy power-line right-of-way along the west boundary of the Preserve, right to East Michigan Avenue. That exit point places you a mere 50 feet from where the Alliance proposes that their trail meet back up with the same exact power lines, right across the street in Kimball Pines! It could incorporate the placement of a currently un-used historic bridge, to cross over a tributary to the Kalamazoo River. The diversity of “edge-loving” species of birds and mammals that inhabit areas between forest and open habitats makes this alternative route rich in wildlife-viewing opportunities. I have bird-watched this route many times, to my heart’s content.

The development of the preserve as currently proposed would have complex and permanent environmental impacts.  Much more is involved than just “how wide” the proposed trail development is, or “what surface” is used. Transforming this peaceful nature preserve into an urban park would make Ott into what every other urban park is: paved, loud and with limited nature experience. And let’s face it, in a county that is recovering from one of the worst oil spills in its history, does it really make sense to develop and destroy the one last remaining public wilderness area we have?

The 100-year history of the Ott Biological Preserve rests in the hands of the Calhoun County Commissioners. Make your voice heard at Change.org. But also contact Calhoun County Commissioners directly and attend Commission meetings. To stay informed, join our page at Facebook.    Spread the word.

Buttonbush swamp in winter, Oshtemo Township. Photo by Richard Brewer

Whatever else Christmas may mean to a birder, it definitely means the Audubon Christmas bird count.

The National Audubon Society sponsors a continent-wide set of local counts to be taken some time around Christmas, specifically on a single day between December 14 and January 5.   Local groups of birders count birds in circular areas 15 miles across. What most groups do is divide the circle up into sectors and maybe sub-sectors and assign a party to each.  The party may be one person ambling ( or driving) along and censusing birds by himself or herself.  Or it may be a small group, but if the group gets above about four, it would be more efficient to break it and the sector up.

A circle of 15-mile diameter doesn’t sound very big, but it is.  It amounts to a little more than 175 square miles. A square mile is 640 acres.  Except for a few sophisticated urbanites, most of us out here in the part of the US where the grid rules–where the land is laid out in townships, ranges, and sections–most of us have at least a vague idea of what 40 acres looks like.  A square mile (640 acres) is one section, which can be divided into quarter sections–each 160 acres–and each quarter-section can be divided into quarters.  These are each 40 acres, as in the back forty.

So if a local bird group divides its count circle into 20 slices or chunks, the average size will be between 8 and 9 square miles, or between 5000 and 6000 acres. The average bird club is making a good showing if it has 40 birders out and counting, or in other words, about 2 birders per sector.

The point of all these numbers, if there is one, is that most Christmas bird counts are a bit understaffed.

But that’s not a serious problem.  First, the main point of the count is fun, of a sort.  It’s fun to get out and brave the elements in the coldest, darkest part of the year.  The Christmas count is the birder’s winter solstice festival.  And it’s fun to see what birds are around, what birds are braving those conditions along with us.  A few bird species have normal body temperatures around the same as humans, 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but most of the small birds we count at Christmas have temperatures up around 105-110 degrees. It takes a lot of feeding during the daylight hours, a lot of sunflowers seeds and suet or hibernating insects and fat from a deer carcass, for a chickadee to stay alive for 24 hours in winter.

Christmas Counts do provide data for scientific purposes.  They provide a very accurate map of the winter range of the most of the bird species.  They provide passable information on abundance of many of the species, expressed as an index value, usually number of birds per party-hour.

But except for a few species, a Christmas count almost never gives us the actual number of birds, Song Sparrows or Black-capped Chickadees or Cedar Waxwings, in our 15-mile circle.  On a well-regulated count, it might be possible to arrange things to tally every individual of an uncommon, conspicuous species, especially one of a well-defined habitat.  For example if there are only three areas of open water in a count circle and we cover all three, we can probably get a pretty good count for the ducks.  A good count for the time when somebody visits the three areas of open water, that is.  There’s no guarantee that some ducks from our circle didn’t fly a few miles to a different circle just before we counted.

The first Christmas Count I took was in 1949, when I was a sophomore in high school.  Bill Hardy, Kenny Stewart and I took a Murphysboro, Illinois, count on December 27th.  Hardy was the instigator.  He was the oldest, the best birder, and also more of an organizer than Kenny or me.

Things were more casual then.  We just decided to take a count, figured out our circle, took it, typed up the results, and sent them to Audubon Field Notes, which published ours along with the whole batch of counts from around the country.  Audubon Field Notes is called American Birds now, and the figures that get sent in on forms go into a database and the published Christmas Count consists mostly  of summaries for the different geographic regions.  The total number of counts today is well over 2000, mostly in the U.S., but quite a few in Canada, and some in Latin America and the Caribbean, and a few elsewhere.

We took the Murphysboro count a few more times. I can’t remember when we stopped, but eventually Hardy went off to graduate school at Michigan State and a little later I went off to the University of Illinois.

I ought to mention that the Murphysboro count was not the first southern Illinois Christmas  bird count.  A few years before, William Marberry, a botanist and all-round naturalist on the faculty at Southern Illinois University, had taken a count south of Carbondale and, I think, including Giant City State Park, or part of it.  He may have repeated the count another year, but I’d have to get to the library to look at the back issues of Audubon Field Notes to be sure.

I’ve occasionally gone on a couple of counts in a year, but I’ve also missed an occasional year.  Ordinarily though, even if I’ll be away from home, I try to get in touch with the organizer of a count near where I’ll be at Christmas time and ask if I can join in.  Most groups are happy to have visitors help out. Most of the other places where I’ve helped seem to be in places that are warmer in the winter than Michigan.

Most counts that have been running for a long time have a tradition as to when the count is held.  The Kalamazoo count is supposed to be the Saturday after Christmas.  When Christmas is on a Saturday, as is the case this year, this means that the count would be held on New Year’s Day.  That would seem to be no problem, except that the tradition for the Southern Kalamazoo County Count (SKCC) is that it be held on New Year’s Day.

The SKCC is relatively young, started for the 1975-76 count.  It’s odd in that it is a rectangle rather than a circle, hence it doesn’t qualify for the National Audubon database. One advantage of a rectangle is that, here in our gridded landscape, you nearly always know exactly whether a bird is in or out of the count area, depending on which side of the road it’s on.  Sometimes you’re not so sure about a bird near the edge of a circular count area. On the other hand, circular count areas are the most compact shape and accordingly have the least amount of edge to worry about.

I understand that in the clash of tradition this year, SKCC won.  The Kalamazoo Count is on Sunday, 26  December 2010, rather than on the Saturday after Christmas, 1 January 2011.  What would Frank Hinds say, or Theodosia Hadley?  Or Charlie Cook, or Helen Burrell, or Bob van Blaricom (Buckeye Bob), or Harold Wiles?

I was happy to accept answers at any level of the environment from “If I don’t build my house in chaparral I won’t get burnt up in the next chaparral fire.” to “I’ll cut down on energy usage, hence CO2 emissions, and I and the rest of us won’t get drowned when we’re living in Miami, Charleston, or Wilmington and the sea level rises.”

Some students got it, but a few didn’t.  For the latter, perhaps ecology was simply a required course, as remote from real life as a class in theatrical costumes of the 17th century.

Just out is an interesting article by two who get it, Jim Armstrong, a poet, and Kim Chapman, an old friend and former student.  Both got a lot of their schooling in Kalamazoo.  The article is called What Laura Saw: Making a Little Home on the Extreme Great Plains. The article is about the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder but puts it in an ecological context.  Ecology turns out to set the social and economic contexts of the Ingalls’ lives also.

The article appears in the recently published Proceedings of the 21st North American Prairie Conference. The conference was at Winona State University in Minnesota in August 2008.

Western Michigan University was host in 1982 to the Eighth Prairie Conference. Kim Chapman, then a graduate student, served as field trip coordinator, poetry contest chairman, and co-designer of the logo.  He was also finishing up his master’s thesis.

What Laura saw around her little house, in Armstrong and Chapman’s words, was “a highly evolved environment, where several thousand years of drought, fire, hail, harsh winters, and intense grazing by ungulates and locusts shaped a responsiveness in plant and animal life that enabled the whole of the environment to persist even as individuals and species disappeared or shifted in abundance and location. That environment was beautiful and hostile by turns and Laura described this in memorable detail.”

The bison and the grasshoppers (the Rocky Mountain locust) were members of this ecosystem.  The locust is now extinct and the bison no longer around as a free-roaming species.  Still extant because they don’t infringe much on human property rights or economics are most of the bird species whose life histories fit them for flourishing in the years of good rainfall and good growth and pretty much moving out in the droughts.  The Yellow-headed Blackbird is an example that I talked about a few months ago.

“The argument threaded through all the books,” Armstrong and Chapman point out, “is that an independent-minded family, pulling together and with a little help from neighbors, could make a living on the Great Plains by their enterprise and hard labor.  As the books progress, however, the reader understands that Pa [Charles P. Ingalls] was not able to realize that dream for his family.  This tension is what makes the books readable today.”

By 1894, Laura and her husband, Almanzo,  had moved to “the well-watered Missouri Ozarks where they lived for the rest of their lives.”  And where Laura and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, worked on the Little House books starting in 1930.

The books promote individualism, hard work, and self-sufficiency.  These are admirable traits, but were not enough in themselves to bring success in the unpredictable habitat of the Great Plains.  Even here in the “well-watered” eastern U.S. and, in fact, in the world as whole, we now live in an environment  characterized by unpredictability–largely brought on by our own actions.  Other virtues, especially an attention to the whole ecosystem, human, biotic, and abiotic, will have to be added if success is to be ours.

Copies of the Proceedings, which have a lot of other prairie articles besides this one, are available in 2 formats: CD, $ 8.00 per copy or hard copy, $29.50 per copy. The combination CD and hard copy are $35.00.  All prices include mailing.  Make your check out and send to Bruno Borsari, Ph.D., Department of Biology, 175 West Mark Street, Winona State University, Winona, MN 55987    Phone (507) 457-2822.

I’d have to find my life list to tell you just when I made my last entry, but I think it was sometime toward the end of my freshman year in college.  The summer after that, in 1952, Kenny Stewart and I hitch-hiked to Mexico and saw a good many new birds, quite a few that we could identify and quite a few we couldn’t.

There was no Mexican field guide at the time, and so we depended on George M. Sutton’s new book, Mexican Birds: First Impressions and Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds, and on taking lots of field notes to work with when we got back.  Sutton’s book had an appendix that tried to list most of the birds of Mexico; it was helpful, just not helpful enough for Neotropical beginners like Kenny and me.

The first Mexican field guide to appear was Birds of Mexico: A Guide for Field Identification published in 1953– several months after we got back home–by Emmet Reid Blake.  Blake was associate curator of birds at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Except for a frontispiece of the Collared Aracari, the book lacked colored illustrations, though about 350 species (or at least their heads) were illustrated with black-and-white drawings. Nevertheless, it was a very useful book and allowed us to identify most of our unknowns.  The first Mexican field guide with color illustrations of most species was the Peterson guide by Peterson and Edward L. Chalif. It did not appear until 1973–though it had been promised years before.

In my early days, I enjoyed seeing rare birds, and I still do.  I still enjoy birding, and I think this is probably true of most ornithologists.  Avian biologists, maybe not so much.

But there are many sorts of rare birds and some are more interesting than others.  An ordinary extralimital observation, say some European shorebird or gull that through a series of errors spends a few days on a Michigan beach or a mall parking lot is only mildly interesting; it does not have a lot of biology going for it.  Maybe there could be some interest in knowing what physiological aberration caused it to go astray and what the fate of the bird was.  A good many of these out-of-place birds are waifs whose life expectancy may be pretty short.

On the other hand, among the shorebirds and gulls, it sometimes happens that a single individual of an out-of-range species turns up at the same place in two or more successive falls, as Philip Chu describes in some of his species accounts in The Birds of Michigan (edited by G. A. McPeek and R. J. Adams, Jr.).  The suspicion in such a case is that the same individual bird is making the same mistakes in successive years.  That would be interesting. Interesting too is the case (also mentioned by Chu) of one adult Sandwich Tern being seen in June 1986 along Lake Superior in Minnesota, in 1987 at Lake Michigan near Berrien Springs, in Ontario April, May, and June 1988, and in April 1989 at Lake Michigan near Chicago.  It’s impossible to know if all the reports were of the same bird, but it’s an intriguing possibility.

Particularly interesting these days would be the first representatives of some southern species to try to nest in Michigan.  Someday, as the climate warms, several southern species may become common, but the first recorded nesting pair will be a rarity worth watching for.

Another interesting rarity is the Merlin that nested in Kalamazoo this past summer. Here is a species that seems to be nesting a little farther south than used to be the case, seemingly going against the global warming trend.  What’s that about?

The Yellow-headed Blackbird and other Great Plains species that I talked about in an earlier post are also interesting.  An occasional individual wanders over to Michigan most summers, but in severe drought years, more come, and some nest.

I got a phone call about a rare bird a few days ago.  The caller had seen a remarkable bird in Oshtemo Township, which lies west of the city of Kalamazoo.  It was a large bird, mottled reddish with a yellow head and a long tail.  The bird was at the edge of a wooded area.  I couldn’t think of any local native species or, in fact, any North American species that met those specifications.  But I’ve been baffled before when trying to identify a bird based on someone’s description.  Because we each have our own frame of reference, a description of what seems like a fabulous species can turn out to be something relatively routine.

Fortunately, the caller had taken photos.  Unfortunately, the image of the bird was too small to make out much detail.  But it was clearly a reddish bird with a yellow head and a long tail, standing on the ground.

It looked like a pheasant but was not any of the varieties of Ring-necked Pheasant that occur in North America.  Of course, Ring-necked Pheasants are not native to North America.  In Michigan, they were imported and released many times from the 1880s on by farmers, hunters, sportsmen’s clubs and the Michigan Conservation Department.  The species was well established in the state by about 1920.  Here in southwest Michigan, it was particularly abundant in the early 1970s but declined sharply after three hard winters late in that decade and has never, or at least not yet, recovered.

This bird was no Ring-necked Pheasant, but it did not take long to identify which pheasant it most likely was–a male Golden Pheasant, Chrysolophus pictus.

Golden Pheasants are native to China, occurring in broad-leaved evergreen forest and bamboo thickets of mountainous regions. The giant panda, in its much reduced current distribution, often occurs in the same habitats as the Golden Pheasant.

The life history of the Golden Pheasant in the wild seems poorly studied.  Because it has been widely imported to Europe and the U.S. by game-bird fanciers and aviculturists since the mid 18th century, its reproduction and life in captivity are well known.  Releases in some parts of the United Kingdom evidently led to some temporarily self-sustaining populations, but few have persisted.

I haven’t read of any feral populations of Golden Pheasants in the U.S., and I expect that the bird seen in Oshtemo escaped from some local pheasant fancier.  Aviculturists have propagated various mutants and hybrids, and the bird  in Oshtemo could well have been one of those rather than pure wild-type Chrysolophus pictus.

If I happened to see the Oshtemo Golden Pheasant, I don’t think I’d post it on the Michigan birding list or add it to my life list, if I still kept one.  But it would be fun to catch a glimpse of a large red bird with a yellow head the next time I’m driving in the vicinity of Prairie Ridge Elementary School.

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.

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.

Beech-maple forest in early spring, Pavilion Township. Photograph by Richard Brewer.

A stretch of chilly weather, especially some cool nights below freezing, has kept spring from racing ahead the way it sometimes does.  This is good; summer is a fine time, but there are lots of things to experience in spring and it’s more fun to have them spread out rather than all happen in a week.

When I wrote my last post, no frogs had been calling as yet, but soon after, the afternoon of 17 March, wood frogs were calling in the small kettles such as the one shown in the preceding post.

Finding another sound to match any animal’s voice is difficult.  But saying that wood frog calls sound like the feeding chuckle of ducks is not a bad comparison. The frog calls are a little louder, I think, and each one sounds quite fervent, unlike the kind of absent-minded noodling of a bunch of dabbling ducks. But the comparison is a pretty good way to give other people an idea of what wood frogs sound like.

I have heard no chorus frogs or spring peepers yet.  We usually think of these two as the earliest frogs here in eastern North America, but some years wood frogs have been earlier in my experience.  I’m not sure, though, that–for whatever reason–peepers and chorus frogs aren’t rarer than they used to be.

Another animal that I believe was decidedly less common the past few months than in preceding years is the white-footed mouse.  I don’t go out and census mice in the woods; I base this impression on how many mice I trap each winter in the house.  The house here in Oshtemo Township is in oak forest. Beginning when the nights start to get cold, the mice start to find ways to get inside.  I trap them with ordinary mouse traps baited with a little peanut butter with a couple of sunflower seeds stuck in the peanut butter or inserted elsewhere on the trigger of the trap.  Most winters I trap a couple of dozen white-footed mice.  This winter I caught a couple of mice early on and then no more through most of November, December, January, and February.  I also set traps in my house in the southeast part of Kalamazoo County, in beech-maple forest.  Most years I catch several mice through the winter, but this past winter only a couple.

I don’t know what may have happened to the mice this winter and I don’t know whether it’s temporary or a permanent decline.  Next fall and winter may give me a clue.

Floerkea proserpinacoides, False Mermaid Weed, Big Island Woods, March 30, 2010. Photograph by Richard Brewer.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.  It’s early spring.  The wood frogs are calling.  In the beech-maple forest, harbinger of spring, our earliest spring wild flower is finishing up (a blog called Kalamazoo Seasons has a nice photo of the flower). The very first spring beauty flowers have opened. Wild leek is up.

And the little annual Floerkea proserpinacoides with its pale-green narrow leaflets is spread profusely over the ground in the few woodlots where it occurs, but is not quite in bloom yet.  This odd mesic forest specialist deserves a better vernacular name than the obscure, bookish “false mermaid weed.”  Maybe we need a contest for a new, better-fitting name for it.

Anyway it’s spring and will be for a good month yet, maybe longer.  Let’s enjoy it.

Leaves of wild leek, March 2010, Pavilion Township. Photograph by Richard Brewer.

Open water in March in a buttonbush swamp, Oshtemo Township. Photo by Richard Brewer.

Spring began in southwest Michigan in the past few days.   One sign has been the Sandhill Cranes overhead, giving their loud rattle.  They could be on their way north or they could be local birds; several pairs now nest in Kalamazoo County.

Because snow cover was so continuous, and thick, some birds that are usually here by February were mostly delayed into early March.  The cranes are one species, Red-winged Blackbirds are another. I saw my first redwing a few days ago and they’re now pretty well scattered over the countryside.

In Pavilion Township Saturday, Song Sparrows were singing, Horned Larks were on territory in the open fields, and sailing overhead was my first Turkey Vulture of the new year. First in Michigan anyway; we saw Turkey and Black Vultures every day in Costa Rica. Most were probably resident there, but some could have been wintering birds from North America. This morning I saw my second Turkey Vulture sailing above West Main in Oshtemo Township.

I haven’t heard any frogs calling yet, and chilly as it is I don’t expect any tonight, but warmer weather is predicted for tomorrow.

As soon as bare patches began to appear around houses, the early spring bulbs were visible, some flowering.  I’ve already seen winter aconite, snow drops, and crocuses in bloom without hunting very hard.  Our native early spring wildflowers grow mostly in the mesic deciduous forests, and many of them are spring ephemerals–they come up, bloom, and then die back, so for most of the year they’re invisible above ground.  Right now the beech-maple forests probably have harbinger-of-spring in flower, and in the wooded low spots currently occupied by temporary vernal pools, skunk cabbage flowers will be out, though perhaps not producing pollen quite yet.

Acute-leaved hepatica, an early spring wild flower, but not a spring ephemeral. Photographed in an Oshtemo Township oak forest by Richard Brewer.

Our native early spring flowers take advantage of the brief window of full sun that opens between the arrival of warmer weather and the closing of the forest canopy by sugar maples.  It would make sense that the cultivated spring bulbs we buy and plant might be the early spring flowers from the deciduous forests of other parts of the Earth, but that isn’t the case.  Rather, most of the spring bulbs blooming in our front yards come from the steppes or the alpine and sub-alpine meadows of the Middle East and Asia.

The seasons follow one another in a continuous cycle.  A year has no natural beginning and no end.  Several groups of ancients gave the winter solstice, around December 21, special significance because it was the day they were reassured that the sun was actually coming back for another year. Our New Year’s Day, January 1 is arbitrary but since it comes not too long after the solstice, it’s not wholly unsatisfactory as a starting point in the cycle.

To me, though, the first definite signs of spring in nature, the sorts of things that have happened in the past week or so, feel like the engine of the year starting up.  In our temperate latitudes, this is the start of the year’s organic production; photosynthesis really gets underway, storing sunlight that, passed on along the food chain, runs nearly the totality of the living world. For a high percentage of the creatures here, spring is the time for beginning reproduction as well as production.  Eggs hatch and babies are born, and young of the year having new combinations  of genes not quite the same as either parent go out to become part of a later generation–or not.

Spring has arrived in southwest Michigan–I think–and a new year has started.  Happy New Year!

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.

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.

Sticky trap for insects possibly the property of MSU, Colony Farm Orchard, spring 2009. Photo by Richard Brewer

Friday night, 18 December 2009, between 10:30 and 11:00 PM, not long before adjournment, the Michigan Senate passed HB 5207, which would strip the open space/public use restrictions from the Colony Farm Orchard land, allowing Western Michigan University to put it to any use.

Most of the senators voting yes probably bought WMU’s claim that passing the bill would create jobs by using it to expand the BTR park. If it would, none of the jobs would come on line until at least 2013, since any expansion of the BTR park would occur after the current park is full. It still has three unused lots, at least two vacancies, and the temporary soccer facility of 20 acres.

I’m working on a longer post, but it’s worth pointing out now that the next step is for the bill to go to Governor Jennifer Granholm, who will sign it or veto it.

For those interested in commenting on the legislation, here is some contact information for the governor.  It’s likely that there is time to reach her by any means including US Postal letters but the sooner, the better. Phone calls, letters, Faxes, and emails are all useful.

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 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

Spicebush, late October, Oshtemo Township, Section 9. Photo by Richard Brewer

Wetlands are scarce in Oshtemo Township.  Its thirty-six square miles are mostly high and dry and the soils are mostly well-drained.  A few kettles exist in the moraine-outwash plain topoography.  These are depressions formed when ice blocks left behind during the retreat of the last Pleistocene ice sheet melted.  Most kettles in Oshtemo Township don’t hold water today.  A few do some or most years; perhaps a clay lens lies somewhere beneath them, or perhaps enough clay occurred in the surrounding glacial drift to form a more-or-less impermeable layer when it eroded into the kettle.

The kettles that hold water year round or for a few months in the spring tend to have a buttonbush swamp at the bottom; some have a band of spicebush up the bank from the buttonbush.  These are features of some of the sites disturbed least by agriculture and other human activity.

A small triangle of swamp forest is still present in the northwest corner of Oshtemo Township, but several wetland vegetation types that occur elsewhere in Kalamazoo County don’t seem to be present here.  I’m unaware of any examples of open bog, bog forest, sedge fen, or prairie fen.  Possibly small patches of some of these might have been here at the time of settlement.

Early this November I started noticing a good-sized tamarack tree in the wetland at the west edge of the Lilian Anderson Arboretum (Section 15) as I drove by.  It was only 10 0r 15 yards south of West Main (M-43).   At this time in the fall, tamarack needles turn a gold color, so the species is easily spotted.  I finally stopped by on Saturday 14 November, 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.  The site is at the base of a slope where ground water feeds the sizable wetland northeast of Bonnie Castle Lake.  However, I haven’t noticed fen plants at other places along the edge of the wetland on many other visits to the Arboretum.  I walked around near the tamarack, but I was just wearing short leather boots and couldn’t get very far out. I didn’t see any obvious fen indicator species, but this isn’t not a good time of year for botanizing anyway.  I’ll have another look or two next spring and summer.

I’ll also make a point late next October of driving around the other wetlands in the township to see if more tamaracks are evident.  Clarence and Florence Hanes found tamaracks in the Twin Lakes area which is right next door to Oshtemo, but nearly all the Twin Lake low ground is across the line, in Alamo Township.

Spotted wintergreen, mid-November,Oshtemo Township, Section 9. Photo by Richard Brewer.

Walking back up the wooded slope above the wetland at the Arboretum, I saw a few spotted wintergreen plants (also called spotted pipsissewa).  It’s a small plant, handsome with dark green leaves with a whitish line running along the midrib.  The line is often rather jagged looking where the pale coloration runs off varying distances along the side veins. The leaves are evergreen and were peeking through the fallen oak leaves. A good share of the oak areas in Oshtemo Township that weren’t cleared still have the species, though I’ve never seen it abundant.  A plant or two or small patches pretty widely scattered is the way it usually occurs. Its geographic range is basically eastern North America, in most parts of which its occurrence is much the same as here–never common but seemingly not in serious trouble.

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.