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.

Button found 14 April 2011 and reused

Whether the stable population will be 1.5 billion or 5 billion, the question is: How do we get there?… I have no doubt we’re going to have a bad hundred years.  We have the resources to gracefully handle the transition, but we won’t.  We apparently can’t.

–Jeremy Grantham

Jeremy Grantham is an investment strategist who has specialized in identifying bubbles–Japanese stocks in the 1980s, dot-com corporations in the 1990s, housing in 2008.  It appears that he has come to see the current world population size as a bubble.  If so, he may have reached roughly the same position as Richard Heinberg, senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, who has suggested that we have passed or are about to pass, not just peak oil, but peak everything.  Heinberg published a 2007 book called just that, Peak Everything.

Of course, peak oil is the trigger. As fossil fuel energy becomes more expensive, everything gets harder to do.  Mining, food production, transportation and travel, providing potable water, all become more expensive, and eventually too expensive.

That there is such a thing as a carrying capacity for humans and that exceeding this carrying capacity can lead to degradation of the environment in such a way that the carrying capacity is itself reduced are not new ideas.  Thomas Malthus, William Vogt, Garrett Hardin, and Paul Ehrlich are a sampling of those who made the case from 1798 to 1968.

But the idea that there can be too many people is not popular, and such words as “overpopulation” and “population control” and “ZPG” have not been heard much in the U.S. since the 1970s.

In the New York Times Magazine article (“A Darker Shade of Green” 14 August 2011) from which this quote is taken, author Carlo Rotello also quotes Grantham as saying that people won’t listen to environmentalists, but will sometimes listen to people like him.  Rather than concentrating on overpopulation and global warming, he talks about our coming problems with commodity shortages. “Global warming is bad news,” according to Grantham.  ”Finite resources is investment advice.”

Will enough people connect the coming shortages and rising prices of potassium and phosphates and other such shortages and dislocations with global climate change resulting from overpopulation (combined with our energy technology and corporate/political system)?  Possibly.  Grantham’s newsletters posted on the website of his investment management firm make the connections.  Here is a link to the July 2011 newsletter, Resource Limitations 2: Separating the Dangerous from the Merely Serious.

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.

Spring beauty in bloom in Pavilion Township. Photo 15 April by Richard Brewer

Saturday, the day after the date of the original Earth Day, was the next to last stewardship work day scheduled for the spring at the Mildred Harris Audubon Sanctuary.  Katy and I started within the east edge of the beech-maple forest, that is, within the forest proper ignoring the border with briars and fallen wood where garlic mustard forms frequent dense patches.  We began at the road, F Avenue and walked compass lines south about 10 meters apart to the south boundary of the Audubon property.

The point was to pull up all the garlic mustard plants we found along our line and between us.  Katy got a large green plastic trash bag almost 2/3 full and mine was about 1/4 full.  At this stage, the plants are still basal clumps with no evidence of stalks that will bear flowers.  It’s desirable to remove flowering plants from the site; there is at least anecdotal evidence that such plants if tossed on the ground may proceed to produce fruits and set seed.  But I wonder if plants at the stage they are now need to be hauled out. Certainly, some soil and nutrients contained in the plant tissue are removed from the site this way, which has some negative consequences.

When we got back home, I laid eight of our pulled-up plants (four large and four small) on the ground in the oak woods where we live. To give them the best possible chance, I raked off the oak litter.  I’ll follow them for at least a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Garlic mustard plants pulled at Harris Sanctuary staked out in Oshtemo Township. Photo 23 April by Richard Brewer

Perhaps this super invasive will manage to point its roots down and send a shoot up and be back in business.  Or maybe it will turn out to be only mortal and all eight will shrivel, die, and blow away.  We’ll see.

As to other phenological events, Toothwort is blooming, as is spring beauty.  So is Dutchman’s breeches, though the flowers on most of the plants and still cream-colored and knobby rather than white and puffy the way Dutch boys pants are supposed to have been.   I saw leaves of a species of waterleaf  (Hydrophyllum) but, of course, no buds or flowers.  Waterleaf is not one of the spring ephemerals. The shrub spicebush was also in bloom.

I saw several patches of soil where the dead maple leaves had been removed–scratched away by Wild Turkeys I concluded, based on an occasional bird dropping of the appropriate large size near one of the patches.  Turkeys seem considerably more common in and around the sanctuary than a few years ago.

Katy and I completed one pass from north to south along the east side of the forest and then walked back through the same strip, finding a couple more garlic mustard plants.  Then we called it a morning about 9:30.

No other Audubonites had shown up for the scheduled and publicized work day.  When we drove up at just before 9AM, a white van was parked alongside the road ahead of us on F Avenue.  But when I checked to see if they might be volunteers, it was only a family attracted by displaying turkeys not far off the road in the woods north across from the Audubon Preserve.

Wednesday, April 27, was supposed to be the last Harris work day of the spring but we decided to cancel it.  As we announced at the Audubon Society of Kalamazoo meeting Monday night 25 April, we’ll reschedule for Saturday, 7 May 9 AM and see who comes then. One of the things we’ll do is continue walking lines in the forest, where we have managed to keep the number of garlic mustard (and any other invasive plant) to a manageable level).

Meanwhile spring advances.  Yesterday in Pavilion Township the larger clumps of garlic mustard  had small flower buds.  Mayapple and wild ginger were up and have flower buds (the individuals that will flower have buds when they emerge from the ground).  The earliest Trillium grandiflorum are up.

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.

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.

A section of the Darwin shelf. Photo by Richard Brewer

I got an email message from Barack Obama today–well, maybe not from Barack personally.  The heading of the message was, “What does your T-shirt say?”

The next message in my mail box was from the Center for Inquiry, Michigan chapter, reminding me not to forget Charles Darwin’s birthday, Saturday February 12th.

The Obama T-shirt is very nice, a pretty blue, and says, “We Do Big Things,” which I think may be from the State-of-the-Union speech.   All in all, though, a better T-shirt to wear this time of the year would be one of the T-shirts you can get with the “tree of life” diagram based on gene sequencing.  This is the diagram where the end branches of the phylogenetic tree are arranged to form a big circle. The primate branch or maybe it’s the hominid branch, has an arrow pointing to it and a label, “You are here.”

Wearing such a shirt might be a good way to start some conversations.  We know from polls that many Americans doubt the existence of evolution.  As to the specific question, Did human beings develop from other species of animals?, the figures for the U.S. (in 2005) were 40% yes and 40% no.  Twenty per cent hadn’t decided yet.

In the 33 other countries where the same question was asked, the yeses were over 60% for most of them.  I’m reading from a graph, but it looks like Denmark had yeses just over 80%, France just under 80%, followed by Japan, the UK, Norway, Spain, Germany and several others above 70%.

At least the U.S. isn’t the lowest on the list. Turkey is below us, with yeses below 30%.  In fact, since only 34 countries were included it’s not impossible that some country omitted–Iraq or Afghanistan perhaps–would have been below the U.S. and Turkey.

The figures don’t give me much reason to believe that America has progressed a whole lot since my boyhood in southern Illinois.  After the gospel quartet was done, the preachers in the little country churches, in tones rising toward hysteria, would fulminate against the idea that man had descended from the monkey.

But belief or non-belief in evolution is not America’s main problem.  With or without our endorsement, genetic variation will go on, natural selection will do what it’s going to do, and adaptation will continue apace.  Our poor showing on the evolution issue is an indicator of a bigger problem–America’s low level of scientific knowledge and, much more serious, our general lack of understanding of scientific reasoning.

Of course, that’s not news. The newspapers have all had reports recently telling us how poor we are in science.  The National Assessment of Educational Progress  (NAEP) tests say that 40 per cent of U. S. high school seniors function below the basic level in science and only 1 per cent  perform at the advanced level.  We also are confronted with a dismaying variety of other data showing the same deficiency: For example, 49 per cent of U.S. adults don’t know how long it takes for the Earth to circle the Sun.

The fact of the matter is that, despite our country’s many fine scientists and excellent research in most fields of human knowledge, America as a nation has rarely shown a strong interest in science. Figuring out what causes this and how to fix it are things Obama needs to work on. There’s not much evidence he’s on the right track as yet.

For my part, as a beginning, I’ll order a “You Are Here” tree-of-life shirt and wear it on Darwin’s birthday. Maybe for the whole week.

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.

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.

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?

Rainbow at dusk near Tarcoles, Costa Rica, 17 February 2010. Photo by Richard Brewer

The January 2010 issue of The Auk published my review of the Atlas of Breeding Birds of Ontario, 2001-2005.  It’s a fine book. It may be a little heavy for some readers–it weighs more than seven pounds.

The next (April) issue of The Auk published a Letter to the Editor that made reference to the review.  The letter from Wayne E. Thogmartin (with the U.S. Geological Survey at its LaCrosse, Wisconsin, center) was prompted, he wrote, by “a peculiar aside proffered by the author.”  He then quoted the following passage from my review:

A word about the colors of the maps:  Like nearly 10% of males in the United States (a similar prevalence in Canada, I suspect), I have red-green color blindness.  Though it may seem unfair that maps and other color-coded graphics should be designed with 10% of one-half of the human population in mind, I suggest that it is unwise to design materials that will be unintelligible or at best ambiguous for this segment of the population. My wife, like 99% of the female population, has good color vision.  She informs me that the breeding evidence maps use the following colors–gold, orange, red, yellow, and dark gray (plus white). I can separate all these colors, whether I can identify them or not.

I have more trouble with the relative abundance maps; they use white, yellow, gold, light orange, orange, and red.  In areas where the abundance level marches in orderly progression from low to high, I can pretty much distinguish the six abundance classes.  But an isolated blob might require considerable study in very good light.

At least these maps do not intermix red and green.

The emphasis was added by Thogmartin.

He calculated that at 8% prevalence in the general (male) population, about 140 members of the AOU are likely to have red-green color blindness, or “color-vision impairment.” He went on to say, “Any failure to produce a color legend that is informative to the full spectrum of ornithologists is unfortunate,” because methods are available that allow map-makers to produce maps with color schemes everyone can interpret. He cited several sources that can be consulted by the map-maker who aspires to inclusiveness and social equity.

I’m indebted to Thogmartin for making my aside operational.  I admit I’m puzzled by his characterization of it as “peculiar.”  But it does seem odd, if not peculiar, that one of the most important students of getting map colors right for the color-blind, as cited by Thogmartin, is also named Brewer.  That would be Cynthia A., professor of geography at Penn State (no relation).

Cynthia A.  has an online tool for map design, ColorBrewer, that looks very useful for designing color schemes. On the other hand, just having the cartographer confer with a color-vision impaired person might do the trick almost as well.  The map Presettlement Vegetation of Kalamazoo County, Michigan (Thomas W. Hodler, Richard Brewer, Lawrence G. Brewer (also no relation), and Henry A. Raup, 1981, Western Michigan University Department of Geography) has a color scheme anyone can readily interpret because a color-vision impaired person (me) chose the colors for the cartographer.

I noticed a couple of days ago that the National Weather Service’s on-line radar maps have a downloadable Color Blindness Tool (located on the left side of the screen under Additional Info:)  On-line radar has always looked like multicolored hash to me, so I’m hoping the tool (Visolve) will prove usable and useful.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe not.

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

Matt Clysdale, from his website

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

Greetings everyone,

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

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

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

Matt Clysdale
HorsePower Pictures

Response to John Dunn Viewpoint

Richard Brewer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Senator George–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely yours

Most additions will be in the form of brief discussions, posted fairly often (under Categories) on topics of special interest.  In terms of subject, these will deal mostly with ecology and conservation, both defined broadly.  A conservation subject of special attention will be land trusts.  Biologically, the emphasis will be heavier on birds and vegetation. Geographically, Michigan (where I live) and southern Illinois (where I grew up) will get the most attention.

Richard Brewer

Richard Brewer is a biological scientist and author.

His most recent book is Conservancy:  The Land Trust Movement in America, published in October 2003 by the University Press of New England under the Dartmouth College imprint.

A recent article is Conservation Easements and Perpetuity: Till Legislation Do Us Part.  It is in the fall issue of Duke University Law School’s journal Law and Contemporary Problems (vol. 74, no. 4), which consists of a symposium, Conservation Easements, New Perspectives in an Evolving World.  The fall issue with its eleven articles (Brewer’s is next to last) was published online 12 October 2011.

On 22 February 2012 Brewer was the first recipient of the Nancy Cutbirth Small Distinguished Service Award established by the Kalamazoo Area Chapter of Wild Ones, Native Plants, Natural Landscapes.