ISSUE #4 • AUTUMN 2024
From the
Ground Up
Conversations about conservation, climate, and communities in New England.
Artwork by Samuel Peter Rolt Triscott (1846 – 1925) "In the Woods, Monhegan" circa 1900 - View Full ImageNOTE FROM OUR EDITORS
The climate crisis has exposed a need for a dramatically different, more integrated approach to conservation. While people have lived in reciprocity with land and water for millenia, unchecked development and destructive practices of the past century have threatened the natural systems and society itself here in New England and around the world. Each season, we share stories, conversations, research and perspectives that explore the inextricable connections between conservation, climate, and communities — human and wild.
Our hope is to inspire action and support for policies and practices that protect New England’s Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities.
To the first-time visitor, Monhegan’s Wildlands are completely unexpected, remarkably wild, and notably subtle. Their history presents a captivating story of preservation and enduring stewardship by a small community—a story that should inspire every conservationist and land trust in the United States. Fortunately for everyone interested in wildland conservation and New England landscapes, this history is now beautifully conveyed in a richly illustrated volume produced by the renowned art publisher Rizzoli. The new book, Art, Ecology, and the Resilience of a Maine Island: The Monhegan Wildlands, features many artists who have over the years visited and painted on Monhegan, among them some of the country’s greatest landscape artists. The book is reviewed in our Bookshelf section. An accompanying exhibition of original art, photographs, maps, science objects, and historical documents will open in December at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine.
On a spring day in 2015, a miniature country fair sprang up in the parking lot of an old bank in the center of Orange, Massachusetts. There were farmers selling seedlings, gardeners from a local youth program serving up salad, volunteers offering tastes of local cheese and pickles. A magician with a long red beard made balloon animals. There was live music and a parade with big stars on sticks, borrowed from the committee that organized the town’s annual New Year’s celebration. It was earnest and homegrown and hopeful in all the ways that a lot of small-town festivals are.
This one was celebrating the opening of a new food co-op in the old bank. Formed as a seasonal buying club five years earlier, the North Quabbin Community Co-operative had been incubating in a tiny volunteer-run store in one of Orange’s many old factory buildings.
What can agricultural land contribute to protecting biodiversity? Much of modern farming, in order to succeed in a highly competitive marketplace, features intensive land use that is simplified to maximize production. There is not much habitat for wild species in a field of corn.
But what about more complex agricultural landscapes, such as those described by Conrad Vispo in the last issue of From the Ground Up? These were once home to beloved grassland birds and other open land species associated with diversified smaller-scale farming—a landscape that itself is in long decline.
We could view such species as interlopers that migrated here during a few centuries following the removal of native forests, say they don’t really belong, and be content to watch them fade away.
Conversations
Chasing Nature, Chasing Hope
A Conversation with Bryan Pfeiffer: Naturalist, Writer, Photographer, and Boy Explorer
by Liz Thompson
I’ve known Bryan Pfeiffer for at least 35 years, since his days as a reporter for the local paper in our mutual hometown of Montpelier, Vermont. He covered politics, the environment, and when he could, nature. One day in the 1980s he excitedly showed me a picture of a plant he’d found in a weed lot near my home, and he asked me what it was. “Teasel,” I told him. The next day his beautiful photo of what some might call a homely weed appeared on the front page of the paper with the caption “Teasel Time.” That was when I knew we’d be friends for life.
Yes Farms, Yes Food
A Beacon of Hope for Local Food Access
by Maddie Kempner
You’ve seen the bumper sticker: “No Farms, No Food” or perhaps its positive inverse: “Yes Farms, Yes Food.” Both are reminders—or maybe warnings—pasted onto the back of any number of Subarus and pick-up trucks around New England gesturing to the connection between working farms and the food we eat every day. It's an important message (our members certainly drive with bumpers adorned), and while memorable in its simplicity, it begs some questions. What kind of farms? And where? Food for whom, exactly?
Policy Desk
© Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News, NYSupreme Court Overturns Chevron Doctrine
Implications for Climate and Conservation
by Patrick Parenteau
The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron doctrine has broad and frightening implications for the conservation goals of Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands, and Communities. To achieve our vision, land conservation and government regulation must work hand in hand. This decision severely limits the latter. To offer readers a better understanding of this, we asked Professor Patrick Parenteau, a legal scholar, to interpret the decision for us.
Conservation in Action
One Wildland at a Time
Storytelling, Social Media, and How We Experience the Wild
by Richard Farrell
Is it possible to preserve wildlands in the face of pressure from social media promoting a vision of tourism that values conformity, comfort, and safety above a person seeing and reacting to nature independently?
My lifetime working with a small land trust may give some clues to the answer. I live on Monhegan Island, a small island off the coast of Maine. Monhegan’s beauty, its incomparable light, and its cliffs battered by Atlantic storms all feel like a part of my being. In the 1950s a few residents—who saw the island’s wildlands as remarkable—joined a wealthy summer visitor in creating Monhegan Associates, a land trust charged with preserving the island’s forests, meadows, and cliffs.
Read, Watch, Listen
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Lost and Found at Sea
Bryan Pfeiffer, Chasing Nature, Substack
Read: Bryan Pfeiffer’s Monhegan Island musings on the fall migrations of warblers, butterflies, and dragonflies. Pfeiffer laments the decline, over the years, of songbirds and insects, but nevertheless takes solace in their beauty, which he shares in his stunning photographs.
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The Old-Growth Expert and the Forests He Vowed to Protect
The Seattle Times
Watch: Discover Jerry Franklin’s remarkable career through his lifelong bond with old-growth Douglas fir forests of the Pacific Northwest. Set in Washington’s Cedar Flats Research Natural Area, Franklin discusses the importance of elders, old-growth forest research, and humility in forest protection.
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Vermont to Require Fossil-Fuel Companies to Pay for Climate Damage
New York Times
Read: See how Vermont’s bold new climate law holds fossil fuel companies accountable for climate change and the devastation it brings, including massive floods two years in a row. Even while pushback is anticipated, Vermont forges the way in climate legislation.
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Changing How We Farm Might Protect Wild Mammals—and Fight Climate Change
Civil Eats
Read: Expanding human population and agricultural land expansion are threatening biodiversity. In response, Tom Farquhar is fostering healthy crops AND beneficial species in his fields. Learn about how this farmer is taking action, setting an example for a more sustainable future.
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Hot Farm
The Food & Environment Reporting Network
Listen: “Hot Farm” explores Midwest farmers’ efforts to combat climate change. This podcast showcases innovative practices and debates on what farmers are doing, or could be doing, to reduce their impact, offering insightful stories and perspectives on the future of agriculture.
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In Cornwall, Newly Conserved Grasslands are for the Birds
VTDigger
Read: Vermont’s Fish & Wildlife Department recently bought 110 acres to safeguard threatened grassland birds, amid habitats both created and destroyed since settlers arrived. Read about the balance between farming and conservation crucial for protecting the habitat of these vulnerable species.
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America’s Disappearing Grasslands—and Grassland Birds
Sierra Magazine
Read: Habitat loss is the biggest reason we’re losing birds, according to John Carlson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Read about the science behind grassland birds’ decline and how Indigenous practices are currently leading efforts to protect them.
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Ndakkina
Read: Poet and author Joseph Bruchac shares an essay and poem with a title that translates to “Our Land.” Rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing, he explores our relationship with the land as it includes the lives of all living beings, not just humans.
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Lie Down: A Forester’s Directive
Read: Robert (Bob) Perschel, executive director of New England Forestry Foundation, shares a poem inspired by a gathering of foresters in a Slovakian beech grove.
The Bookshelf
Essential reading from our editors and contributors.
ARTWORK BY JACO TAYLORBulletin Board
Events, updates, and announcements from our partners and friends from around the region.
Want to join the conversation?
We invite your questions, reactions, debates, suggestions, and contributions. Our editorial team is committed to expanding the chorus of voices needed to safeguard the health, resiliency, and vibrancy of New England’s communities—both human and wild.
Reflections
Artistic expressions that reflect Nature's complexity, simplicity, and beauty.
View from Little Ascutney, Watercolor on paper, © Amy Hook-TherrienNdakinna
A POEM BY JOSEPH BRUCHAC
You cannot understand
our land with maps
lines drawn as if earth
were an animal’s carcass
cut into pieces, skinned,
divided, devoured—
though always less eaten
than is thrown away.
See this land instead
with the wind eagle’s eyes,
how the rivers and streams
link like sinew through a leather garment
sewed strong to hold our people,
patterns of flowers
close to the brown soil.
© Pro SilvaLie Down: A Forester’s Directive
A POEM BY ROBERT T. PERSCHEL
Lie down and let the falling leaves cover your garments
If you time it right
You can disappear
In minutes
This isn’t shinrin-roku,
Or the next big thing to settle your mind
No one does this
It doesn’t have the dry husk of ritual
If it’s a forester’s communion
It’s not your first
And while it may be your last
That’s not for you to decide.