Environment Newton: the blog

Wednesday, October 5, 2005

Mega-malls in your future?

By Rachael Lax/ Special To The Tab

Imagine spending the weekend at a five-star hotel powered entirely by renewable energy, dining at top-end restaurants in the glow of solar-powered light, and passing a perfect spring day kayaking along a calm river running through the Adirondacks. Sound like an environmentalist's dream vacation? Probably not, if this getaway is Robert Congel's proposed mega-mall, DestiNY U.S.A.

Scheduled to begin construction this summer in Syracuse, N.Y., the $20 billion "retail-and entertainment complex" of 1,000 shops and restaurants, 80,000 hotel rooms and a 40,000 seat arena will be powered completely by alternative energy sources. Congel envisions this shopping haven to be the world's biggest attraction, bringing in millions of people from around the globe. Not only will guests find all the top-of-the-line shops and major chains, they will also enjoy the biosphere-produced spring-like climate, an artificial mountain peak and a river for kayaking. Moreover, not a single tractor or crane will use fossil fuels in the construction of the complex. Although it sounds like a valiant effort to model and promote mass use of renewable energy, DestiNY may actually be as false as its faux ponds and mountain peaks.

How environment-friendly can a mall really be?

For starters, by encouraging and embracing consumerism, DestiNY defies the environmentalists' motto: "Recycle, Reduce, Reuse." Regardless of its energy sources, a mall is a mall; its primary purpose is to attract consumers to consume more material goods, which will therefore pollute the environment, epitomizing and magnifying the problems of our growing disposable culture. Furthermore, DestiNY is boasted as a post-fossil-fuel project and is expected to attract millions of visitors, but ironically, the only means of transportation to upstate N.Y. is fossil-fuel powered cars and planes, further encouraging fossil-fuel use and pollution. And doesn't the term environment-friendly imply some appreciation for nature? DestiNY will be located in the Adirondacks, one of the most naturally beautiful regions of the United States, yet visitors to the resort will be encapsulated in a fake climate, encouraged to appreciate only the synthetic mountain and artificial river.

Congel, a commercial real-estate developer, is currently owner of 25 malls. He is a businessman, not an environmentalist, and his motives are suspect. He claims that DestiNY, which will be bigger and better than Disney, will save upstate New York's declining economy. The locals are skeptical, like the architect who said: "He is hardly interested in the environment or the well-being of anything in the city aside from his financial interests." Because Congel is expected to receive significant government funding and enormous tax breaks from the state, his professed concern for our planet looks more like a thinly disguised effort to exploit growing public environmental concern.

On the other hand, perhaps DestiNY offers a unique opportunity for public education. Promoting alternate energy sources through a multibillion-dollar project will surely bring environmental issues to the public's attention. And beyond merely modeling the use of alternative power sources, the project has enormous potential to encourage mechanisms for mitigating the destructive effects of consumerism. Could there in fact be ways to meld consumerism and concern for the environment? Imagine: electronic retail stores that encourage trading in old items to be refurbished and resold; clothing stores that promote clothes drives, supermarkets that sponsor food drives, and DestiNY could choose to give an enormous boost to the use of shopping bags, shipping boxes and receipts made from recycled materials. In theory, a mega-mall could stimulate change, but DestiNY U.S.A., regardless of its proclaimed virtue, may sadly be just another example of unsustainable growth.

Rachael Lax, Wesleyan University 2006, is a Newton North graduate. A psychology major, she spent this past summer working as an intern for the Newton Office of Volunteer Services and volunteered for the Green Decade Coalition.

The writing’s on the water

By M. G. Criscitiello, MD/ Special To The Tab

Book Review

“Confluence: A River, The Environment, Politics, & The Fate of All Humanity," by Nathaniel Tripp, 161 pages, Steerforth Press, Hanover, N.H. 2005 - $21.

"Buzzards Bay: A Journey of Discovery," by Daniel Sheldon Lee, 229 pages, Commonwealth Editions, Beverly, MA 2004 - $24.95.

Newton environmentalists have welcomed recent improvements in the water quality and general health of the Charles River and of Boston Harbor. Reduction in pollution, restoration of fish life, and the addition of waterside pathways, parks and other amenities have added up to a large plus in the lives of Greater Bostonians. Only a little removed from us are two other important bodies of water, the Connecticut River and Buzzards Bay, both deserving of our attention. Recently published books by two journalist/naturalists have shed light on the unhappy history of environmental challenges to these major waterways. Nathaniel Tripp, author and part-time farmer in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, has served on the Connecticut River Joint Commission, also on municipal zoning boards. This has brought him into regular contact with power company officials, loggers, dairy farmers, scientists, fishing interests, real estate lobbyists, property owners and many advocacy groups. He describes the interests and actions of each of these parties, viewed against the background of his own intimate knowledge of the river, one of New England's major watersheds.

He recalls the 1930's era of dam construction, focusing especially on those built in the Fifteen Mile Falls region along the upper reaches of the river. The creation of large reservoirs above these dams allowed the New England Power Company to control the release of water in order to generate electricity in response to peak demand from cities and factories, many of them farther south in Massachusetts. This was quite profitable, but these daily alterations in river flow interfered with the usual seasonal cycles, resulting in marked changes in the downstream riverbed, its vegetation and its fish life. As the power company bought land along the river valley, many people were forced to leave the region, and there was a marked change in the economy of nearby rural regions of Vermont and New Hampshire. Also, the remaining dairy farms and woodlands came increasingly under the ownership of large conglomerates, and as outside ownership increased, life in the small villages along the upper river changed markedly. Tripp does inject much local color into his story, included, for example, are his accounts of instructing local school children in the ways of the river, of his annual canoe trip downriver with Gov. Howard Dean, and of his trek into Quebec to investigate complaints of the Northern Cree over the building of power lines in their territory.

For many years there has been an attempt to restore Atlantic Salmon as a breeding species in the Connecticut River. This effort appeals even to those environmentalists who don't fish, but Tripp offers words of concern about its impact on other native fish species. He also notes that salmon restoration is viewed by many to be of benefit primarily to wealthy sportsmen, with neglect of some less glamorous species important to the dinner table of local fishermen. He warns us - "One of the greatest vulnerabilities of the environmental movement is its elitist reputation. This characterization finds an especially ready ear among the rural American farmers, woodsmen, and mill workers who live close to the outdoors and are already being stressed for economic as well as for social reasons."

This slim volume contains many interesting anecdotes about people and places along the Connecticut, told in an informal style. Underneath it all, the author doesn't try to hide his anger at human greed, and he admonishes those who "came along and tried to subjugate nature without really understanding the long-term consequences of what they were doing". Only in his final chapters does he use the fate of the Connecticut River as an example of what is happening in larger scale around the world - a brief fulfillment of the book's somewhat ambitious-sounding subtitle.

Daniel Lee's story of Buzzard's Bay is more wide ranging in its scope. For example it includes an historical account of how the Bay was used for food and transportation by Native Americans of Southeastern Massachusetts in the era before Bartholomew Gosnold's 1602 arrival. Each chapter covers a single topic such as the attempt to preserve threatened bird life on shores and islands, the impact of hurricanes on towns around the Bay, the status of commercial fisheries, the role of the special summer school for boys on Penikese Island, and the changing patterns of wildlife around the Bay. Conservation issues are discussed in each case, and the author includes much information gained from interviews with various environmental experts as he accompanies them in the field.

He acquaints us with the "Coalition for Buzzards Bay," a key watchdog group which monitors water quality and provides an annual "report card" for each bordering community, listing its level of success in controlling the release of pollutants. He reports on the effects of the oil spills of the past few decades and the continuing hazard of transporting two billion gallons of oil through the Bay each year! He reminds us, however, that the greatest overall threat to the water is from sewage generated by the increasing population around Buzzards Bay. Conventional septic systems and wastewater treatment plants do not prevent nitrogen derived from these sources from reaching Bay waters. Released from such human waste, and also from heavy use of fertilizers on farms, lawns and golf courses, nitrogen leads to overgrowth of algae and subsequent drop in oxygen content of the water. It is feared that this will fall to levels no longer permitting marine organisms to survive.

Both of these books, short as they are, provide easy reading and much useful information for the environmentally-minded.

Modestino Criscitiello, a retired cardiologist, is Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, Tufts University School of Medicine. He is a Board member of the Newton Conservator and host of the Conservators' Environmental Show on NewTV

1-2-3’s of Recycling Plastics

By Ira Krepchin and Barbara Herson/ Special To The Tab

What to do with all that plastic! In the hit '60s movie "The Graduate," the one word career counseling that Dustin Hoffman's character, Benjamin Braddock, heard was "Plastics." While Braddock didn't follow that advice, plenty of people did, so that today that material, the antithesis of biodegradeable, is everywhere in the environment. And one word doesn't cover it.

However, seven numbers go a long way towards understanding plastics, at least from a recycling perspective. We're all familiar with the "chasing arrows" symbol - the set of arrows arrayed in a triangular pattern around a number that ranges from one through seven. Contrary to popular belief, that symbol does not indicate recyclability; it's simply the industry standard way of denoting the type of plastic that a container is made of. The plastics represented by the different numbers have different characteristics, such as different melting points and different additives, which affect the way they can be recycled.

In Newton, we're fortunate that we can recycle all seven types- - our processing plant in Charlestown has markets for all of them. The company puts the recyclables onto a conveyor belt and sorts and cleans them before sending them on for remanufacturing. (To see the process in action, join us on a recycling tour on Oct 27. See calendar for details.) Types 1 and 2 are the easiest to handle and many communities limit their programs to those items. Type 1, known as PET, for polyethylene terephthalate, is typically used for soda bottles; it is easy to sort and clean, and can be used to make a range of products, including carpet fibers, fleece and plastic film. New PET material is expensive, which increases the incentive for recycling. Type 2 plastic, HDPE for high density polyethylene, is used for milk and detergent bottles - it's a little harder to clean, but it can be recycled into a number of products, including pallets, compost bins and detergent bottles.

Numbers do not tell the whole story. Take those plastic bags that you carry your groceries home in. They are usually made of #2 plastic, but they contain various dyes, plasticizers, UV inhibitors, softeners and other chemicals required to make them into a film. This mix of additives changes the properties of the plastic and make it incompatible with the plastic used to make bottles. Therefore, it is important that you place only stiff plastic containers numbered 1-7 in your green bin for recycling. Those grocery bags can either be reused or brought back to the store for recycling. They can also be woven together to form a durable tote bag that keeps the plastic out of the waste stream (contact Barbara Herson at 617-7961000 for instructions and patterns).

Then there is Styrofoam; although it may have arrows on it, and it is labeled #6, in fact is not plastic, so Newton cannot recycle it.

Recycling is only one part of the environmental picture for plastics. Plastics degrade through the recycling process, and unlike glass, typically can't be reused for their original purpose unless they are mixed with new materials. Recycling plastics in these products also does nothing to reduce the demand for making new plastic packaging. If, instead, manufacturers would reuse plastic in their packaging, the need for resource extraction would diminish. The rug industry, for instance, uses both recycled and virgin plastic to make polyester fiber. Some computer manufacturers are working to redesign their products for easy dismantling, reuse of components and recyclability. (For now, you can recycle old computers at Newton's Rumford Avenue facility.)

From the consumer perspective, source reduction is far preferable to recycling for many types of plastic, and it isn't difficult to do. So whenever possible, please use refillable containers, buy in bulk, buy products that don't need much packaging or products that come in recyclable and recycled packages.

Ira Krepchin is on the board of the Green Decade Coalition. Barbara Herson is Newton's recycling coordinator and is on the Board of Advisors of the Green Decade Coalition.

Useful chemical or dangerous toxin?

By Lucia Dolan/ Special To The Tab

More than 80,000 new chemicals have been created and released into our environment since World War II. Many of these chemicals, such as pesticides and flame-retardants, are in our children before they are even born. Rising rates of asthma, autism and cancer beg the question: Who decides which chemicals are safe?

Under our laws chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. It took many years, many deaths and many lawyers to prove the case against tobacco. In 1951, the first study linking smoking to cancer was published. The study motivated its author, Dr. Richard Doll, to give up smoking, but few others. Smoking was so ubiquitous; no one could believe it was truly harmful. Twenty-five years later, Dr. Doll published another study, which showed 1 in 3 smokers died from their habit. In 1998, California passed the first laws restricting smoking.

The Environmental Protection Agency has the ability to ban the manufacture and import of chemicals that pose an unreasonable risk. The last chemical the EPA banned was asbestos in 1989. In 1991, the asbestos ban was overturned and compliance made voluntary. We know many of the chemicals we use pose a risk. The question remains: when does a chemical's risk outweigh its benefits?

In 1989, Massachusetts became the first state to tackle this question with the passage of the Toxics Use Reduction Act. Instead of innocent until proved guilty, we are attempting to follow the Precautionary Principle, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The Precautionary Principle recognizes scientists often cannot fully predict the impact of toxins on our health. It calls for us to seek out the safest alternative within the limits of our knowledge. TURA seeks to reduce the use of toxins by either replacing them with safer alternatives or eliminating their need by redesigning a product's production process.

TURA was a compromise between environmental groups who wanted toxins banned and industry groups who used chemicals in their business. Our law is recognized as a success worldwide. TURA met its original goal to reduce toxic byproduct generation by 50 percent in 1998. Since 1990, toxic byproduct generation has been reduced another 58 percent and industrial toxic chemical use has dropped by 40 percent. TURA led to the creation of the Toxic Use Reduction Institute at Lowell. TURI researches and promotes safer alternatives to known toxic chemicals. One of the top toxic chemicals TURI is working to replace within our state is formaldehyde.

Formaldehyde, the embalming liquid, is a common source of indoor air pollution. It keeps more than frogs in jars looking fresh; it is used to make wrinkle-resistant clothing and draperies; it is in glues and in some paints (as a preservative). It is in prefabricated wood products all around us, flooring, tables, cabinets and chairs. These products release fumes into the air in quantities we can't smell but can detect in blood samples. Formaldehyde has been linked to both cancer and reproductive problems.

TURI is funded by industries who use toxic chemicals and by our state government. TURI's annual cost to the state is quite small, $250,000 for 2006, but often under attack in tight budget times when pennywise becomes toxic pound foolish. Fortunately, TURI receives strong support from our legislators, representatives Ruth Balser, Kay Khan, Peter Koutoujian and Sen. Cynthia Creem. Together with public support, they have helped keep TURI working towards a healthier tomorrow. For more information on safer alternatives to toxic chemicals, contact the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow at 617-338-8131 or www.healthytomorrow.org.

Lucia Dolan has a bachelor's degree in economics from Columbia and master's degree in library and info science from Berkeley. She is the mother of three young children and is district coordinator for the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow.

Fish good, Mercury bad!

By Gilbert Woolley/ Special To The Tab

Fish and other seafoods are excellent foods, low in fat, but rich in protein and Omega 3 fatty acids. Nutritionists advise that eating seafood regularly is good for your health and parents should encourage their children to eat this healthy food.

A number of seafoods, however, are heavily contaminated with mercury. Unfortunately, one of the most popular and affordable fish products, canned albacore tuna, is one of them. Mercury is a potent “neurotoxin”(it poisons the nervous system) and is especially harmful to the developing brains and nervous systems of young children and of the fetus in the womb. This can cause learning difficulties, delay mental development and the effects may be lifelong. To be safe, small children, pregnant women and women who may become pregnant (mercury persists in the blood for up a year) should not eat canned albacore (white”) tuna or tuna steaks. Moderate amounts of “light” tuna are OK.

The website of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) advises that these sensitive groups should not eat swordfish, shark, king mackerel, grouper, tilefish and other large “predator fish” (fish that eat other fish) The Advisory states that pregnant women may eat up to six ounces of albacore tuna per week. Since the effects of mercury are so serious, several non-governmental organizations say that this far too high. So, why risk the brain of your child or unborn child? “Light” tuna has five or six times less mercury than albacore but it is still significant.

Mercury pollution of the oceans is a worldwide problem. The US contributes to it but is not, by any means, the only offender.

Fresh water fish may also be contaminated by mercury and Massachusetts advises pregnant women not to eat freshwater fish caught in the waters of the state. This mercury comes mostly from the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants, many located hundreds of miles away in Ohio and other coal mining states. Mercury is present in much of the coal mined in the US. When burned, it is released into the atmosphere in the form of vapor and carried down wind to the Northeast. Only the federal government can protect Massachusetts, but the federal government is proposing to relax standards for mercury emissions.

How much is too much?

· A 115 pound woman who consumes two cans of albacore tuna a week has a “mercury in blood” level more than three times that recommended by the FDA.

· A 45 pound child eating one can of albacore tuna a week would have more than four times the FDA recommended level

The “Sea Turtle Restoration Project” has a “seafood mercury calculator” on its website (http://www.gotmercury.org)

If you want to know more about mercury in tuna, do a “Google Search” on the two words “mercury” and “tuna”. You will get more information than you may have time to read.

Gilbert Woolley is a retired engineer. He has been a very active member of the Sierra Club since 1971, and he served on the Sierra Club National Toxics Committee for six years.

This article is archived at www.greendecade.org/tabarchive.asp.

Silent, secret invaders

By Bruce Wenning/ Special To The Tab

Throughout human history, people have been the major culprits behind the introduction and use of non-native plant species - often accidentally. Non-natives are termed invasive because they can colonize, spread and crowd out our native plant populations with ease sometimes with greater success than when growing in their native country or region of origin. Most are terrestrial; some are aquatic. This is a silent and secretive process, because there are no plant insect pests or disease symptoms attracting your attention. You see green plants in the woods, fields and gardens, implying that nothing is wrong, but you must look beyond the color green!

I am constantly battling invasive plants that have invaded the Audubon sanctuary where I am the property manager (Habitat, Belmont). These efforts to control invasives are long term, and without dedicated volunteers, they would consume most of my grounds department budget in labor costs each year. Just as an example, for seven years, a small group of volunteers and I have removed more than 25 acres of the invasive, exotic shrub, glossy buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula).

According to William Cullina, New England Wildflower Society (www.NEWFS.org), of the 2,814 plant species growing in Massachusetts, almost half of these (1,276) are introductions from Europe, Asia or other parts of the world. Many of these nonnatives, ranging from trees to shrubs to herbs, were intentionally selected and planted because of their specific characteristics - botanical, medicinal, agricultural, horticultural or ecological. Others were introduced by accident; left to their own devices; some of them simply got established.

Whether intentional or not, the long-term presence of most of these introduced plant species has had both powerful and subtle effects on the landscape. Invasives suppress the growth and establishment of our native flora by changing or influencing native plant succession; changing the quality and availability of pollen for bees and wasps; and altering the feeding behaviors of organisms dependent on native plants, among other things. This can have many detrimental effects on the health of our local ecosystems.

We have only limited knowledge of the destructive actions these nonnative plant species have on the many components of a healthy native ecosystem, and much research is needed to enable us to understand the mechanisms fully.

However, we are pretty good at defining what makes nonnative plants invasive. They have at least some of these seven characteristics (Randall, J M. and J Marinelli (Eds). 1996. Invasive Plants. Weeds of the Global Garden. Brooklyn Botanic Garden. p 95-96):

1. Invasive plants exhibit longer flowering and fruiting periods than native plants.

2. Some invasive plants leaf out earlier in the spring and retain their leaves longer into the fall, providing an advantage over natives by photosynthesizing longer.

3. Invasive plants can reproduce by vegetative growth and seed.

4. Invasive plants are more attractive to birds and mammals that help distribute them longer distances than wind.

5. Invasive plants produce more seeds (sometimes earlier) than native plants.

6. Invasive plants can germinate and establish themselves on a wider range of soil and climatic conditions enabling them to exploit new habitats.

7. Many invasive plants are shade tolerant and can grow under the shade created by both native and nonnative plants.

More and more exotic plants are being introduced into the United States by the horticultural industry, and the public needs to know how to recognize them. Some plant nurseries and garden centers are providing this information - even some that are selling invasive plants! However, consumers need to be more aware that exotic, invasive plants have been, and currently are, contributing to ecological degradation and loss of biodiversity locally, nationally and worldwide.

Why not buy native plants? Why risk creating ecological damage by purchasing nonnative plants that may become invasive? When plants with invasive characteristics escape our gardens they become the silent and secretive pests of our neighborhoods and our nation.

To read more, see Devine, R S. 1998. "Alien Invasion. America's Battle with Non-Native Animals and Plants." National Geographic Society. and: www.invasive.org, invasives.eeb.uconn.edu/ipane, www.invasivespecies.gov, www.hort.uconn.edu/plants and plants.usda.gov. For a free copy of "Invasive Plants of the Eastern United States: Identification and Control," contact Richard Reardon, USDA Forest Service, Morgantown, WV, 26505.

Bruce Wenning ,a lifelong Newton resident, plant pathologist and entomologist, has been property manager of MA Audubon Society's Habitat Education Center and Wildlife Sanctuary (Belmont) since 1993. He is on the Board of Directors of the Ecological Landscaping Association.

Wednesday, September 7, 2005

Life BAC (Before air conditioning)

By Diana Muir/ Special To The Tab

Our air conditioning is on the blink. I am told that there was a time when people used to live without central air conditioning. Really. If you look closely as you walk around Newton, you can still see the physical indications of that long-ago era, like an archaeologist who discerns the lifestyle of an ancient civilization in the contour of a hill or the shape of a stone.

There is a house, just a block from ours, that still has its old sleeping porch. Sleeping porches, built upstairs, off a bedroom, used to be common. Screened from floor to ceiling on three sides, they cooled much faster than the house, letting you have a comfortable night’s sleep even after the hottest days.

Awnings were another effective trick. Shading southern and western windows with custom-tailored canvas reduced the solar-heating effect of the afternoon sun. Only a handful of houses in Newton still have their awnings.

The windows themselves used to be left open on summer nights. This might have been a security issue since housebreaking, as a profession, is even older than air conditioning repair. Double-hung windows on the first floor were fitted with little brass knobs that slid into place to prevent the window from being open wider than about six inches. With the windows open on the first floor, and a whole house fan pulling hot air out through the attic, houses were kept reasonably comfortable in hot weather.

Now that houses have air conditioning, the old round of opening the windows wide in the early morning and rushing from room to room to close them quickly when a thunderstorm blows up is too much trouble. The little brass sliding knobs sit unused, as obsolete as the haylofts in Newton’s old carriage houses now that only horseless carriages are parked downstairs.

Newton homes retain numerous vestigial elements, reminders of how life used to be. A few of them speak to ecological adaptations of an earlier generation that in some ways walked more lightly on the earth.

When we bought our house, outside the kitchen door there was what looked like a subterranean garbage can. Its lid was level with the ground and you stepped on a flange to lift the lid. This was the receptacle for a pig route.

Newton used to have a contract with a pig farmer. Housewives or maids would step on the flange and tip the day’s potato peels and stale bread into the can, which was underground to retard spoilage by keeping the scraps cool. Collectors went from house to house, and drove the kitchen waste to a farm.

I once knew where the farm that turned Newton’s leftover oatmeal into pork chops was located. I seem to recall that it was in Weston, the contrast between a commercial hog-raising outfit that must have been smelly and noisy, and the manicured million-dollar lawns of Weston today is rather funny. The pig farm needed to be reasonably close to the collection route, else the transportation costs would have exceeded the values of the potato peels.

Near the pig-route can there was a rotating clothesline held erect by a huge concrete pyramid. During one period of save-the-planet fervor I hung laundry outside. That, of course, takes time. Plus, sometimes it rains. I haven’t hung laundry on a line in years.

It is hot in the house now, despite the fact that I have every window open. It would be cooler if I set up a few fans, just until the repairman gets here, but I don’t own any fans. I sent them to college when our youngest moved into the freshman dorm at Barnard one hot September. Brooks Hall, a truly beautiful building, was built so long ago that the top floors were designed as maid’s rooms. Young ladies took their maids to college in those days. The wiring was not designed to support air conditioning. It is now being renovated to accommodate a generation that arrives at college without personal ladies’ maids, but with the expectation that air conditioning comes standard.

Which is pretty much true. And which is, of course, one of the reasons why our climate is changing and why our summers are hotter than the summers of our childhood were.

When I was a kid in Connecticut, it was common to hear people say that it was not really necessary to install air conditioning because it was only uncomfortably hot one, maybe two, weeks a year. This was not merely an excuse for not spending the money; it was actually true. Then we all got air conditioning. And now every summer it is so hot that we actually need it. We have met the enemy, and it is us.

Diana Muir is an award winning Newton author whose most celebrated works explore the landscape and history of New England. Her book 'Reflections in Bullough's Pond,' received the Massachusetts Book Award as the best non-fiction book of 2000.

What the Ivory-bill is telling us

By M. G. Criscitiello, MD/ Special To The Tab

On April 28 this year, when Cornell scientists revealed the secret that Ivory-billed Woodpeckers had been spotted in an Arkansas swamp in early 2004, the news hit the front pages everywhere. Recent recordings of their call notes have convinced even the most skeptical that this elegant creature, long considered, extinct, still lives!

The news was especially exciting for me. It brought back the poignant moment, some months earlier, when I had held a specimen skin of this majestic creature in my own hand! It was larger than expected, big as a crow, and its feathers were still bright despite years in a darkened museum drawer. The fiery red crest, the brilliant stripes running down the sides of the neck, converging to form a broad white shield on the black back - these were markings quite different from those of its pileated cousin. Most striking was the impressive strong, white bill which gives the bird its name. A tag on its leg bore the date "1911," the year it had met its fate in a Florida swamp. Inscribed also was the name of the naturalist who had shot it and later bequeathed it to the museum's collection. Officials there had allowed me to examine some of their prized examples of "Campephilus principalis." The name, roughly speaking, means "lover of grubs, chief of its tribe." It had once been a fairly widespread, free-ranging inhabitant of southern bottomland forests.

My interest in the "ivory-bill" dates from 1935 when, as a boy, I learned that a team of Cornell ornithologists was searching the swamps of the Southeast for the very few remaining. Notice had been given of its dwindling population, and the aim was to take photos, record its voice and study its habits in hopes of finding some way to restore its numbers. Not one was seen until the group reached an area near the Tansas River in Louisiana. A few pairs were located there in a wetland forest of towering oak and sweetgums, set aside by the Singer Company as a source of wood for its sewing machine cabinets. Cumbersome equipment was lugged by mule cart into this swamp, and the bird's calls and its typical "doublet" drumming beat were recorded for posterity.

The study, extending over three years, revealed discouraging data. The bird's chief food consisted mostly of larvae of a particular kind of wood-boring beetle, retrieved by tearing off strips of bark from still-standing dead trees and probing for the grubs underneath. Fallen trees were generally not approached, and dead ones remaining upright were few and far between. James Tanner, Cornell's on-site investigator, estimated that each nesting pair required a minimum of 2.5-3 square miles of forest to meet its needs. These findings, in the face of rapid disappearance of these bottomland forests, seemed to seal its doom. During World War II, the rate of cutting accelerated, and by mid-century, these southern primeval forests, accept for scattered remnants, had all been harvested. Until February 2004, the last reliable sighting was that of a lone female in 1944. (To check the 1935 Cornell Study, with photos, recorded calls, etc. see: http://www.npr.org/programs/re/archivesdate/2002/march). A subspecies of the Ivory- bill had been known to exist in the easternmost forests of Cuba, but the last of these was seen in 1987.

“The Race to Save the Lord God Bird”

by Phillip Hoose, a full report of the struggle to save this bird, tells a story of heroes and villains. Among the latter were the bird-skin collectors and their hired gunners, who, perhaps unwittingly, continued to track down these woodpeckers despite severely declining numbers. Most of all, he faults the owners of lumber companies intent on harvesting all trees in the southern climax forests. Appeals to save areas as preserves for the ivory-bill went unheard -- the rich market for valuable wood trumped all calls for caution. Today, in place of those great trees of the Singer tract are vast fields of soybeans. Loss of the water-holding capacity of former wetlands has now led to increased problems of flood control in the region. Continued replacement of such lands for agricultural or industrial use, there and elsewhere in the world, is taking its toll.

Ironically, while media attention was focused on one end-of-life story in Florida, the remarkable March 30 report of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx) missed the headlines. It summarized the results of a joint effort of 1,360 specialists in 95 nations, warning that “human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”

In other words, besides a grim outlook for huge numbers of plants, animals, fish and other organisms, survival of the human species itself is increasingly under threat. Those of us who continue to think of the "environment" as something surrounding us but not including us - something "out there' consisting only of mountains, forests, wetlands, lakes and the like - are missing the point. We are messing up the very ecosystems we are part of.

We rejoice at having the ivory-bill still with us, but one big message it offers is this: - "Look, folks, we're all in this together. Listen to my story and take better care of our habitat!”

Modestino Criscitiello, a retired cardiologist, is Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, Tufts University School of Medicine. A Board member of the Newton Conservators and host of the Conservators' Environmental Show on NewTV he is an avid bird-watcher. A version of this article appeared in the Newton Conservators Newsletter, Spring 2005

The Garden City’s tree doc

By Eric Olson/ Special To The Tab

Urban trees have it rough, especially those growing in that no-mans-land between the sidewalk and the street. Yet by the reckoning of Marc Welch, Newton's new Tree Warden, regionally only Boston tops Newton in sheer number of trees to plant, tend, and ultimately remove and replace. Our thousands of curb-side trees and the narrow plot of grass and soil (the berm) they grow in are all City property. Most homeowners mow the berm and some even keep it bright with flowers, but what about those trees, who cares for them?

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The author with a doomed Maple tree

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Officially that is the City's job. "The trouble is, we simply do not have the resources to routinely patrol the town spotting and removing problem trees" says Welch, a former City of Boston Arborist and President of the Mass Tree Wardens and Foresters Association. Still, as anyone who appreciates trees knows, there are some seriously ailing trees in Newton. If the City had sufficient resources, many of them would probably come down tomorrow, in time to be replaced during the fall tree planting season. Inspecting, cutting, and hauling off a dying tree, and then buying and planting a new one, cost a lot of money. So just how does the City prioritize within its limited tree budget?

The answer may come as a surprise - the City depends on residents to sound the alarm for a given tree. When a call comes in, Welch makes a visit to decide if the situation warrants immediate action. If he agrees its a goner - due to wounding, senescence or other cause - he alerts the private companies that the City works with for its tree care. Some 20 years ago the City maintained its own arborist crews, but those days are long-gone.

Since the City depends on resident calls, action on trees that need prompt removal is taken largely on a first-come first-served basis. A tree census might bring more order to this process, but Newton's trees were last surveyed in the early 1990's, and the results are long out-of-date. Welch hopes to organize a new census sometime in the next few years, for which he says college students will be trained and employed for a summer to survey the 300 miles of roads in Newton. That's a lot of trees to classify to species and health status. For sake of comparison, its about 260 miles from Newton to Philadelphia, Penn.

Meanwhile healthy trees can be better kept that way by judicious pruning –

for example, by trimming limbs that are growing towards the street and might be torn off someday by a passing truck. In addition to his inspector role, Welch organizes courses in tree care, and then oversees his graduates in weekend volunteer pruning fests. For information on courses, or to report a street tree doomed to die, call the City Parks and Recreation Department at 617-796-1500.

Eric Olson, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Ecology in the Sustainable International Development Program at the Heller School, Brandeis University, has led many research expeditions in Central andd South America. He is on the Board of Directors of the Green Decade Coalition.

The state of red

By Michelle Portman/ Special To The Tab

What blooms like a flower, was found off the Massachusetts coast in great numbers in 2005 and is red all over? You probably guessed it by now: the notorious red tide. Actually, scientists prefer to call this phenomenon harmful algal bloom because algal blooms are common, discolor ocean waters and are usually not harmful. During a "red tide" event, algae, made up of microscopic, single-celled plants called phytoplankton, grow very fast or "bloom". They release noxious odors, irritating vapors and slim. Those that occurred in New England this past spring caused dangerous toxins to accumulate in shellfish. Human consumption of shellfish contaminated by these toxins can be harmful, even fatal.

The syndrome is called paralytic shellfish poisoning and can result from eating large quantities of affected shellfish. No cases of death attributed to PSP have been reported in New England, although there have been such fatalities reported elsewhere in the U.S. The Division of Marine Fisheries is responsible for monitoring for PSP; the agency's staff conducts coastline monitoring on a weekly basis from April to November. This year DMF was extremely busy. The New England region suffered the worst HAB since the first massive outbreak in 1972 that followed Hurricane Carrie.

Scientists are unsure what exactly caused the recent bloom that prompted the shutdown of shellfish harvesting throughout most Massachusetts coastal waters. The blooms begin in Maine and spread southward. Some of the more productive shellfishing areas off of Cape Cod and the South shore re-opened in the beginning of July, but damage done to the shellfishing industry was already substantial and prompted lawmakers to ask for federal disaster relief. Despite tight budgets, DMF may be required by the federal Food and Drug Administration to add more testing sites and to monitor for additional biotoxins, such as Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning and Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning, based on findings from this past season. Also, new sampling sites in Buzzards Bay, off Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard are being considered.

Despite lingering questions about the local causes of HAB, scientists have established a clear connection between red tide and one of the most widespread, chronic problems in coastal ocean waters: eutrophication. Eutrophication is caused by the buildup of excess nutrients in water and it is wrecking havoc on our seas. Human activities including agriculture, waste disposal, coastal development and fossil fuel use, have greatly increased the discharge of nitrogen, phosphorous and other nutrients that invariably end up in ocean waters via streams, rivers, groundwater, sewage outfall and even the atmosphere.

All these nutrients stimulate the growth of tiny marine plants including algae. During HAB, the growth of particularly species of algae is excessive. Although only about a hundred species of algae are toxic, increased blooms of non-toxic species cause ecological problems too. Large surplus blooms of seaweed, or macroalgae, can coat beaches thus interfering with recreational activities. Others can choke coral reefs and seagrass beds that provide habitat for fish spawning necessary for biodiversity and maintenance of commercial fisheries. The gravely endangered Northern Right Whale have been affected too when large algae blooms in Cape Cod Bay clogged surface waters making it difficult for the whales to find food.

In the U.S. and other developed countries, monitoring and fishery closures have reduced human illness from HAB however, biodiversity and ecosystem health continue to be impacted. Also, monitoring and closures have economic costs. It is hard to decide what the right public policy response should be for long-term remedies and prevention of red tide. So many activities are related to eutrophication; scientists concede that cause and effect is complex. This phenomenon again highlights the influence that our everyday activities - use of fertilizers, disposal of sewage, fuel combustion, etc., - have on the environment, economics and public health in areas miles, even nautical miles, away.

Michelle Portman is a Ph.D. candidate studying marine conservation policy at UMassBoston and she works as an environmental analyst.

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Katrina: the real story

By Lois A. Levin/ Special To The Tab

Katrina starts with "K". It's not even Labor Day and the weather service is halfway through the alphabet in naming hurricanes. A major US city is uninhabitable, inundated by the sea, with no infrastructure. Other communities along the Gulf Coast are in ruins.

For now, everyone is focused on rescue, evacuation, damage, looters, and the terrible human toll. As with the tsunami last year, poor people have remained vulnerable, while most affluent people had moved to higher ground.
No one should be surprised - horrified, but not surprised. It has long been predicted that a powerful storm would sooner or later overwhelm the city of New Orleans, which has kept the sea at bay by a massive system of levees - until now.
The deeper story? For years, a local Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Ross Gelbspan, has been telling anyone who will listen that the emperor has no clothes. "Katrina's real name," he wrote in an Aug. 30 Boston Globe Op-ed, is "global warming." No matter how much money lobbyists spend to confuse us about the issue, the truth is that "to allow the climate to stabilize humanity must cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent".

To protect the fossil fuel industries, our federal government is committed to a collision course with reality. Meanwhile, this unprecedented threat to humanity is being addressed with regional and local government initiatives, by non-governmental organizations, and even by some large corporations mindful that a rising tide will swamp their operations and their profits, and not just the people who live in coastal areas (like most of us).
We need to change the way we think. "The Environment" is not just another interesting subject; it is about our future as a species.

Newton has a large and respected community of environmental activists, including the modestly-named Green Decade Coalition, which has been working on energy issues for over a decade. We need more concerned citizens to join and support local environmental organizations, to help strengthen good programs and create new ones. We are all part of the problem. It's time for all of us to become part of the solution to the greatest global dilemma humanity has ever faced.

Lois A Levin, PhD, a clinical psychologist with a Certificate in Conservation Biology, and owner of the Lightbox Co of New England, is coordinator of the Environment page of the Newton TAB.