Drivers, bucks are still chasing does; watch for them near roadways. Weather conditions more typical of January arrive outdoors, bringing the possibility of pond skating and sledding, while indoors, lemons ripen and camellias bloom. Early-blooming hellebores are unfazed. January robins pass through to strip the holly berries. Submit seed orders.
Scrub oaks
I am probably in a minority in being a fan of scrub oak. Many Island property owners and landscapers have the attitude of “Scrimey things! Get rid of ’em, replace ’em with a real tree.”
When I was a kid, I shared that attitude. (It goes without saying that it is challenging for a “real tree” to grow where scrub oak does, sandplain and frost bottom.) It amazes me now — that their enduring toughness and beauty has not been seen and appreciated more widely.
Quercus illicifolia and Q. stellata can be like natural, Island-born bonsai, and in the private landscape, can become garden sculpture. Scrub oaks are the perfect trees for “a heap of sand out at sea.” However, there may be more to it.
Debate: Manuel Correllus State Forest
Does the end justify the means? Here is a slanted sample of argument that covers some of the pros and cons of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) State Forest white pine removal project. It is a back-and-forth debate.
As envisioned by Natural Heritage in 2002 or earlier, restored scrub oak barrens, which would replace the disputed white pines (Pinus strobus), could add to the most valuable aspects of the reserve going forward: home to globally rare habitat and species.
It would reconnect to the Island’s older oak forests, now fragmented and under intense development pressure. Those escalating development pressures might mean the State Forest reserve eventually becomes one of the Island’s major remaining carbon sinks. Its location, topping the Island’s aquifer, gives the reserve additional significance.
Many of the doubts voiced may have at their core fears that the plan may result in a disastrous outcome, such as that the large-scale, wholesale removal of the white pine, because it is not a historically native species, just results in destroying a large chunk of carbon-rich forest. Or that it opens the way for attacks on the reserve’s existence and integrity.
Many qualified experts on forests and trees offer differing views. While its focus may be more general, this one, from the British garden writer Ben Probert, adds another voice: “Our love of big, old trees comes at a cost. Those same feelings of warmth toward veteran trees and their preservation can stifle sensible woodland management. Woodlands, like gardens, need a gentle process of renewal if they are to retain their long-term vitality; a woodland filled with ancient trees and nothing else is a woodland at risk of total collapse.”
(Many would disagree, citing, for example, the ecologically diverse ecosystems that old-growth temperate rain forests represent, with trees in all life phases, vertebrate and invertebrate life forms, and arrays of fungi, ferns, mosses, and other bryophytes.)
It seems that managed woodlands and forests have relatively low biodiversity, compared with those temperate rain forests and old-growth forests, where they exist. While white pine habitat is considered depauperate by some ecologists, the State Forest white pine plantation has, paradoxically, a respectable established inventory of species.
In addition to its documented biodiversity, the white pine plantation is an already existing, actively functioning carbon sink. Its clearance in the manner proposed would appear to be a herbicide- and carbon dioxide-emissions-heavy approach.
Since it is a frequently cited concern, white pine fire risk, per the U.S. Forest Service
(bit.ly/USFS_WhitePineFireRisk): “FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS: Eastern white pine is moderately fire resistant. Mature trees survive most surface fires because they have thick bark, branch-free boles, and a moderately deep rooting habit. Younger trees are not as fire resistant. The needles have relatively low resin content, so are not highly flammable.”
Informed sources claim crown fire in white pine forest is the main fire threat. Other sources claim the real fire risk is from the scrub oak, one of the most highly flammable of our woody plants, with tough, oil-rich dry foliage, unlike other Island oak species’. Read more about its ecology and fire adaptation at https://bit.ly/USFS_ScrubOak.
Some have voiced doubts that the desired result of oak barrens will ever materialize, and instead, a jungle of woody invasives will take hold in the large areas of soil disturbance. Others have acknowledged the long-term value of establishing oak barrens, but would prefer a more measured, patchwork-quilt approach: “Does clearing have to be such a massive, wholesale clear-cut?”
The DCR plan, originally from 2021, appears not to take into adequate consideration recommendations of the Climate Forestry Committee (bit.ly/CFC_Recommendations), or the application of these as endorsed by the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. The plan needs updating to address the urgency of current climate recommendations. As the State Forest is a reserve, the Forest Reserve Science Advisory Committee should review it.
For the project’s long-term success, the island community should be brought into the discussion. Read at the link bit.ly/10_Golden_Rules the “10 golden rules” for forest restoration globally. How does the DCR State Forest plan compare?
Tricky to value?
How much value the State Forest currently gives the Island as rainfall producer, water collector and aquifer protector, habitat connection to other Island woodland, and in carbon storage is debated, but can be modeled, and the “eco-system services” calculated.
How much value it gives as a recreational magnet for botanists, bicyclists, birders, entomologists, hunters, runners, walkers — and the wildlife it hosts — this too can be calculated, although it may be essentially unquantifiable.
What Martha’s Vineyard was like prior to European contact and European land-use patterns is also an area for discovery and research.
Coda
Many, many locations worldwide are learning the hard way that water is an indispensable resource. Its purity, presence or absence, and forests’ relationship to it are basic to life. Increased water use, increased contamination, increased runoff, increased heat and evaporation: Without water we are sunk. The precautionary principle says where there is no way to know, let’s avoid finding out the hard way.
Some reading: “A Meeting of Land and Sea,” Foster, 2017; “Reading the Forested Landscape,” Wessels, 1997; “The Changing Face of New England,” Thomson, 1958; “Changes in the Land,” Cronon, 1983; and “How to Love a Forest,” Tapper, 2024.