by Marsha C. Salett, EditorStruggling to find a unifying theme for my editorial for the current issue of “Conservation Perspectives,” I did what I always do when confronted with writer’s block. I took a walk. Actually, I took several walks. On Monday, I ambled down the beach and fringe salt marsh at Little Pleasant Bay. Wading out on a long, shallow sand bar, I watched two knobbed whelks laying their egg cases, which were slowly extruded in long, milky-opaque coils from the pulpy-black visceral mass of the animals. On Tuesday, I hiked Nauset’s barrier beach, pausing to search for piping plovers (I saw six) among a flock of semi-palmated plovers, all hunkered down in the sand for the night, blending in with the stones and cobbles and driftwood as sunset gave way to dusk. On Wednesday, I followed the Goose Pond trail at the MAS Wellfleet Bay sanctuary to a swath of coastal heathland in order to catch a glimpse of diamondback terrapin hatchlings; then I walked the less traveled Silver Spring trail through pitch pine-scrub oak barrens along one side of the freshwater stream and returned along a highbush blueberry-swamp azalea-sweet pepperbush thicket on the other bank.
All of the beauty and variety of nature that I encountered during my rambles left me feeling energized but still stymied about my editorial. I stopped by the Nature Center to chat with Bob Prescott, the sanctuary’s director. Through the course of our conversation (thanks, Bob!) I realized that I had been immersing myself in the obvious theme for this issue: the natural communities of Massachusetts. Estuaries and bays, the open ocean, barrier beaches, salt marshes, ponds, streams, coastal heathlands, pitch pine and scrub oak barrens, blueberry thickets, -- and yes – level bogs, acidic graminoid fens, and traprock oak-hickory glades are just a handful of the natural communities in the Commonwealth.
Many of the 105 terrestrial, palustrine, and estuarine natural community types listed in “Classification of the Natural Communities of Massachusetts” (Swain and Kearsley 2001) are familiar to most of us, or at least we can conjure a visual sense of these places in our minds. Others are unfamiliar because they are rare, inaccessible, far from where most people live, or not a typical destination for visitors. Both traprock ridge communities and peatland communities fall into the latter category. How many people, especially in the eastern half of our state, associate the Holyoke Range with traprock ridges instead of the former Mt. Tom ski area, or realize its ecological worth? Just this past August, the Trustees of Reservations successfully purchased 359 acres of the range that will now be protected. The Trustees described the land as “arguably the most significant threatened open space in the Connecticut Valley…. [and] critical to the ecological integrity of the mountain.”
Peatlands in southern New England are small jewels of unusual habitat, frequently hidden and inaccessible. Since the mid 19th century and throughout the 20th century, particularly on Cape Cod and in southeastern Massachusetts, countless natural bogs, red maple swamps, Atlantic white cedar swamps, and other small peatlands were converted to cranberry bogs. When I tell people I study bogs, they invariably ask me about cranberries or 5,000-year-old bodies. Among the natural peatlands scattered throughout Massachusetts, there are only about a dozen peatlands with protective boardwalks or bordering a hiking trail that I would encourage people to visit. Fragile, waterlogged peat mats aren’t able to withstand heavy foot traffic, and protection of these ecosystems is important. The downside is, it is hard to convince people to preserve an area if they don’t understand its value of or feel a personal connection toward it.
At first glance, the traprock communities of the Metacomet Range in Elizabeth Farnsworth’s article seem to have little in common with Hawley Bog, the site of Aaron Ellison’s research about pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea), and other peatlands of southern New England that are highlighted in my article. The Metacomet Range supports a high level of biodiversity, and is home to a wide variety of floral and faunal assemblages because, as Farnsworth writes: “Weather can differ dramatically on either side of the range, east to west or north to south. Together with stark elevational gradients in temperature, this variation in microclimate contributes to the diversity of forests found on the Metacomet Range.”
In contrast to the Metacomets, bogs and acidic fens have fairly low species diversity. I was quite impressed (and slightly envious) that a group of biologists found more than 270 plant species in a single day in Hadley on the Holyoke Range, and then found 750 species over several days around Mt. Tom. The electronic field guide to bogs and acidic fens of southern New England that I just finished for my Master’s thesis [the natural history section is excerpted in this issue of CP] contains 130 vascular plant species that are most commonly found in the region’s peatlands. Even if I added the two dozen or so Sphagnum moss species, more of the uncommon sedges, and some of the more northern peatland species such as cloudberry (Rubus chamamorus) 
and black crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), the list of bog plant species doesn’t come close to that of the traprock ridges. Nevertheless, peatlands support beautiful orchids and fascinating insectivorous plants such as sundews (Drosera spp.) and pitcher plants. They are closed, circumscribed ecosystems with little or no input of nutrients other than from precipitation, thus enabling Ellison and his colleagues to utilize pitcher plants “as useful indicators of local, regional, and continental environmental change.”
What traprock ridges and peatlands do have in common is that they are home to rare and unusual plant and animal species. Farnsworth writes that traprock ridges support more than ten of Massachusett’s state-listed species. Some of the rare species found in Massachusetts’ peatland communities include: plants – three-leaved Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum trifoliulm), dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium pusillum), mud sedge (Carex limosa), and northern yellow-eyed grass (Xyris montana); vertebrates --- spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata), Jefferson salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum) and blue-spotted salamander (A. laterale); invertebrates – pale green pinion moth (Lithophane viridipallens), spatterdock darner (Aeshna mutata), ebony boghaunter (Williamsonia fletcheri), ringed boghaunter (W. lintneri), and the pitcher plant borer moth (Mearranthus). Ellison points out, that while not necessarily rare, many of the invertebrates that inhabit pitcher plants are associated only with their host plant.
Also, traprock mountains and peatlands are unusual and uncommon habitats that should be protected in their own right. Of course, everyone who is reading this editorial is now thinking, “ What about _______? (Fill in your favorite natural community or the ecosystem you study.) It warrants conservation, also.” [Several readers have suggested that Conservation Perspectives should spotlight a different natural community in every issue. I think that is a fine idea, so I invite naturalists and scientists to submit an article, query me about writing an article, or suggest a natural community to highlight in the future.]
Preserving biodiversity -- from bogs to pitch pine barrens, from traprock ridges to barrier beaches, and from vernal pools to salt marshes -- is a noble objective but a daunting task considering the amount of development occurring in Massachusetts today versus the amount of funding, time, and manpower available for conservation. All too often, local environmental groups, hearing about the impending sale of a piece of land, struggle – sometimes in vain -- to raise awareness and money to save the habitat and the species that it supports. With limited resources to buy and protect land, how do we choose? And how do we most efficientlypreserve both biodiversity and habitat?
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Executive Office of Environmental Affairs has attempted to answer these and similar questions by funding the BioMap project for “guiding land conservation for biodiversity in Massachusetts.” The BioMap publication, produced in 2001 by the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, Mass. Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, is available upon request either by phone, mail, or NHESP website: http://www.state.ma.us/dfwele/dfw/nhesp/nhbiomap.htm The Biomap is also available as a poster.
The goal of the BioMap project is “to promote strategic land protection by producing a map showing areas that, if protected, would provide suitable habitat over the long term for the maximum number of Massachusetts’ terrestrial and wetland plant and animal species and natural communities.” The map is further explained as “representing the most viable exemplary natural communities and habitat for rare plant and animal species, as well as landscape areas that buffer and connect habitat areas, and which help maintain ecological processes upon which the species and communities depend.” Through the BioMap, EOEA hopes to enable regional and local planners, managers, scientists and organizations to identify places in the state that can be protected to maximize biodiversity and to be proactive, rather than reactive, in preserving these natural communities.
I think that the BioMap is an impressive project in scope and scale and professionalism. It is a useful tool for professionals, amateurs, and anyone who wants to protect what’s left of the open space in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. To pique readers’ curiosity, here are some of the facts and figures excerpted from the publication:
The BioMap project’s approach to conservation is multi-faceted, from species to natural communities (such as a bog) to landscape scale (such as the Metacomet Range). The objective of identifying Core Habitats and Supporting Natural Landscape is not only to protect but to also to prioritize biodiversity. This approach is skewed toward the rare rather than the common, and toward the large landscape rather than the small habitat. The producers of BioMap most likely recognized this bias. They write: “Because of their sheer size, large landscape areas also capture many of the more common elements of biodiversity in Mass., including plant and animal species, fungi, bacteria, and natural community types not tracked by the NHESP. Finally, by capturing multiple examples of each species and community type, the BioMap addresses the conservation of genetic diversity in the state’s plant and animal spp.”
Bob Prescott, director of MAS Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, considers BioMap to be an extremely useful tool for land conservation, but voices concern that it “focuses too much on bigness and misses the small parcels that neighbors and neighborhoods should be looking at. This way the common habitats, the small lots will get protected too. Tim Storrow, former MAS Land Protection officer turned a well know quote this way- ‘Think Locally, Act Locally’. I believe nature will benefit from both approaches.” I have to agree with Bob. A parcel of land might not give a very high rate of return on the biodiversity index, but it might be an important purchase for a city or town, nonetheless. One of the more stunning aspects of the BioMap is seeing the sheer volume of developed land in Massachusetts, particularly in the eastern half of the state. NHESP divides the state into 13 ecoregions. Boston Basin is 79% developed; the southern New England coastal plains and hills ecoregion is 44% developed; Cape Cod and the islands is already 36% developed. While maximizing biodiversity in these ecoregions is desirable, it is just as important to have open-space refugia from development ? no matter how rare or common the habitat. On the other hand, in today’s world of shrinking budgets as well as shrinking open space, it is necessary to prioritize and set standards in order to realistically protect bidiversity in our state. How do we choose? It’s a tough question, and it becomes even more difficult depending on whose priorities are used and who is doing the choosing.
Me ? I want to preserve it all.
References
EOEA. 2001. BioMap, Guiding Land Conservation for Biodiversity in Massachusetts. Natural Heritage & Endangeres Species Program, Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, Westborough, MA.
Swain, Patricia and Jennifer Kearsley. 2001. Classificaition of the Natural Communities of Massachusetts, draft.. Natural Heritage & Endangeres Species Program, Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, Westborough, MA.
all photographs are copyrighted by Marsha C. Salett