2008 updates from Bill Livingston
Bill Livingston's 2008 report on the Monhegan Forest - whole presentation
Stewardship of
the WildLands of Monhegan
(The following was written by Lucia Taylor Miller, co-chair of the Ecology Committee of the Associates)
Ever since its founding in 1954 there has been an Annual Meeting for members of the Monhegan Associates, always held on the third Friday in August. Almost as predictable as the date have been some of the subjects discussed. A lively exchange regarding any sort of intervention in the forest has been as inevitable as the great Fairy House debate.
Someone expresses concern about the dead and dying trees. Someone observes that Eastern Dwarf Mistletoe (a.k.a. Witches Broom) is present and feels that infected trees must be pruned to prevent spread of the disease. An argument is put forth that the dead ones be cut down for aesthetic purposes, as well as to reduce fire danger. Someone else heatedly proclaims that on the contrary, we must leave the woods in their "natural" state, the way they've always been, as Ted Edison would have wished.
Notice the quotes I put around "natural"? That's because within the past three years we have learned that far from being natural, most of our current woods are there because of the arrival of us, the Europeans, who cut down existing timber for masts or firewood, and later, in order to plant crops or graze sheep.
What we see today on most of the Island is an influx of White Spruce, limited to the shoreline where they get lots of light on Islands that have never been touched. When fields on Monhegan were no longer grazed, when the sheep were removed around 1908 to make way for the building boom of cottages for summer use, White Spruce grew up in the open places. For unknown reasons, they are very susceptible to damage from Dwarf Mistletoe. Red Spruce, much less prone to the devastation of Mistletoe, grows in the shadier interior. Our Cathedral Woods is an example of a healthy Red Spruce forest, never cut because the land was too wet to farm.
But I've gotten ahead of my story. In the summer of 2000, I (Lucia Miller) read an article in "Working Waterfront" about a study of Forest Health being conducted on Great Cranberry Island. Two students had completed their senior research project there, under the supervision of Professor William Livingston of the Forestry Department of the University of Maine, characterizing healthy and unhealthy forests.
The situation being studied: some healthy and some dead and dying forest. The question; why?
Well, hey! That was OUR situation too!
So we called Bill Livingston, the Professor who was working on Great Cranberry, and asked if he would be willing to take a look at us. He came and gave a talk in August, sharing the platform with Philip Conklin who was already scheduled to speak.
What he told us was a surprise. The vegetation on outlying Islands which had been disturbed by civilization was often quite different from the original.
We asked if he'd be interested in doing a survey of Monhegan.
He was dubious at first. Was it going to meet with approval from the Islanders? We assured him that the land he'd be examining, the wild land, belonged almost entirely to the Associates, and we were certain they'd be overjoyed.
Would the Associates be willing to come up with the funding that would be necessary to provide one or more graduate students in Forestry to do the work? (The University of Maine would fund approximately 2/3's of the cost, which would include laboratory testing of soil samples, tree coring, historical research, and so on.)
Since Harry Miller was dedicated to the belief that the Associates had an obligation to study the Forest, as indicated in the Purposes of the Organization, (see 2-b), and Harry was currently President, with access to the ears of the 12 Trustees, we felt confident that his enthusiasm would carry the day. The only argument that I recall against the survey was the question; if they come up with recommendations for expensive steps that need to be taken, are we prepared to do that?
Since no one could know until the survey was completed whether any recommendations of any kind would be made, that doubt was quieted.
Bill Livingston submitted a plan called "Forest Health on Monhegan Island."
The Trustees approved the plan in 2001. A team of graduate students started work during the following winter, looking at old photos of the Island and talking to old timers to try and figure out what land had been used for what purposes.
In the early summer of 2002 Rick Dyer and Greg Grainger took up residence on the Island for six weeks. They discreetely marked out 64 plots of land, each several yards square, in spots all over the woods. They tabulated the plants in these areas, and observed them again on return trips during the fall. A list of the plant species they recorded will be made available. Rick and his fiancée Karen Loennecker cored approximately 200 trees as well.
Over the course of the winter of 2003 the soil samples and other data were being analyzed.
And their news was cheerfuly optimistic about the health of the woods. The Red Spruce and Balsam in the Cathedral Woods area are thriving. White Spruce, which grew up on land cleared by settlers and abandoned around 1910 is succumbing to the Dwarf Mistletoe, but many Red Spruce and Balsam seedlings are grouing and flourishing everywhere now that the deer are gone.
However, their report contained alarming news about the threat that Asiatic Bittersweet, Black Swallowort, and most of all Japanese Barberry pose. No place in Maine has a barberry problem to match ours, and unfortunately Bittersweet and Swallowort seem to be moving in as the Barberry is cut and we must address this problem as well.