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From the Director

 

The Oak Log: Autumn 2007 

Download a copy of the Autumn 2007 issue of The Oak Log (PDF, ~1MB).

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The Oak Log / Autumn 2007
by Bob Klein

Executive Director, Vermont, Bob KleinIn front of the office one morning, I ran into a couple staff members loading our new, more gas-efficient vehicle with materials for a workday in the woods: boots, walking sticks, water bottles, snacks, measuring tapes, increment corers (to extract tree ring samples), a boundary survey, and a flipchart. A flipchart? This mixed group of science and stewardship staff wasn’t visiting just any patch of Vermont woods. They were off to survey Williams Woods Natural Area, a special place where a windstorm of high-speed “microbursts” toppled many of the old-growth trees we’d so proudly protected, one over two centuries old.

The idea was to map and measure the effects of the storm at Williams Woods, and then to document the forest’s recovery over a period of years and decades. The team that morning also included the leading expert on old-growth forests in New England, and a scientist from UVM who specializes in forest disturbances. After climbing over fallen trees and surveying damage in the morning, this group
planned to brainstorm a long-term research and monitoring protocol for Williams Woods. Hence the flipchart.

The change at Williams Woods is dramatic, and though it’s tempting to wring one’s hands over this, these kinds of disturbances are normal, natural, and necessary for the regeneration and revitalization of forests. But I couldn’t resist teasing the group by saying: “I hope the devastation out there isn’t too much for you.”

To which someone aptly replied, “This isn’t about damage and devastation, it’s about healthy forests and disturbance dynamics that keep them going.”

I once thought that we were in the business of preserving places as is, but now I understand that everything changes over time. And perhaps the most important things to preserve are the natural processes and forces that shape and nurture the natural world we want to save. That’s what we’re trying to do now, and perhaps Williams Woods perfectly embodies that idea.

Williams Woods Blowdown

Larry Hamilton, professor emeritus at Cornell University, tree warden for the Town of Charlotte, and Conservancy trustee, led a team of ecologists to Williams Woods this July to assess the effects of a sudden, localized storm that downed a number of trees in the preserve. One of the affected trees was over 200 years old. While many were saddened by the storm’s damage, disturbance and regeneration are a natural part of the forest life cycle.

Return to Autumn 2007 Contents Page

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Oak Log Cover Design: The Laughing Bear Associates; Cover Photos © Sarah Wakefield/The Nature Conservancy (Pitcher plants and visitors to Morristown Bog); © Bob Klein/The Nature Conservancy (Williams Woods).