Todd McLeish: Threats to Rhode Island's rare plants

Salt-marsh pink

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

Only two populations of salt-marsh pink are left in Rhode Island, and they are at risk from sea-level rise.

David Gregg worries that not enough is being done to protect Rhode Island’s rare plants.

“There are a lot of plant species that we’re monitoring out of existence,” said Gregg, the executive director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey. “We check them every year, and there are often fewer of them each year. The best-case scenario is that they stay the same, but many populations are getting smaller and smaller.”

He believes that conservationists must be bolder during the climate crisis if native wild plants are going to survive in the coming decades. Rather than simply monitoring the status of rare plants in Rhode Island, he is advocating for the use of more active strategies to boost plant populations.

“There’s been a big debate among biologists about how active we should be in trying to save rare species,” Gregg said. “Are we going to end up gardening nature? Aren’t we bound to make faulty decisions? If we get involved in active management of rare species, aren’t we doomed to screw it up?”

With little left to lose in some cases, the Natural History Survey has chosen to partner with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and the Native Plant Trust — formerly the New England Wild Flower Society — on an effort to propagate select species of rare plants and transplant them into the wild to augment existing wild populations and establish new populations.

The “Rhode Island At-risk Plant Propagation Project” is an outgrowth of the Rhody Native program, which was established a decade ago to help commercial plant growers propagate native plants for retail sale. At its peak, the program was growing 50 different species, but eventually just one species became dominant, a salt marsh grass used in restoration projects.

“Rhody Native became a commodity growing project, and that’s not our business,” Gregg said. “Our strength is in rare species — learning to propagate them and experimenting with them.”

The Natural History Survey’s “Propagation Project” began last year with the selection of four plants to propagate to test the concept: salt-marsh pink; wild indigo; wild lupine; and several varieties of native milkweed. The lupine and indigo were selected in part because they are the food plant for a rare butterfly, the frosted elfin. Just two populations of salt-marsh pink are left in Rhode Island, and they are at risk from sea-level rise.

“Our populations of marsh pink have very few plants, and we’re worried about inbreeding,” Gregg said. “The idea is to take plants from a Connecticut restoration site, cross pollinate them with plants from Rhode Island to reduce inbreeding, and then return some to Connecticut and use the others to reinforce the Rhode Island populations.”

The big challenge with this kind of project is learning how to propagate the plants in a greenhouse setting.

“These aren’t domesticated plants we’re working with,” said Hope Leeson, a botanist for the Natural History Survey who led the Rhody Native program. “We have to imitate the environmental conditions the plants are adapted to — the temperature, humidity, soil, water, and other factors.”

Salt-marsh pink is a particularly challenging example. It’s an annual species that produces a large quantity of seeds in a good year, but the seeds are extremely small — Leeson described them as “dust-like” — and they don’t tolerate drying, so they can’t be stored over the winter.

“We collected seeds in October and had to sow them immediately,” she said. “In the wild, they grow in a band of vegetation along the top of a salt marsh, where it’s a moist sandy soil mixed with peat. Periodically it floods as the tide comes in and then drains. I’ve got to come up with a soil mixture that’s like the natural conditions to make the plant happy.”

Wild indigo, on the other hand, is very drought tolerant and doesn’t grow well in moist or humid conditions. Its seeds, like those of wild lupine, must be scarified before they will germinate.

“A lot of species in the pea family have a hard seed coat that keeps them from taking in water until conditions are right for germinating,” Leeson said. “In the wild, lupine grows in sandy, gravely soil, so the seeds are likely to get abraded by the sand over the winter, allowing it to take in water to trigger the process of coming out of dormancy.”

To get lupine and indigo seeds to germinate, Leeson must first scratch them with sandpaper to simulate the natural scarification process.

Leeson and volunteers from the Rhode Island Wild Plant Society are raising many of the target plants in greenhouses at the University of Rhode Island’s East Farm and at a private site in Portsmouth.

Gregg said the project is being undertaken on a shoestring budget to demonstrate it’s potential.

“We hope someone will realize that we have this unique capacity to do research propagation of rare plants, and maybe that will help us find some funders to support the project,” he said.

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.

Todd McLeish: He caught the bug bug

David Gregg at work.

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

KINGSTON, R.I.

The artifacts scattered around David Gregg’s office provide a good idea of what he does for a living. Among the items are a crayfish preserved in a jar of alcohol, two coyote skulls, numerous large dead moths awaiting identification in a plastic container, framed invasive insects, a deer head hanging on a wall, illustrations of butterflies, and a foot-long, 8-inch diameter tree stump he quizzes visitors to identify. (Spoiler alert: the stump is bittersweet, an invasive vine that apparently grows much larger than most people think it does.)

Gregg is the executive director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, and what he calls his “cabinet of curiosities” represents many of the issues, programs and challenges he regularly addresses as one of the Ocean State’s leading voices for the study and conservation of Rhode Island’s wildlife and other natural resources.

He describes the Natural History Survey as somewhat of a social organization where “people who have been bitten by the bug of natural history” can connect with like-minded individuals.

“There are many ways to discover things about the world around you, but for people who are oriented toward identifying animals and plants and learning about them, the survey is an excuse to get together,” he said. “And that makes it valuable, because otherwise we would never get together and talk about what we know.”

The organization was founded following a 1994 ecological research conference at the University of Rhode Island, when many of those in attendance recognized how productive a gathering it had been and wanted to keep the exchange of information going. Based at URI’s East Farm, the survey is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year with a fall conference on “Climate Change and Rhode Island’s Natural History Future” and monthly citizen science events.

Gregg caught the natural history bug — literally – as a young teenager in Falmouth, Mass., when he tried to capture a butterfly that had landed on his shoe. He had already been somewhat interested in nature, but that moment led him to start a butterfly collection using a net he made out of cheesecloth.

David Gregg has been interested in studying and protecting the natural world since he was a kid. (Courtesy photo)

After collecting as many butterfly species as he could find around town, he switched to moths.

“I got all the colorful moths in my collection, and all the rest were brown and I couldn’t make heads or tails of them,” he recalled. “So then I switched to beetles, then to grasshoppers.”

The lure of insects was their endless variety and interesting physiological adaptations, Gregg said.

But he also had a curiosity about archaeology, and when he was considering a career, archaeology eventually won out. He said archaeology “is about discovering a mystery and finding out what it means. I also liked the outdoors-ness of it, the expedition aspect, the cadre of people thrown together in remote locations and having to stay focused on what they do. It’s the same thing in natural history.”

Gregg ended up earning graduate degrees in archaeology at Oxford University and Brown University, then worked at Brown’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology before becoming director of the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History.

By then he had rekindled his interest in entomology and joined the survey’s board. He accepted the leadership post at the survey in 2004.

He described the job as a balancing act between gathering information about rare and invasive species to support conservationists’ need for scientific information — a mission “that doesn’t pay very well,” he noted — and administering complex ecological monitoring projects involving multiple partners and numerous funding agencies.

“The state can build a highway or an airport, but it can’t do a project with six funders and lots of partners,” Gregg said. “We can do that.”

For instance, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management used federal money to hire the survey to implement a project to assess the health of salt marshes and freshwater wetlands around the state. The survey is also leading a coyote-ecology research project with numerous partners and funding from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“These are the kind of projects that wouldn’t get done unless we did them,” Gregg said. “These are the projects that are every other organization’s fourth priority.”

Along the way, Gregg still finds time for insects. He has shifted his attention during the past two years to ants, as a leader of a statewide effort to document all of the species of ants found in Rhode Island.

“I’ve been working on moths since I was 14, and I think I have a better understanding of ants after two years than I do of moths after 40,” he said.

In the coming year or two, Gregg’s focus at the survey will be on the establishment of a new database of everything known about the biodiversity of Rhode Island, preparing an updated publication of the state’s vascular plants, and ensuring the group’s finances are stable.

But his favorite activity is the survey’s annual BioBlitz, which brings together as many as 200 biologists, naturalists, and volunteers for a 24-hour period to document every living organism at a particular property. This year’s event is a return to Roger Williams Park, where the first BioBlitz was held 20 years ago.

“BioBlitz is an expedition to discover things in a particular place, and you bring together people with all of the different skills and talents you need to look at all of the different aspects,” Gregg said. “But they’re not just random people. They’re really nice people having a great time because this is what they love. BioBlitz is social — it’s not just science — and that’s the key. You get to meet people that can show you the cool things you don’t notice the rest of the year.”

Todd McLeish is an ecoRI News contributor.

Frank Carini: On the path to a great beech

Rhode Island arborist Matt Largess recently led a tour of Wingover Farm’s forest. He was impressed with what he saw.

— Frank Carini/ecoRI News photos

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

To see the video and more photos with this article, please hit this link.

TIVERTON, R.I.

The “oohs and aahs” and “oh my gods” were followed immediately by one or more superlatives from among “amazing,” “cool,” “awesome,” “incredible” and “wow.”

“If you could leave this for 100 years people would come from around the world to see it because everything else is going be gone. Just think of it that way,” Matt Largess, a respected Rhode Island arborist who has studied East Coast forests from Maine to the Florida Keys, said near the end of an hourlong walk in the woods on a 72-acre farm not far from the coast. “If Rhode Island could start to think that way, if they saved their places where people come as ecotourists to see the forest. I know its sounds farfetched but in 100 years it’s going to be that crucial, not only to see our leaf colors but just come to be in a forest near our ocean. Rhode Island is one of the great environments. We have these beautiful forests right up to the ocean, but they’re diminishing rapidly.”

During an Oct. 18 tour of Wingover Farm’s “unique” forestland, the leaves of Rhode Island’s state tree, the red maple, were turning color and Largess and two colleagues, Daryl Ward and Kara Discenza, were constantly pointing out trees of all shapes, sizes, and ages.

During the 60-minute tour, they counted nearly two dozen different types of trees, including American beech, American holly, black and white oaks, yellow and white pines, black tupelo, yellow and paper birches, sassafras, black cherry, and bigtooth aspen.

And not just individual trees, but stands of black birch, groups of teenage and adult red maple growing together, and baby holly trees sprouting from the forest floor. Largess said having birch, holly, and beech together in one place was special. He used the word “special” a lot. He said the forest has an “impressive understory.” He noted that some of the tallest hollies documented in North America are in Tiverton and Little Compton. He said native forests of American beech are shrinking rapidly, especially in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

With the population of the region’s American beech decreasing, Largess was thrilled to discover a large beech tree he repeatedly called “the mother tree.” He said the tree must be 300-400 years old and was surrounded by younger beeches, 150 or so years old, waiting to be the next mother. He pointed out beechdrops, a wildflower that lacks chlorophyll and produces brown stems on which small white and purple flowers appear July through October, growing under the forest’s majestic beech tree.

The property’s other vegetation included, among many others, mountain laurel, a broadleaf evergreen shrub; sweet pepperbush, a shrub with fragrant white or pink terminal flower spikes in late summer; and winterberry holly, a shrub with copious amounts of bright-red berries that shine in the fall and winter landscape.

Largess called the layered and biodiverse property, which includes a pond alive with frogs and fish, “a balanced ecosystem.” He said it would be an excellent location for the Rhode Island Natural History Survey to hold a BioBlitz, would make a wonderful outdoor classroom for local students, and could be a great future ecotourism site, as it could be tied into nearby Weetamoo Woods.

Julie Munafo invited the Largess Forestry professionals on the tour to better understand what could be lost should the property be developed into an 11-megawatt solar facility.

Munafo’s family has owned the Crandall Road property since the 1970s, but a pending sale could lead to some 40 acres of solar panels. The buyer’s proposed project would inevitably decimate forestland, ruin farmland, and destroy wildlife habitat.

The family is torn by the pending sale of the property — Munafo, for one, doesn’t want to see the farm reduced to acres of solar panels. But the family was unable to come to an agreement with the local land trust or find a buyer interested in farming and/or preservation, according to Munafo. She said she believes the property is selling for about a million dollars.

Largess, who has become a leading spokesmen for the preservation of trees and old-growth forests, said the farm’s open space is unique, as it features, in this order, open fields, young woodlands, and a mature forest. He was impressed with the property’s mix of vegetation, most notably its diverse collection of tree species. He noted that forestland like this “needs to be protected,” not turned into an energy facility, subdivision, or an office park.

In fact, the staunch conservationist believes that trees deserve more respect, which is why his company is “dedicated to the preservation, restoration, and education of the the Earth’s forests while enhancing awareness and knowledge of the natural world.”

“Trees are the No. 1 tool to battle climate change,” Largess said. “But my work as an arborist is less about planting trees and more about cutting them down, because cars are getting dirty or someone wants to see the water.”

Like many following the ongoing debates across Rhode Island on where to site solar projects, Largess doesn’t understand why so many are gung-ho to clear-cut forests. Like others who have weighed in on the controversial topic, he believes Rhode Island can deal with the issues of interconnection, infrastructure, incentives, property rights, and economics without sacrificing priceless open space. (A city in eastern China is building the world’s first photovoltaic highway.)

The will, both public and political, however, needs to be there. The state, its 39 municipalities, its 1.06 million people, and a host of nonprofit organizations have been grappling with the issue for two years. The town of Tiverton, for instance, is pondering a solar moratorium until it can craft an ordinance that better addresses the siting of utility-scale solar energy.

Munafo, who, like Largess, supports renewable energy, at least those projects sited responsibly, has been a vocal proponent of the moratorium. She believes the project proposed for her family’s property doesn’t mesh with the town’s comprehensive plan or even Tiverton’s current solar ordinance. In a letter to the editor recently published in the Sakonnet Times, the Jamestown resident asks: “How is wiping out a historic farmhouse, prime farmland and a special forest for a massive solar plant consistent with the comprehensive plan?”

Site work in the woods of Wingover Farm, likely done to determine the property’s ability to host an industrial-scale solar project, has already claimed a number of trees, including a small stand of American holly.

Once the trees are cut down and the solar panels installed, Largess said the development will clear a path for Russian olive, oriental bittersweet, and other invasive species to take root.

“All these trees will be gone and the whole ecosystem will change,” Largess said. “This place is special. It’s hard to find green spaces like this anymore. This property is a classic example of the problems we are having.”

Frank Carini is editor of ecori.org

Todd McLeish: Be careful -- salamanders, frogs on the march

A spotted salamander.

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

During last month’s warm spell, Emilie Holland saw and heard something she seldom detects this early in the year: the first movement of frogs and salamanders from their woodland wintering grounds to their springtime breeding pools. She observed wood frogs, spring peepers, spotted salamanders, and even a rare marbled salamander near her house not far from the Great Swamp Wildlife Management Area in South Kingstown, R.I.

“We often get pretty early activity here,” said Holland, an environmental scientist for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation and a board member of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey. “For whatever reason, the micro-climate is good for them. The problem is that my hot spot is along a road, and the frogs and salamanders are often crossing it.”

During the same warm days last month, other observers reported hearing spring peepers in North Kingstown and Cumberland, and seeing a red-backed salamander in Middletown.

According to amphibian expert Lou Perrotti, director of conservation at Roger Williams Park Zoo, frogs and salamanders don’t typically migrate to their breeding ponds until mid-March in most areas of the state. During the cold winter of 2015, when many ponds were still frozen until April, amphibian migration was delayed by almost a month. But it’s not unusual for rain showers during an especially warm period in late February to trigger an early migration.

“When that happens, the migration period tends to get extended,” Perrotti said. “A snowstorm or cold snap shuts things down for a while, and then it picks back up again. You don’t have the usual massive explosion of breeding activity all at once. It trickles along instead.”

What happens to the frogs in the ponds when the cold returns and the ponds freeze over again? Not much. Perrotti said the animals are adapted to survive such conditions for short periods of time. In fact, University of Rhode Island herpetologist Peter Paton said he commonly sees wood frogs and spotted salamanders swimming beneath the ice of local ponds in late winter. And wood frogs are uniquely adapted to freeze solid and thaw out later with no negative consequences.

The bigger concern, as Holland expressed, is that many frogs and salamanders must cross roads to reach their breeding ponds, and untold thousands of them get run over by vehicles each year in Rhode Island during those journeys.

“It’s a huge problem, one of the biggest threats to amphibians and reptiles in the area,” Perrotti said. “I’ve seen nights where there were hundreds of smashed wood frogs at just one site. Toads get hammered, too, because they typically have huge breeding explosions over a period of two or three nights. And gray tree frogs, too, which are pretty clumsy on the ground.”

Amphibian movement to and from their breeding ponds will likely continue through April – some species, such as green frogs, migrate later than others — but it typically happens at night when it’s raining. Perrotti and Holland recommend driving carefully at night along back roads in wetland areas during rain showers.

“It’s hard to avoid every frog in the road, especially if you catch it on a good night for migration when they’re everywhere,” Perrotti said.

One strategy that Perrotti said has been employed in western Massachusetts to avoid the problem of amphibian roadkill is the installation of what he calls “salamander tunnels” beneath roadways in areas where large numbers of frogs and salamanders migrate across roads. Barriers along the roadside funnel the animals toward the tunnel, which avoids much of the mortality.

The idea has been discussed in Rhode Island, but the cost is high and finding funding in municipal budgets is an impediment. Signage encouraging drivers to slow down at certain locations is another strategy that officials in the state have considered, though few have been installed to date.

Holland noted that homeowners with sump pumps should regularly check the system for amphibians that wander in and can’t escape.

“I’m constantly fishing salamanders and frogs out of mine,” she said. “People should monitor the sump in their basement and maybe they can keep a local breeding population healthy by not letting the adults die in a pitfall trap that they didn't even know they had.”

Those interested in learning more about local amphibians and participating in a related citizen science project should consider signing up for FrogWatch, a national program administered locally by Roger Williams Park Zoo. Volunteers attend a training program to learn the breeding calls of the various frog species that reside in Rhode Island, then visit a designated pond in the evening once a week from March through August to document breeding activity.

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.

Todd McLeish: How New England wildlife deals with extreme cold

River otters like to slide across the ice of a pond.

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The recent extreme cold has New Englanders avoiding the outdoors as best as they can and loading on extra layers when they must go outside. Which raises the question of how wildlife fared during this unusually cold period.

Local biologists agree that most species of wildlife that spend their winters in Rhode Island are well adapted to weather the cold. They have evolved numerous strategies to deal with the conditions, from hibernation and torpor to thick fur coats and layers of fat.

Birds, for instance, have developed a number of adaptations that enable them to survive the extreme cold. According to Scott McWilliams, a physiological ecologist at the University of Rhode Island, ducks can stand on ice for hours at a time and swim around in the icy water without suffering frostbite in their feet thanks to a counter-current heat exchange system in their legs. The warm blood flowing down to their feet warms up the cold blood flowing back to their core, and the blood in their feet is so cold that the difference between their foot temperature and the ice ensures that they lose little heat through their feet.

Birds also huddle together to stay warm, fluff up their feathers to provide an insulating layer around them, and lower their body temperature to save energy.

But not all birds are prepared for the cold.

“Most sensible birds will migrate to warmer places, thereby avoiding having to contend with the cold,” McWilliams said.

Some of those that stick around, however, “are less well-insulated or otherwise poorly adapted to living in cold places.” He noted the Carolina wren, a southern species that has expanded its range northward in recent decades, as an example. Southern New England is at the northern part of its range, and during extreme and extended cold spells in Rhode Island, many of the birds don’t survive. That was the case during the winter of 2015, when the state had a record snowfall and Rhode Island’s Carolina wren population declined. When favorable weather returns, however, the wren population bounces back again until the next severe winter.

Cold-blooded creatures such as reptiles and amphibians — animals that can’t regulate their own body temperature — are also well prepared for extreme cold. Wood frogs, for instance, have what some scientists call “antifreeze” in their blood that enables their tissues to freeze solid without harmful effects. In some winters, the frogs experience several freeze-thaw cycles.

Herpetologist Scott Buchanan said adult painted turtles, snapping turtles, and spotted turtles are also extremely cold tolerant and will likely fare well. But some painted turtle hatchlings, which overwinter in their nest cavity, may die if the temperatures are extreme for an extended period of time.

“The invasive red-eared slider, on the other hand, is less tolerant of extreme cold — both the adults and hatchlings,” Buchanan said. “Hatchlings, which also overwinter in the nest, are more vulnerable to these cold periods and would exhibit a greater rate of mortality than painteds or snappers.

“From a conservation perspective, this would be a good thing, as it would slow down the invasion.”

Wildlife that lives in the upper layer of the soil or in the grass at the surface may be particularly vulnerable to extreme cold, especially cold temperatures without a thick layer of snow to serve as insulation. 

David Gregg, director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey, speculated that the d that the dearth of leaves on the ground — thanks to two years of gypsy moth defoliation — may mean there will be less insulation for species that hibernate in the forest floor, such as box turtles and salamanders.

“Low temps and thin snow is also probably tough for small mammals like voles, which tunnel around in the grass,” Gregg said before the Jan. 4 blizzard. “Of course, that might make life easier for owls and hawks that need to be able to find voles.”

He also wondered about the impact of the cold weather on aquatic mammals, when all of the local ponds are frozen solid. During the week before New Year’s, he twice observed a muskrat wander up from a nearby frozen river to scratch for food in his lawn. And in the winter of 2015, a river otter emerged from the same frozen river to forage in Gregg’s compost pit.

Charles Brown, a wildlife biologist with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, isn’t worried about those aquatic mammals, however. He said the range of muskrats, river otters, and beavers extends far to the north in Canada, where they likely experience much longer periods of extreme cold than they do in southern New England.

“So around here, they’re probably living the easy life,” he said.

Those animals typically gravitate to areas of moving water, like dams and spillways, during extreme cold, Brown said, and otters can even chew holes in the ice to gain access to pond water.

Brown is more concerned about how big brown bats will fare. He noted that most bat species that spend time in Rhode Island migrate to caves to hibernate or travel south to warmer climates to avoid the winter conditions. Big brown bats are the only species that lives in the state all year. And even those should survive without much difficulty.

“We’ve had some pretty cold winters in the past, but rarely have I ever seen any evidence of bats dying from exposure,” he said.

The big picture, according to Gregg, is that the creatures that winter in the state do so for a reason, and there’s probably a logical reason for those that don’t survive the chill.

“I think that hard cold like this helps to hold back the northward expansion of southern species, like fire ants, kudzu, and lizards,” he said. “The kind of animals and plants we think of as typical here are either helped or hurt in the appropriate ways by cold, so the net effect is good even though there are animals and plants that go up and others down.”

Rhode Island resident and author Todd McLeish runs a wildlife blog.