Robert Whitcomb: Open woods; the aim is merely fame; Art Deco challenge
A version of this first ran in the Digital Diary feature on GoLocalProv.com.
The other week, as I drove through miles of woodsin inland southern New England where caterpillars had consumed the leaves of so many trees, I thanked God that no one has suggested spraying to kill the creatures. You hear enough about massive spraying campaigns to kill mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.
The trouble with these campaigns is that they kill a lot more than the targeted culprits. They kill, for example, bees, which we need for pollination of our crops, as well as birds, fish and many other creatures.
The trees will come back without chemical bombing. For now, we can enjoy the eerie sight of midsummer woods looking like November’s.
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In picking Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump has shown yet again that he really doesn’t have any “policies.’’ His only real apparent interest is maintaining himself as a “winner’’ and Mr. Pence might help.
Mr. Pence’s support for “free-trade’’ agreements that have helped kill jobs and lower wages in the U.S.; his backing for open immigration (which also cuts U.S. wages), and his evangelical Christian views don’t jibe with Mr. Trump’s rhetoric or behavior.
Mr. Trump has two main issues: Crack down on “free trade’’ and on immigration. On the latter, he wants to kick out 11 million illegals, build a “wall’’ on the Mexican border and make it tough for Muslims to enter America. Operational details to come.
Maybe.
The governor has also been a loyal servant of the Koch Brothers and other very rich people. For a time, Mr. Trump made vague populist noises about the need to reduce the power of Wall Street big shots and Washington lobbyists but that has gone away as he realizes the Republican reality. The public has less and less patience with details anyway, and citizens rarely remember what a candidate said a few months back.
Judging by how he has conducted his business and much of his personal life, The Donald would rank high up on most metrics of, to be polite, ‘’amorality’’.
But that matters little in the Reality TV and Twitter age, even to the Boy Scouty Mr. Pence, who has decided to try to ride the Trumpmobile back to Washington, where he was an ineffective, if pleasant, congressman promoting the usual collection of Tea Party and supply-side nostrums that, although having been tried for much of the past few decades, do not seem to have ushered in a golden age for the middle class.
Anyway, the aim is fame. Isuspect that Donald Trump originally ran for president simply to keep himself and his businesses in the news. He may have been surprised that his incoherent, virtually detail-freebut entertainingly demagogic primary campaign did as well as it did. And this pathological liar and con man will get a lot of votes in November from people who won’t admit their choice to their neighbors. As for Mike Pence, he knows that there’s a good chance that a vice president can become president.
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People tend not to like Hillary Clinton because she has told some self-protective lies; because she has a reputation for extreme secretiveness; because she seems to feel herself privileged to make her own rules (but not as much as Donald Trump), and because she and her husband have made a fortune by mingling/cross-self-promoting government work, “nonprofit’’ work and for-profit work (especially by being paid vast sums to speak to companies and other special-interest groups). And, as unfair as it is, a lot of people find her voice grating.
Not surprisingly, she generally avoids press conferences. But she could do herself a big favor by holding a long press conference in which she takes any questions. She could, for example, elaborate more on why she used a private server to conduct top-secret discussions by email and also explain the mysterious workings of the Clinton Foundation. Such a forum might help lance the boil of public distrust, if not dislike.
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David Sweetser, whose High Rock Development owns the Industrial Trust Building, in downtown Providence, is smart to have arranged for public tours of the Art Deco skyscraper to be offered over the next couple of months to, he hopes, get people excited/intrigued enough to rent there (or buy the whole place).
It’s a gorgeous structure, although, of course, fading. The model in New England of how to retrofit such a stepped-back Art Deco building is the gold-topped United Shoe Machinery Building, on Federal Street in downtown Boston, which is now fixed up and full. But it’s usually a lot cheaper to tear down an old building and put in a cheap utilitarian replacement than to save it. And there’s much more money in Boston than in Providence. But hang in there, Mr. Sweetser!
Robert Whitcomb is the overseer of New England Diary.
Todd McLeish: The wildlife effects of defoliation by caterpillars
Hills deforested by caterpillars.
The massive defoliation of trees in southern New England by winter moth and gypsy moth caterpillars this spring and summer has totally changed the look of the regional landscape. And while scientists say it’s unlikely that many trees will die as a result of one year of defoliation, it raises the question of how it will affect other species of wildlife.
University of Rhode Island ornithologist Peter Paton noted that several varieties of songbirds are likely benefiting from the huge number of caterpillars swarming the area. Black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoos, two species that are known to eat large numbers of caterpillars, including the prickly gypsy moth caterpillars that many other birds avoid, are likely to thrive this year. He said birdwatchers in the region have noticed an unusually large number of very active cuckoos since the birds arrived from their wintering grounds in South America in May. As a result, these birds will probably have a very successful nesting season.
“Last week I was watching some robins 40 feet up in a tree foraging, which is a pretty unusual place to find them eating,” Paton said. “So I’m guessing they were probably feasting on caterpillars, too.”
Paton also observed blue jays and hairy woodpeckers tearing apart some of the abundant caterpillar cocoons, another unusual behavior brought about by the caterpillar infestation.
“And if the defoliation ends up killing trees,” he said, “that could eventually have a positive impact on woodpeckers,” which consume insects that live in dead trees and which drill nesting cavities in dead trees.
As for other possible impacts on wildlife, he speculated that the absence of leaves on many trees will enable sunshine to filter down to the forest floor and other areas that are typically shady, which may provide additional sunny areas for turtles and snakes to nest and sun themselves.
On the other hand, fewer shady areas may make it more difficult for wood frogs and salamanders living in the forest to remain cool and moist, according to David Gregg, executive director of the Rhode Island Natural History Survey.
“Ferns and other forest floor plants are also more likely to have a negative experience of this phenomenon than a positive one,” he said.
Natural History Survey botanist Hope Leeson said there will be both winners and losers on the forest floor, depending on the needs of the species living there. “If there is an understory of trees and shrubs, they’ll be happy to have the sun.”
Leeson noted greenbrier as one plant that will thrive with the additional sunlight penetrating to the forest floor, and it will provide benefits to other species that may be at risk.
“At the moment, any small mammal living in the forest doesn’t have any cover,” she said. “Deer have eaten all the tree seedlings and shrub seedlings, so there isn’t anything for the mice and chipmunks to hide under. Once the canopy was removed by the caterpillars, it made it easy for the hawks and owls to see the small mammals pretty well.”
The increased growth of greenbrier, she said, will provide the small mammals with new places to hide.
Both Leeson and Gregg also noted that some unwanted invasive species may also thrive this year, thanks to the defoliation. Amur cork trees, for instance, an Asian species, have invaded forests throughout the Mid-Atlantic states and are now found in small numbers in coastal forests of Rhode Island as well. They grow very slowly in the shade, with some 25-year-old trees no more than 8 feet tall with trunks only an inch or two in diameter.
“They just wait it out in a shady situation,” Leeson said. “They just eek out an existence and wait for the moment when there’s light, and that’s when they put on a lot of growth.”
This year could be the year they will shoot skyward.
According to Rick Enser, retired biologist for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, if the region experiences another gypsy moth infestation next year, tree mortality will likely increase, which could create gaps in the forest for new species to move into.
“Unfortunately, invasives are highly adept at dispersal, although small infestations within forest openings should theoretically be reduced or eliminated as the canopy returns,” he said.
Enser noted winged euonymus, also known as burning bush, as one invasive species that can spread quickly to new areas and survive when the forest canopy returns. It’s a shrub that has become a primary concern at URI’s W. Alton Jones Campus in West Greenwich.
Since it has been more than 30 years since Rhode Island has experienced such a severe defoliation, many of the environmental effects are uncertain and unstudied, leaving some scientists with more questions than answers.
“I was wondering about the nutrient balance,” Gregg said. “Normally oak leaves breakdown in a certain way at a certain time, but this year they've been consumed by caterpillars and turned into manure and sprinkled all over the forest floor. So is that good for the plants? What’s the nutrient analysis of gypsy moth poop?”
Author and EcoRI News contributorTodd McLeish runs a blog about wildlife. Hit this link to read it.