Letter: Herb’s not-so-tiny stand of oaks a big loss

Posted 7/5/15

To the editor:

Perhaps my lifelong interest in the New England woods, inhabited by my ancestors since 1661, leads me to value Herb’s woods; I also spent many hours with a tractor and chain pulling out ground hemlock from  fields in Maine.  I …

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Letter: Herb’s not-so-tiny stand of oaks a big loss

Posted

To the editor:

Perhaps my lifelong interest in the New England woods, inhabited by my ancestors since 1661, leads me to value Herb’s woods; I also spent many hours with a tractor and chain pulling out ground hemlock from  fields in Maine.  I am  happy to learn more, in this case from Mr Yoder, who assures me about the “tiny pocket” of clearcut Hadfield woods that I have  lived beside for 40 years.   For  residents of Kansas, six acres may be tiny, but for residents of  Massachusetts, and in particular, Cornell Road, it is not so tiny.

Perhaps Mr Yoder  has not been told  Herb’s  forest is a most unlikely quail meadow, since it is filled with major stones, and quail, I have learned, shun stoney ground.  I have also been told, though Mr Yoder may not have been, that it will take decades to turn forest soil and its root and rhizome system into meadow, while we have thousands of acres of meadow in Westport already, some held by farmers who delay mowing until the quail fledge.  The Land Trust even has some acreage in Dunham Brook that would make a good meadow with very few trees removed.

I appreciate Mr Yoder’s instructing me on the future of biodiversity, though I have a beginning familiarity with lost bird, bee and butterfly  species through my study of zoomusicology, and especially through my fellow zoomusicologist from Chennai, AJ Mithra.

Though I understand clear-cutting can foster lynx and deer, I support Mr Yoder’s friends in their protest of clear-cutting in the Northwest; and, I wonder if they may not support us who have lived near, and even on, the  previously conserved Hadfield forest here in the Northeast.

One thing I do know:   I helped my grandfather  on Crockett Ridge, (interior, not coastal) Maine, cut 16 cords to burn each winter. Hard wood has a value.  And for abutters on Cornell Road,  Herb’s oaks had more value standing than in a backyard woodpile.

Alan Powers

Westport

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