The Diggs Tract

I have been invited along on machete duty. I am standing at the field edge, balancing my knife vertically on its point in the palm of my hand. This is not unpainful, but I am getting good at it. My boss has invited three biologists from the Wildlife Commission (including me) and representatives from various other agencies to join him at the Pee Dee River. The purpose of this meeting is to convince the North Carolina Land Trust that we need to purchase the tract of land on which we are standing.

This is the river where my coworkers spent a day variously drowning one another and wrestling catfish. We are looking at the last public access point to this river in the county, and the land that surrounds it is a 1600-acre block that has never been developed. Tracts this large and this wild do not exist here anymore. We are usually lucky to find a partially farmed 500-acre tract, with a couple of buildings already on it. This tract will cost us four million dollars, and even if we apply for grants and funding, there is no guarantee that the owners will not sell this site to a higher bidder, as development is almost always more profitable than conservation.

The players in this game are chatting, in expensive and marvelously clean field gear, on the flat, open roadway. It is a beautiful day, a mere 90 degrees, which is a relief after the previous week. We have pulled off the road into a particularly lush blackberry patch, and there is an understanding that no one will speak until we have all had our fill. But now Brady, Kendrick and I are hopping around restlessly, waiting for the go-ahead to explore the site. When Jeff has finished the first part of the tour, we head down towards what has been designated a “high-priority” wetland, picking out arrowheads from the red clay path along the way. As if showing off, an arrestingly beautiful black-and-white striped Eastern King snake slips past us. We walk for a half a mile before reaching a barricade of briers.

“If Erica will help us out, we can take a look at the wetlands.” This is my cue. I swing and slash. I am cutting a path about 200 meters long, and wide enough to accommodate people who will not negotiate with thorns. I have never before been chosen for anything based on my muscle, and now I am beginning to question my boss’s sense.

I have chosen this particular machete for its tone. When you swing a machete and cut something cleanly, there is a “shing!” like the movie sound effect of a sword being unsheathed. Mine is like a church bell, flattened and in miniature, with rich overtones that spiral up into the next octaves. Swinging a machete is a skill that involves steady concentration and moment-to-moment judgment. At some swing-angles, you can bludgeon the vegetation out of the way without killing it. Some angles will cut the vegetation, if you have correctly gauged how resilient the stems are, and hit them with the right part of the blade. Many angles will simply cut you, and so it is prudent to practice in Kevlar chaps. “You’ve gotten really good at this,” my boss compliments me. Everyone will tell me I’m a good scientist, but this praise is different. I glow, in trickles.

We are finally at the muddy boundary of a field of cattails, indicating deeper water. We offer to show the landtrusters how to equip waders for the next part of the tour. We only have two functioning pairs, and Jeff will go in as he is. This is a brave (read: absurd) thing to do, and the rest of his biologists are exploring the neighboring hillside. “I can go in like this. My boots are waterproof,” says the female landtruster, with the untroubled confidence of someone who has never tested this assertion. There is no way she has ever walked through a swamp before. Perhaps her boots will protect her toes when she is hip-deep in muck, but I offer her the waders anyway, as well as a lesson in getting unstuck from mudholes. Mudholes can suck you straight down if you struggle, and many field-biologists working alone have been killed this way in Alaska, even recently. “Oh yeah, everything will kill you in Alaska,” says Kendrick, when I bring this up.

Jeff gives us the go-ahead. It is like opening a jar of butterflies, and we flit off erratically towards our individual interests. Brady zips up the hill, towards a reptilian rustle. Kendrick and a botanist from the Ashboro zoo are discussing stem shapes and leaf attachments on everything they pass, identifying everything in a patter of Latin and English. They are using their binoculars backwards, and pulling leaves in past the focal length of the eyepiece while looking through the large end; a field-ready magnifying glass. I slink off towards shade.

After a few minutes, the landtrusters have made headway into the swamp. Brady is scuttling down the hill, holding an enormous turtle, a yellow-bellied slider, who is returning to the water after laying her eggs at the top. Kendrick has disappeared entirely. I give him my “wo-wickery-chee-ew” location whistle now and again, which will not scare off wildlife, but will tell me that my partner is still with the group, and has not done the literal version of falling down the rabbit hole of this biological Wonderland. He returns a “witchy-witchy-where-are-you?” of the hooded warbler from various points, clever because the bird fits the habitat and the mnemonic fits the purpose. “Am I hearing a hooded warbler?” asks the female landtruster, down in the swamp. She knows her birds, but probably from recordings, as a human whistle never quite reproduces an avian one. I am impressed nevertheless.

Kendrick is making an inventory of all the species he sees on this site, and is lagging behind, but is up over a hundred species of grasses, forbs, flowers, trees, amphibians, reptiles and birds when he finally rejoins us. He and the botanist are debating over a plant in front of them, because a few of the species here are so uncommon, possibly even endangered, that they have not encountered them in the wild in their many years of study. “Take a sample to identify,” I suggest. “I don’t think so,” says the botanist. They refuse to take anything off the site, in some sort of biologists’ More-Ethical-Than-Thou code of honor. “Are you kidding me? This place could be lawns and houses in six months, and you aren’t going to figure out what’s here while we have the chance to get grant money?” She shrugs. I chalk this behavior up to misplaced loyalties, and slice down the unrare thing next to me, with what might be a careless flick of my machete.

We head back up the clay path, carved by water rather than machine. My head is hurting with the first signs of heatstroke. The air is so humid that sweating does nothing to cool you down. “Doing field work is great,” says the male landtruster. “I love this. If I could do it all over, I would do what these guys do.” On the ride back, the biologists are vying with each other, loudly, on who gets to give him our job. He is in the other truck, and we have only barely made it into ours before complaining about his statement. We are dirty, bleeding from briars, bruised, insect-bitten, ridden with poison ivy, oak and sumac, hot, dehydrated and sunburnt, and, adding insult to copious injuries, underpaid, uninsured, and overworked. But we are not in this condition because of this trip. What we have just done is gone outside. Fieldwork for research purposes can be somewhat more strenuous.

I think that we have made an impression on the landtrusters. They will never get as dirty as we do, at least not on purpose, and so they may never get a chance to experience the wilder parts of what is out here, but they are responding to our excitement over what exists, for this moment, on this piece of land. They are soaking in the education we are trying to provide, and judging, rephrasing it in their minds. They need to be able to present to boards and councils and landowners and developers, and people who have never heard of something like and Eastern King snake, and are probably afraid of snakes and indifferent to what hunters call “tweety birds.” They are going to recreate this experience with charm and flattery for those who control money, property, and the future of conservation in North Carolina.

You always read, “Habitat is disappearing at an alarming rate.” Alarming? —This begs the question of who is being alarmed. Are you? Well, here we are, standing on some of the nicest habitat I have ever seen, and alarms aside, it can be very difficult to get people to care enough to rein in development, or even recognize that there are real environmental losses associated with each and every building or road that gets built. Even people who are conservation-minded have trouble identifying what wildlife they are seeing and hearing, and it’s tough to appreciate what you can’t name or distinguish. It’s even tougher to realize what’s gone, if you haven’t bothered to examine what once was.

Brady and Kendrick and I are giddy with our good fortune. We know what we are looking at, and it is incredible. The fact that it may be gone in a few months is making us goofy and playful while we have the chance to experience what is here. I chew young sassafras leaves and play my machete-balancing game again. We take a last look at the river access on the site. A Red-Shouldered Hawk flies over our heads, checking us out. A Belted Kingfisher wings off in another direction, chattering noisily over our presence. There is sun, and breeze, and water, smooth and clear and full of freshwater clams and fish that were thought to be extinct, and even those funny catfish that attract noodlers and people who love to be out here as much as we do. The group stops talking about money, and starts talking about how good the air smells.

Even after spending years in the field, there is something new here for me, as well. After an entire season of hearing them, I finally see, for the first time in my life, a secretive, but stunningly yellow Prothonotary Warbler.

“Wow.” I point the bird out to Kendrick. “It’s more beautiful than I imagined.”

“Yup. Sure is.”

Letters Home

I began a series of letters when I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina. I couldn't have prepared myself for the move, or what I would be doing... I was more used to cities than wild areas. I knew no one, had no family in the south, but even though it was a big chance to take, it was worth it.

I'll start posting the letters I wrote home, sequentially, over the next month or so.

--------------

Hi Everyone-

I have arrived safely in North Carolina.

I live in Rockingham, a town with its own Wal-Mart. Nine thousand people live here, and I'll give you one guess where you can find them. I live in the bird sanctuary on a gorgeous lake. We are overrun with birds, lizards, and dragonflies. I work in Hoffman, a town of 600 people. They have a rusty water tower, and that's about it… a post office that could fit into my current bedroom, and two gas stations. Though in Rockingham proper, it appears that Hoffman has a raceway that seats 78,000 people, but since the raceway was closed down in order that a much larger, 115,000-seater could be built further north, there's not much going on out there. I will say that after a day in the Sandhills, I am happy to see these signs of "civilization."

I live with a fire technician named Jake, who, like the rest of the burn crew, has a slightly cooked look to him. Jake is an easy-going, drawling Hoosier who enjoys taking extreme close-ups of deadly snakes. He knows an incredible amount about the local wildlife, and we spend nice evenings out on the porch with our binoculars and field guides, when we are not watching "the Channel," in this case CBS, and scrutinizing "Survivor, Fiji" for wilderness survival tips. Occasionally, other scientists stay here with us, and some sort of bizarre two-for-one sale brings us a second "fire-technician Jake" next month as our final permanent roommate.

Day One in the Sandhills Wildlife Depot managed to seem both completely ordinary and completely foreign simultaneously, making me think that I have not quite resolved into which of the "many universes" from quantum theory I am destined to inhabit. There was the normal paperwork to fill out, I-9's to file, direct deposit forms, and so on. For the project, papers on Bachman's sparrows and Red-Cockaded woodpeckers to collect and study, field equipment to gather and store in the field truck. This time, I have a tow-chain and snake chaps in addition to clipboards, data sheets, and nest-monitoring tools. At lunch, though, I was sitting down with men named "Rupert," "Lincoln" and "Lee," sharing the cornbread and stew. I remarked that the vertebra that I happened to be chewing on seemed awfully mammalian. A long pause. "That's whah ah shoot mah rabbits in the heyud," offered Lincoln obliquely, spitting out a piece of lead shot. That guy cracks me up.

Later in the day, we visited the sites I will be studying. Most of them are Longleaf pine restorations, host to trees sporting hundreds of goofy green pom-poms and some very rare birds. There are also "the drains," which seem to be some sort of hell reserved specifically for ornithologists. Each site offers particular challenges, but let me back up a little.

North Carolina has taken a cue, perhaps the wrong kind of cue, from Smokey the Bear, and has introduced into the conservation panoply "Burnin' Bob White" (a small quail with a large rake) and "Drip Torchin' Tom Turkey." Go ahead and read that out loud. Drip-Torchin' Tom Turkey is a biologically accurately drawn turkey, wing outspread, pouring burn fuel on the ground with a tool that might be recognizable to fire technicians, but otherwise requires the unlikely name of its possessor to provide a clue as to its function. I know it sounds improbable, but this is North Carolina's plan for converting the masses to the environmental mindset. Given what I've seen of the predominant culture here, I think they might do better with Jesus in flame-retardant robes, or Jesus in a burning pine forest, or even just a bumper sticker proclaiming "Drip-Torch for Jesus!" But maybe in the course of questionable conservation practices, the pyromaniac holiday bird is not so bad. Let me offer this entry into the category of most questionables: "Chomper."

Chomper is the adopted child of the environmental movement of the 1960's and 70's, when conservation was apparently done by swap meet. At some point, Florida walked away with some of North Carolina's turkeys (unfortunately, not our famous drip-torcher), and we received "Chomper," a 6-foot gator that was placed into the Sandhills conservation area lake. This with the aim of making skinny-dippers and revelers think twice about whether they would like to lose a limb along with their clothing and inhibitions. A testament to the take-no-prisoners strategy for conservation, it did work, but now we have a lonely alligator, far from home, who basks in the too-cool Carolina sun. Does he dream about the long walk back to Florida and the clear blue swimming pools that await his return? I wonder if he longs for those vast, open golf courses and the slow-moving prey they offer, or looks up at the sky, to ponder "Why is there only me?" Did we rip him untimely from a more sophisticated world, where he feasted on marshmallows and wrestled with Attorneys General-to-be? "What do I do to avoid Chomper?" I ask naively, thinking that they are putting me on, that there is no gator. "Git out of the truck on this sahd and run fir the first hundred meters. You outrun 'im, you'll be jest fahn. Those snake chaps maht slow you down, but then agin, so maht the snakes." "Will he really come after me?" "Maht could be." Just like a scientist to talk in meters.

End of Day One.

I shouldn't be so down on the conservation around here, though. They do an awfully nice job of it. Next installment, Chiggers Debunked! No, they don't burrow into your skin! Or maybe I'll actually get around to saying what I'm supposed to be doing here. Take care of yourselves, and I promise to do the same.

-Erica

Our Forests Are Adapted to Burn

I had an article in the Fayetteville Observer on the 14th, which I am posting below. It is an op-ed about fire ecology and the wildfires that have broken out in the eastern part of the state, known as the Evans Road Fire in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and a separate fire in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

You can track the progress of the wildfires, these and the Californian ones, on InciWeb.

Published on Monday, July 14, 2008

Our Forests Are Adapted to Burn

By Erica Newman
Cape Hatteras

“Southern forests need fire in the same way that rain forests need rain.”

This was a favorite expression of Larry Landers, director of research at Tall Timbers Research Station in Florida. Larry spoke a truth that we in North Carolina continue to ignore at our peril: Our forests are fire-dependent. That is, they have evolved to be flammable, and require frequent fire for their very existence.

What we are seeing now in Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and the Dismal Swamp are examples of costly and dangerous after-the-fact responses to large-scale wildfires.

Our current tendency is to suppress fire, but when fire suppression is coupled with unwise development, it inevitably leads to greater destruction in both human and ecological terms. Meanwhile, excluding fire from fire-evolved areas leads to the “shading out” of hundreds of understory plants and loss of habitat for the animals that depend on them. At the same time, pine needles and dead, fire-ready materials accumulate on the forest floor in place of a living understory.

Before the advent of modern fire-suppression techniques, lightning strikes would introduce fires to the coastal and central South every one to three years. These frequent fires would thin and regenerate the trees, consume fuel loads on the ground and stimulate seed production of understory plants.

In the modern, densely settled landscape, the vast majority of naturally occurring fires are quickly put out. With the long-term buildup of tinder on the forest floor, fires that do reach any size tend to burn at the canopy level and are vastly more difficult to control. These over-story burns endanger people, property, houses and negatively impact air quality for miles around.

With North Carolina’s population set to double in the next 50 years, we urgently need to take sensible steps to reconcile the need for our forests to burn with the desires of North Carolinians to live in safety and comfort. Consider the following three proposals.

First, we need many more frequent controlled burns, otherwise known as “prescribed fires,” as an alternative to the policy of after-the-fact suppression of wildfires. North Carolina's State Forest Service, rather than the governor’s office, should determine when burning bans should be enacted and when they should be lifted. Too often, the decision to impose a burning ban is influenced more by popular opinion than by an informed balancing of risk reduction and habitat restoration. Such a transfer of decision-making power would make North Carolina’s fire management more like the rest of the South’s.

Second, people who settle in this region should be encouraged to do so in a “Firewise” manner. For example, home insurance rates could be set at a much lower rate for houses built with metal roofs and bare-ground yards (as was popular in the old South) than conventional houses built with flammable materials and surrounded by grass lawns (which only act as tinder). In fire-prone areas, new buildings that do not conform to “Firewise” standards should be denied building permits.

With out-of-staters relocating to North Carolina in record numbers, we will soon have living here a large group of people who do not remember how the land was once managed with fire and have no context for understanding it. Proper economic incentives will produce the safest kind of development.

Third, burning bans that are in place need separate categories to distinguish yard-waste and trash burns from habitat burns. In this way, national parks and state-owned game lands can still use their fire crews and burn responsibly during drier, more wildfire-prone times, while yard-waste burns, which are not usually attended by fire crews and fire-fighting equipment, are postponed.

With responsible fire management and “Firewise” development, we can help protect our state’s natural beauty and biological diversity along with the lives and property of its human residents.

Erica Newman is a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service and a state Division of Forest Resources prescribed burner. She is also a member of the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog!

I am, and always have been, a lover of birds. When I moved South, I began to realize that the challenges of preserving Southern forests and all of the life in them is fundamentally tied up in reintroducing fire into the savannas, the prairies, the pocosins, and indeed, all of the Southern ecosystems. I became a North Carolina Division of Forest Resources Prescribed Burner, and joined the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council. I now try to educate people about prescribed burning, and the long and interesting history of fire-management in the South.

I took the title of this blog from a Hank Williams song by the same name, and I thought it would be appropriate to make it my first post.

Settin' the Woods on Fire
Hank Williams, Sr.

Comb your hair and paint and powder
You act proud and I'll act prouder
You sing loud and I'll sing louder
Tonight we're settin' the woods on fire!

You're my gal and I'm your feller dress up in my frock and yeller
I'll look swell but you'll look sweller settin' the woods on fire
We'll take in all the honky tonks tonight we're having fun
We'll show the folks a brand new dance that never has been done
I don't care who thinks we're silly you'll be daffy I'll be dilly
We'll order up two bowls of chili
Settin' the woods on fire!

I'll gas up my hot rod stoker we'll get hotter than a poker
You'll be broke but I'll be broker
Tonight we're settin' the woods on fire!
We'll sit close to one another up our street and down the other
Tonight we'll have ball oh brother, settin' the woods on fire

We'll put aside a little time to fix a flat or two
My trey and tubes are doin' fine but the air is showin' through
You clap hands and I'll start howlin' we'll do all the law's allowin'
Tomorrow I'll be right back plowin'
Settin' the woods on fire!

(Hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3hzYRVAkUs)