Reaching Out
It's 9 p.m. in April of last year and I'm headed out into the woods to look for amphibians. It's dark, it's raining, and it's cold. I've chosen a forest in my hometown because it's full of vernal and semi-permanent pools which would be perfect for frogs and salamanders to lay eggs. These shallow ponds often dry up by late summer which means fish do not reside in them; this allows for minimal predation on the eggs and larvae of amphibians. I knew I would find frogs, but what I really wanted to find were salamanders. Many salamanders are secretive creatures and may spend most of their lives buried in leaf liter or well below the soil. But spring is the time to see them, when they make journeys out from their hides and burrows to ponds. Here they'll swim through the leaves and murky water to find a mate and make the trek back to their hides once the mating period is over.
As I approached my target pond, the frog calls were loud. Males were out, posturing and calling to attract females. As I got closer to the pond, the calls were not just loud, they were deafening. Their calls rang in my ears for an hour after I returned home. The main culprit of these calls was a small frog called the Spring Peeper.They are some of the earliest frogs out in the spring and easy to ID due to the darker "X" pattern on their back.
As I approached my target pond, the frog calls were loud. Males were out, posturing and calling to attract females. As I got closer to the pond, the calls were not just loud, they were deafening. Their calls rang in my ears for an hour after I returned home. The main culprit of these calls was a small frog called the Spring Peeper.They are some of the earliest frogs out in the spring and easy to ID due to the darker "X" pattern on their back.
I would go back to this site several nights throughout the spring to look for salamanders, to no avail, but I did learn to realize that this was an important forest. I've been going on runs through this forest since I was in middle school, but it wasn't until this spring that I began to appreciate the subtleties of the site. What I always considered to be a very flat land turned out to have these slight undulations that created many ephemeral pools and small upland habitats, perfect for salamanders. The most significant rise in elevation in the area gave one area of the forest a very dry sand, much different than the majority of the forest.
I became even more excited once I discovered two other plant species here. The first being the Skunk Cabbage; a long lived plant with the peculiar flower that can melt snow around it when it begins to bloom in late February. I was elated to see the large patch of it with full foliage later in the year.
Unfortunately, there is more than just native plants and animals back there; several non-native, invasive plants species exist as well. I found patches of Garlic Mustard relegated to half of the woods, Honeysuckle, Mutliflora Rose, Japanese Barberry scattered about, and dense groupings of Autumn Olive in the drier areas. These plants have been labeled as invasive because they are not from North America and they have a negative impact on the native flora and fauna that they grow around.
The presence of invasive plants along with the constant degradation of trails gave me the feeling that something should be done here to keep this forest as prime wildlife habitat. This piece of property is owned by the public school system in my hometown as well as the township. So I began to send out emails explaining my thoughts and concerns with the forest. For awhile I heard nothing. Until I got an email about several people expressing interest in participating in natural areas preservation work back there. I was stunned. I didn't expect to hear anything back, let alone that other people were interested in participating. In late fall a handful of folks got together and we discussed plans for what we'd like to see done and how to go about doing these things. We have big goals for the site and may get started on things as early as this spring, however, there may be several hoops we need to jump through before anything gets done.
In the day to day I often get discouraged at the state of the environment and it can create serious paralysis in my actions. Speaking with others in the field of ecological conservation, I think that this is a common sentiment. But sometimes all it takes is reaching out via a couple of emails to get the ball rolling. So I encourage you to look around you and see if you notice somewhere that requires action. Start contacting people, chances are other people feel the same way and are just looking for that opportunity to do something.
In the day to day I often get discouraged at the state of the environment and it can create serious paralysis in my actions. Speaking with others in the field of ecological conservation, I think that this is a common sentiment. But sometimes all it takes is reaching out via a couple of emails to get the ball rolling. So I encourage you to look around you and see if you notice somewhere that requires action. Start contacting people, chances are other people feel the same way and are just looking for that opportunity to do something.
Comments
Post a Comment