Field Notes

• Land Preservation
• Birds in Service
• Bill's Big Stick
• Keep Bird Feeders Clean I
• Keep Bird Feeders Clean II
• Johnny Rotten, Tree Hugger
• Buying the Ranch

Land Preservation
Waterfront Land: $37.10 an Acre

Chris Avers

Chesuncook, Maine, is a former logging village with one white church, a store that grosses $25 on a good week, a whole lot of moose, and a year-round population of 12. No roads lead here: You arrive either by boat (an 18-mile trip up the West Branch of the Penobscot River), by ski or snowmobile. The Forest Society of Maine is working with the state to keep it that way. The group hopes to get $30 million in public funds, not so much to save the town but to protect the 656,000 acres surrounding it in one of the two largest conservation easements in U.S. history.

The second is right next door: 754,673 acres of timberland that have been in the Pingree family for 160 years. The family offered the New England Forestry Foundation a $30 million option on the easement that expires this December. If both the West Branch and privately funded Pingree projects go through, they will double the number of acres under conservation easement in the United States and forever protect a swath of northern forest nearly the size of two Rhode Islands.

Under the conservation easements, the lands will continue to be logged and, in some areas, used for recreation, but they can never be developed or divided. Though the North Woods have been cut many times, Canada lynx, black bears, moose, ravens, peregrine falcons, and bald eagles live among the vast quiet lakes and spruce fir flats. Maine Audubon has been mapping the West Branch Project and working with the timber companies to ensure sustainable forestry and encourage public access.

"This is one of the a great opportunities in the nation to do large-scale protection before the land gets parceled up and developed," says Karin Tilberg, of the Northern Forest Alliance, which is helping the West Branch Project secure federal funds.

More than 22 percent of Maine's land changed hands in the past two years, and already "mini-estates" that include entire lakes are mushrooming. No surprise, considering one-quarter of the U.S. population lives within a day's drive.

"It's a beautiful place up here, the type of land you could fall in love with and a where you can still buy a whole lake for about $1 million," says Mort Mather of the New England Forestry Foundation, which has already raised more than two-thirds of the $30 million in private funding it needs for the Pingree easement. "Instead, we're asking people to donate just $37.10 an acre to keep it wild."

Birds in Service
The Charge of the Bird Brigade

Noah Woods

In a scene worthy of a James Bond film, a peregrine falcon fitted with a microcamera and a transmitter was intercepted by India's Border Security Force last December as it flew across the country's northwestern border. According to the Indian Press Trust, the falcon was on an intelligence-gathering mission for Pakistan. Sources told the news agency that Pakistani troops had been using trained falcons to monitor the Indian army's movements along this remote border. The bird was the second such "spy" in as many months to be captured by India.

But they are hardly the first feathered agents to hit the skies. Birds have been pressed into service by Homo sapiens since the Middle Ages, when they were snared from the thatched roofs of enemy houses, fitted with flaming twigs, then sent home to
roost--and presumably roast the occupants.

"During World War II, thousands of homing pigeons were members of all branches of the Allied forces," says Peter Bryant of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association in England. "Pigeons contributed to the saving of many lives and the success of certain vital military operations." Scotch Lass flew from the Netherlands to England through heavy enemy fire with 38 rolls of microfilm. William of Orange saved the lives of 100 soldiers by flying 260 miles with intelligence about a planned sneak attack. At war's end, 31 birds were honored with the Dickin Medal--the equivalent of the Victoria Cross--for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. Even today, a hospital in Plymouth, En-gland, uses pigeons to transport blood samples to its laboratory across town, saving money and beating the traffic, too.

In India, which has gone to war with Pakistan three times since 1947, the captured peregrine falcon spent four months recuperating at the Jodhpur Zoo. Then, in a gesture of peace, Indian wildlife officials set the bird aloft. It immediately flew north--toward Pakistan.

Bill's Big Stick

Greg Hardgreaves

During his eight years in office, Bill Clinton has set aside more land in the Lower 48 than any other president. Clinton earned his spot in history by wielding the formidable stick Theodore Roosevelt first fashioned under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The law gives presidents the power to permanently protect public land--sometimes in defiance of a hostile Congress--as a "national monument" if they deem the land "an object of historic and scientific interest." No new activities are allowed if they would alter the land's character.

Keep Bird Feeders Clean I

Gary Hovland

Researchers at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology have discovered that since the winter of 1993-1994, house finch populations in the eastern United States have crashed, from 300 million to 180 million. The finding comes from volunteer bird trackers participating in Project FeederWatch--a joint effort, in the United States, between Cornell and the National Audubon Society--who reported birds with swollen, crusty eyes. "We couldn't have made this discovery without the help of birders all across the country," says Laura Kammermeier, the leader of Project FeederWatch. The disease, mycoplasmal conjunctivitis, also afflicts American goldfinches and purple finches (but not humans), and can spread to healthy birds when they come into contact with an infected bird or an object that a diseased bird has touched, such as a tube feeder. To help prevent infection, all feeders should be cleaned every two weeks with a solution of 1 part bleach to 10 parts water. To sign up for Project FeederWatch, call 800-843-2473 or 607-254-2473. For more information, visit the lab at http://birds.cornell.edu or send an e-mail to cornellbirds@cornell.edu.

Keep Bird Feeders Clean II

Last winter, salmonella killed several thousand common redpolls around bird feeders in Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Trent Bollinger, a wildlife pathologist with the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Center in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, says this die-off was among the largest he's ever seen. He notes that two finches--redpolls and pine siskins--are frequent victims of salmonella, which causes severe diarrhea and blood poisoning. In the winter large numbers of redpolls show up at bird feeders, where salmonella can spread easily through their feces. Nearly all bird species can be afflicted, so Bollinger recommends regularly scraping away feces and cleaning feeders.

Johnny Rotten, Tree Hugger

Gary Hovland

Rock star John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, star of the Sex Pistols, made his mark in the late 1970s by proclaiming himself the Antichrist and singing that the world had "No Future." It seems that Lydon has literally turned over a new leaf. The distributors of the group's recent documentary, The Filth and the Fury, have worked out a deal in which they will pay an environmental organization, Future Forests, to plant 500 trees across the United Kingdom to absorb the amount of carbon dioxide created during the film's production and distribution. (Last April, Future Forests also arranged to make the United Nations' environmental conferences carbon-neutral by planting trees to offset emissions created by the delegates' trips to meetings.) Julien Temple, director of The Filth and the Fury, was asked by the British press if environmental activism associated with notorious nihilists could be taken seriously. "The Sex Pistols were always unpredictable," he says, "so there is a certain logic to it." If you're a Sex Pistols fan, or if you just want to plant a tree, click on http://www.futureforests.com/right_frame.html.

Buying the Ranch

"I believe when the dust settles on this Congress, this will be one of the most important, if not the most important, pieces of legislation that has come along," declared U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). It was an unusually bipartisan agreement, especially for an environmental issue in today's Washington. Last July President Clinton signed into law a bill that provides $101 million to buy the Baca Ranch in New Mexico. The deal, which ends more than 40 years of negotiations, enjoyed near-unanimous support in Congress, including that of Bingaman's Republican New Mexico counterpart, Pete Domenici. The 90,000 acres, officially designated the Valles Caldera National Preserve, are considered among the nation's least spoiled private ranch lands; its highlights include forested mountains, a collapsed volcano, and hot springs. Under an unusual plan, the ranch will continue to operate to help defray costs, but the public will have access to the forests and meadows.