What We Need to Know for Their
Conservation
 1.
We can’t control their past, but
we can control their present and
future.
 2. It’s mostly about us, but not all.
 3. We don’t have to reinvent the
wheel.
1.
We can’t control
their past, but we can
control their present
and future.

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When we refer
to “the” pine
barrens, we
mean the
Atlantic coastal
pine barrens
8975 square
kilometers in
New Jersey, on
Long Island
and Cape Cod
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The
Laurentide
Ice Sheet is
the story
400 feet
lower sea
level
Retreat
11,000 years
ago created
the pine
barrens
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Pine barrens are plant communities that occur on
dry, acidic, infertile soils dominated by grasses,
forbs, low shrubs, and small to medium sized
pines.
The most extensive barrens occur in large areas of
sandy glacial deposits, including outwash plains,
lakebeds, and outwash terraces along rivers.
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A thin ubiquitous layer of windblown sand
and silt caps the glacial deposits.
Deposited when there was little or no
vegetation, generally a few feet thick
Mixed with deeper layers by frost action
Glacial deposits are 200-600 feet thick
Bedrock is under that
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Most Cape Cod soil is 85% sand, 15 % mixed
Plants growing here have to be prepared to
deal with high acidity
Must be able to deal with fire, which both
happened naturally and eventually by man
Must be able to live in low-nutrient
conditions
Predominantly Pitch Pines and Scrub Oaks
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There were, of course, fires sparked by
lightning, but most of the fires were started
by the native people who populated the area.
Sometimes the goal was simply to create
fields for planting; other times it was to open
up the forest so that berries and other sunloving plants would thrive.
The plants provided food but they also
improved the hunting by attracting deer and
other animals.
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By 1913 experts estimated that
Massachusetts had 1,000,000 acres of "waste
land" — land that was not only unprofitable
and unsightly but a serious fire hazard.
With an almost endless supply of dry
vegetation, wildfires could burn out of control
for days.
A century ago, the Massachusetts legislature
created the office of State Forester. His job
included the prevention and control of forest
fires.
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The mainland of southeastern Massachusetts,
Cape Cod, and the Elizabeth Islands are
especially prone to fires.
Among the only trees that thrive in this
region's sandy soil are pitch pine and scrub
oak; both species are susceptible to fire but
pitch pine's resin-rich needles are especially
so.
With the added fuel from ground covered
with dried pinecones, needles, leaves, and
twigs, these forests can produce some of the
fastest-moving fires in the country.
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Fires have swept through Myles Standish
State Forest (MSSF) many times since the
state first purchased the land in Plymouth
and Carver in 1916.
Naturalists have analyzed pollen cores from
ponds in the forest and found layers of
charcoal between layers of sediment,
scientific proof of what common sense and
Indian lore tell us — fires have been part of
the natural cycle here for millennia.
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Only since English settlement of the area have
forest fires been seen as a threat to be contained.
In the twentieth century, more and more
resources were directed at fire prevention. State
and federal officials launched education
programs featuring Smokey Bear and began
publicizing a classification system for fire
danger.
A network of access roads was created through
woodlands, fire towers were built at key vantage
points to help with early detection, and
firefighting equipment improved rapidly.
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But conflagrations still occurred. Seven years
before the 1964 fire, an even more
destructive blaze started on the Carver side
of the forest. It raged out of control for two
days.
Like any huge wildfire, flames arched across
roads, and embers blew across ponds.
Sixty-four communities sent 2,500 men to
battle the blaze. But nothing could stop the
40- to 50-foot-high wall of flame that
consumed 15,000 acres on its way to the
Atlantic Ocean.
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In recent decades, there has been intense
residential development surrounding state
forests and parks.
Dozens of structures were lost in the 1957
and 1964 fires.
Today, even a medium-size wildfire in
southeastern Massachusetts would likely
destroy hundreds of homes and possibly
result in loss of life.
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Fire departments are better trained and
respond more quickly. Cell phones allow
members of the public to become fire
spotters.
In the 1980s and 90s, no large fires escaped
suppression at Myles Standish. As a result, in
the past quarter century a mature forest has
grown up in some parts of MSSF.
Taller trees help reduce the flammable
understory and with it the fuel fire needs to
spread, but there are still large areas full of
extremely hazardous fuel.
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Wildfires continue to pose a serious risk to
the public, and land managers have added
what they call "prescribed burns" to their
firefighting tools.
They began in 1998 with a small test at Myles
Standish. The experiment was successful, and
after some initial controversy, controlled fires
are now widely used in the region.
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Will we keep in mind the knowledge we
gained in 1957 and 1964?
How soon before we forget?
Is there an even better way?
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How do different animals react to fire?
Whereas Columbine Duskywing often occurs
in alkaline habitats, and uses only Aquilegia
canadensis as a larval host plant, the eastern
subspecies of Persius Duskywing is confined
to dry pine-oak areas, often acidic, and uses
only Wild Indigo, Baptisia tinctoria, in our
area, although it is also found on Wild Lupine
(Lupinus perennis) in the midwest.
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Baptisia tinctoria (common names include
yellow false indigo, wild indigo and
horseflyweed) is a herbaceous perennial plant
native to eastern North America.
It prefers dry meadow and open woodland
environments
On Martha's Vineyard, the species is a
tumbleweed: it grows in a globular form,
breaks off at the root in the autumn, and
tumbles about.
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Feed on pitch pines
Fire suppression would therefore lead to the
growth of deciduous trees that would
outcompete the pitch pines, adversely
affecting the future of the Zanclognatha
Only currently appears in 8 Massachusetts
communities, including Plymouth
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Amphibians generally survive fires – as far as
we know
Mammals are mostly big enough to move
away fast enough
Some reptiles don’t know any better, like
black racers; can take 25 years to recover
Some birds may never return, particularly
ground nesters
Can we figure out the optimum time for
burning?
It’s mostly about
us, but not all.
2.
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1. Humans
◦ We live here
 We leave year-round in the region
 We live in summertime in our cottages
◦ We play here
 We fish
 We hunt
 We bike, we walk, we hike, we bird, we camp
◦ We work here
 We don’t extract much these days
We’ve been here a long, long time, and we’re not going
away any time soon.
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Mastodon, mammoth, and other extinct
animals of the Pleistocene Epoch, and most, if
not all, of the animals and plants that now
live in northeastern North America, survived
the Laurentide glaciation on the exposed
continental shelf.
Evidence for the presence of mastodon and
mammoth is provided by the numerous teeth
dredged from the sea floor of the continental
shelf and the Gulf of Maine.
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”Trusting to their excellent camouflage,
Eastern Whip-poor-wills typically roost in the
woods by day, only to emerge at night to
hunt for flying bugs over scrubby forest
openings. Loss of these open earlysuccessional areas has likely been a
contributing factor to the decline of Eastern
Whip-poor-wills in Massachusetts.”
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Northern red-bellied cooters today live in just
one county in Massachusetts, but
archaeological data indicate that northern
red-bellied cooters likely lived farther to the
north, south and west in pre-colonial times.
Additionally, data from prehistoric Indian
middens in New England suggest that
humans used cooters for food, perhaps
causing local extinctions.
There are approximately 300 breeding age
individuals known to exist in this population.
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While headstarting is an important part of the
recovery strategy for northern red-bellied cooter,
the strategy’s emphasis is on habitat protection.
Changes in land use have caused loss of nesting
and basking sites. In the past, fires frequently
burned the pine barren habitat occupied by this
turtle, leaving openings in the mixed pine and
oak forest.
For 100 years, the area has been protected from
fire; allowing most of the remaining undeveloped
areas to grow into closed-canopy pine forest.
3.
We don’t have to
reinvent the wheel.
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We can try a three-pronged approach:
Research
Education
Advocacy
Together, they should lead to Action.
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What do we have going on so far?
Do we know, beyond incidental sightings,
what we have living in the pine barrens?
◦ We can work with proven protocol and web-based
data entry programs
◦ We can partner with outside organizations
◦ We can design our own projects
◦ We can challenge others to design projects
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Can we empower students of all ages to
become involved in data gathering?
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State level projects like the Breeding Bird
Atlas 2 are a big help
Localized projects like those of the Pine
Barrens Community Initiative are even better
Native plants program
Strong Friends of Myles Standish State Forest
and Southeastern Massachusetts Pine Barrens
Association
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Research leads to education; once armed with
data, we – and this means all of us - can
better tell the story of the Pine Barrens.
We can design and exhibit appropriate
interpretive signage, produce brochures and
websites.
We can give lectures.
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Education leads to advocacy.
Once we know what we have and what it
needs, we can push for its protection, which
sometimes comes in the form of funding
from governmental sources for staffing, etc.
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…has to be a team effort.
 Remember:
◦ The Pine Barrens have a past, present
and future, and they all involve us.
◦ The Pine Barrens are here for all of
us, human, plant and animal.
◦ The Pine Barrens can be saved
through research, education and
advocacy.