This summer PLC and the NH Fish and Game Department will be working to improve fish habitat in Scataquog Brook at our Proctor Preserve in Lyndeborough. The stream restoration project will involve felling a small number of trees away from the stream, and then carefully and strategically placing them, either whole or cut into specific lengths, into the stream. The practice has been used for about twenty years in New Hampshire, first in the White Mountain National Forest.

One of my favorite woods walks is the Chestnut Hill section of the Joe English Reservation in Amherst. A unique feature of the area are the piles of stones that are scattered randomly across the hillside. These piles are identical to the cairns one sees above tree line in the White Mountains. But where did these piles of stones come from, and why are they in the middle of the forest?

In his book Reading the Forested Landscape, ecologist Tom Wessels writes that if you find a stand of red pines in New England that is not in its natural setting (dry, rocky slopes), then the trees were almost surely planted.  Take the red pines at PLC’s Jon Brooks conservation easement in New Boston.    If you walk northwest along the trail that runs through the property, at the top of the hill you’ll find numerous red pines on your right, but no red pines on your left. 

Water lilies are so romantic, aren’t they? The objects of paintings and poems. But out among them on dreamy ponds there lurks a seamy side of the pond: bladderworts. Dressed … Read More

Droughts happen. When they do, most of the talk is about how they impact the water supply for humans. But droughts also affect fish. In dry years and wet ones … Read More