Elisa Campbell If you visit the Quabbin Reservation to enjoy the views, bird watch, or hike, you may have noticed that recently the roads near the Visitor’s Center have been repaved. But you are probably not aware that the management plan for the next ten years is currently being reviewed and it might bring bigger, less welcome, changes.
The Quabbin Watershed Land Management Plan (QWLP) covers a lot of subjects, including historical and cultural artifacts, the history of the reservoir, and the science of water supply protection. But if you are familiar with Quabbin, you don’t have to read all 300-plus pages. The real heart of the matter is section 5.2, on forest management. And there, I’m sorry to say, I think you have to read between the lines.
In general, the plan looks good. It repeats the well-established idea that the best protection for the water supply is a vigorous, low-maintenance forest of long-lived trees that are well-suited to their growing sites, The plan calls for maintaining roughly the current mix of species, and trees of various ages and sizes so that if some kind of calamity strikes, no portion of the watershed will be l eft without living trees (which would lead to erosion into the reservoir).
My principal concern is the difficulty of maintaining species diversity. Most of the tree species in Quabbin, and all of Massachusetts, for that matter, are under attack from one enemy or another. For example, oaks are just beginning to recover after too much browsing by deer, and now Quabbin has a large population of moose. In addition, gypsy and winter moths attack white oaks, and there is the threat that sudden oak death will be brought to the area and attack the red oaks. Eastern hemlocks are succumbing to the hemlock woolly adelgid. White ash are declining from a variety of causes. American beech, sugar maple, hickory and yellow birch are all uncommon in the watershed, largely because the soils tend to be acidic. What’s left? Mostly white pine, black birch, and red maple. And it turns out moose like black birch and red maple, too.
The QWLP documents the threats to various forest species very well. What it doesn’t do, in my opinion, is require forestry that takes those threats into account. Instead it says it’s the first plan that is working on a forest that is no longer over-browsed by deer. OK; but what about the moose?
Maybe my problem is less with the QWLP than with the forestry that’s being done now – regardless of which “plan” is officially in effect. Thus in section 5.2.3.7.2 the QWLP says that “The vast majority of the harvesting that will take place at Quabbin over the next decade will be made to release regeneration that has become established in the understory, thus developing new age classes capable of persisting to mature overstory trees. As described in previous sections, this regeneration release cutting will include single tree selection, small group selection, and patch cuts.”
However, those of us who have gone out to look at what’s being done have seen “patch cuts” where every tree has been cut, with no “regeneration” present to start growing. (Regeneration means young trees at least a couple of feet high, ready to take advantage of sunlight and water they get when large trees above them are removed.) No “single tree” or “small group” selection.
So what’s up? It seems to those of us familiar with the way forestry has been done at Quabbin that things have changed – dramatically – and that the new Plan doesn’t make it clear, let alone explain how and why.
Having participated in the great debate two decades ago about what to do about too many deer at Quabbin, I am acutely aware of what the ever-growing population of moose is going to do to that forest, and how difficult it is going to be to take action to reduce that population. Under the circumstances, I think Quabbin should not be planning to create openings in the forest of one to two acres with the expectation that trees will grow in them. At the very least, the plan should make clear that they will monitor the situation closely, and if regeneration does not occur, they will stop creating more openings.
You, too, can comment: the deadline is August 17. You can see the plan at http://www.mass.gov/dcr/waterSupply/watershed/quablmp.htm