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03/14/2018 08:30 AMThough March often provides challenges, the reality is spring is coming and with the change of seasons, can plans for the garden be far behind?
Instead of putting in more of the same, the Chester Garden Club and the Chester Conservation Commission are encouraging area residents to consider some new ideas for local gardens. And, these new ideas are really very old ideas. Instead of non-indigenous species, they’d like gardeners to work with native plants. Biologists define native plants as those growing in Connecticut before the arrival of European settlers.
Jane Seymour, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP), will present a program on Native Landscaping to Conserve Pollinators and Wildlife on Sunday, March 25 at 3 p.m. at the Chester Meeting House, 4 Liberty Street, Chester. There will be more than talk about indigenous plants. Those who attend the lecture will also get a packet of native plant seeds.
Preserving native plants, says Lisa Wahle, a member of the Chester Conservation Commission, is not simply an aesthetic choice; native plants do a far more effective job at supporting the insects vital for pollination, and the wildlife that feed on the insects.
“Birds, wildlife, they rely on those insects. The native plants and the native insects evolved together,” she says, “and the non-native plants have a different relationship to the insects.”
Lisa points to a garden favorite: the butterfly bush. The bush provides nectar that butterflies crave, but it doesn’t support the entire life cycle of the insect. Caterpillars don’t feed on the butterfly bush and thus it is not a host plant for their eggs. The upcoming presentation, however, suggests several other native solutions to attracting butterflies, among them the native butterfly milkweed.
Lisa champions native species not only as a member of the Conservation Commission but also as a biologist with the Wildlife Management Institute working with DEEP. Lisa’s job is to create and support sustainable environments for the New England cottontail, a severely threatened rabbit.
Can it be? An imperiled rabbit? Don’t rabbits breed, like, well, rabbits?
Not the New England cottontail, a rabbit that once populated most of New England. That was before the eastern cottontail was introduced for game hunters in the 19th century. The eastern cottontail proved much more successful than the native rabbit.
“The New England [species] is shy....it doesn’t avoid predators” as well as the Eastern cottontail, which has better vision, Lisa says.
Still, she says, rabbits’ general reputation for successful breeding can obscure the problems of this particular species.
“People sometimes say, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she admits, when she talks about the problems of the New England cottontail.
Lisa explains that what the New England cottontail needs is space, from 5 to 10 acres of young forest with low growth and lots of tangled thicket for cover. Moreover, the low-growth space needs to be near existing New England cottontail sites, because the rabbits don’t migrate long distances.
Most Connecticut forests today, Lisa points out, are maturing—tall without the undergrowth necessary for the New England cottontail. Part of Lisa’s responsibility is persuading landowners to cut down mature forest to create the young forest habitat that the endangered rabbits need—only she doesn’t call it a habitat. To her it is, informally at least, a “rabitat.”
Lisa admits the cut woodlands look desolate the first year, but she shows a series of pictures that show after two years the young forest habitat is already flourishing. The young forest is important, she adds, not just for the rabbits but for bird species like indigo buntings and woodcocks.
The best way to tell if the elusive New England cottontail is present in a particular area is to don briar-proof gear and crawl through the thicket, collecting rabbit pellets. Laboratory DNA analysis can tell if the fecal matter belongs to New England cottontails or the far more common eastern cottontail.
“It’s not easy. Briars are great rabbit cover, but if you can’t find the rabbit, a hawk can’t find it either,” Lisa says.
Lisa, who grew up in Clinton and graduated from The Morgan School, got her undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Syracuse with a major in wildlife biology and a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut in natural resources management. She thinks her love of wildlife grew from her interest in her own pets.
It was not what her family had expected.
“My father kept telling me I was good in math so I should be an accountant,” she says.
Today, she has three cats, and adds that she and her husband Peter Auster, a marine biologist, could accommodate three more.
“Six is our carrying capacity,” she says.
Lisa also volunteers at Forgotten Felines, a no-kill cat shelter in Westbrook. In addition, Lisa and Peter have Elvis, a large white Labrador retriever–Great Pyrenees mix, a rescue dog they adopted from Tennessee.
“That’s why we named him Elvis,” Lisa says.
Before her present position, Lisa worked for Project Oceanology, taught water quality monitoring to teachers, and worked for DEEP in the Bureau of Water Protection and Land Reuse. The last position was a desk job with a lot of paperwork and report writing.
“Not a good fit,” she reflects. “I like boots on the ground, working with wildlife.’
Lisa has been a member of Chester’s Conservation Commission for the past year. The commission has spearheaded energy saving projects in Chester including solar energy and the use of energy-saving light bulbs in town buildings. At the moment, the commission is planning to stencil reminders on street drains advising people not to dispose of pollutants in the drains because the water runs directly into Long Island Sound. In addition, the commission is contributing to the town’s plan of conservation and development, currently being revised. Previously Lisa has also served on the town’s Inland Wetlands Commission from 2001 to 2009, chairing the group from 2004 to 2009.
Lisa, who is also on the board of the Connecticut Botanical Society, says she is trying to add more native species to the landscaping on own property, including bee balm, mountain mint, milkweed, and native blueberries. She admits that another native species sometimes makes garden planting difficult.
“I have what the deer don’t eat,” she says.
Native Landscaping to Conserve Pollinators and Wildlife
The Chester Garden Club and the Chester Conservation Commission host the presentation Native Landscaping to Conserve Pollinators and Wildlife on Sunday March 25, at 3 p.m. at the Chester Meeting House. Admission is free. For more information on the talk, call 860-304-6184. For more information on the Young Forest Program, visit www.youngforest.org.