Connecticut’s Great Park Pursuit

Governor Rell Announces Great Park Pursuit
Contest Back for Third Straight Year

Additional enhancements to “No Child Left Inside” also previewed

Governor M. Jodi Rell today announced The Great Park Pursuit – Connecticut’s state park family adventure – is returning for a third season along with other new programs being added to the state’s growing “No Child Left Inside” initiative.
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Town is recipient of Clean Energy Award

Three members of the Redding Clean Energy Committee accepted a Connecticut Clean Energy Award on behalf of the town at a March 18 ceremony. From left are Susanne Krivit, committee chairman, David Lewson and Mike Gorfinkle.
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Mysterious bat disease hits Conn.

 

White-nosed syndrome — a mysterious disease that has decimated bat populations in New York state — has spread to Connecticut. The state Department of Environmental Protection announced Friday that they have found bats afflicted with the disease in a hibernating area in northern Litchfield County — one of eight places where the DEP monitors bat populations.

“I was holding out some hope we wouldn’t see it in Connecticut,” said DEP wildlife biologist Jenny Dickson. “But we checked this site on Wednesday and found it.”

The disease — also found in Vermont and Massachusetts — is called white-nosed syndrome because the a white fungus grows on the noses of the bat afflicted with the disease. But scientist have no idea whether the fungus growth causes the disease, which may kill 80 percent of the bats in some caves in New York state, or whether its simply one of several symptoms associated with the disease.

The disease is causing a huge worry among environmentalists because bats are, by far, the best predators of night-time insects in nature.

“People think of things like mosquitoes, but it’s much broader than that,” Dickson said. “Bats control agricultural pests and insect pests that can damage the forests.”

By Robert Miller STAFF WRITER: News Times.com

The Whitetails of Early Spring

A Whitetail deer emerges from a winter deeryard.
(Photo David A. Murray)

The cold wind blew across the snow-covered landscape with a vengeance. Thermometers idle below zero and seem frozen, along with everything else.

The whitetail deer remain hunkered down in amongst the fir trees and cedar bogs, waiting for early spring to deliver their hope for survival. The old and the weak have already helped the coyote and raven survive the long, arduous winter.

As the days turn into weeks, the deep snow that once covered the ground melts to expose small areas of the forest floor to the sun. The ground cover responds, as do the trees and bushes with buds and new growth.
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QDMA convention set in Chattanooga again

Huntsville TimesQDMA convention set in Chattanooga again

The Quality Deer Management Association will hold its annual national convention July 24-27 at the Chattanooga Convention Center.

The event features exhibits, seminars from noted wildlife biologists, taxidermy exhibits, live entertainment, youth and ladies activities, auctions and more.

For more information, visit www.qdma.org.

Feeding Deer during Winter is it Good or is it Bad

N.E. wildlife officials warn that providing food for deer may have dire consequences

Grace Wilson, 8, and her dad, Eric Wilson, scattered deer food outside their home in Nashua. Many well-intentioned residents do the same. (ERIK JACOBS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

The people of Lincoln Plantation, Maine, have no illusions about their winter deer-feeding program: They know state wildlife officials do not approve.
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When Animals Die

Collecting The Bodies: A Grim Job Pays Off In Knowledge Gained

MELISSA MITCHELL works at the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory at UConn. Part of her job is to pick up deceased livestock and pets and take them back to the lab, where she is pictured, to undergo necropsy – essentially an animal autopsy – and determine the cause of death. (BOB MACDONNELL / March 11, 2008)

STORRS — – Working with dead animals isn’t as emotionally draining as trying to save them, Melissa Mitchell said one recent afternoon on her way to pick up the remains of a sick goat that had been euthanized at a northeastern Connecticut farm.
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Milford Point sets positive example

Canoers and kayakers paddle out into the Charles E. Wheeler… (Connecticut Post file photo.

What access would there be to Long Beach in Stratford and Pleasure Beach in Bridgeport if those sites were acquired by the federal government and made part of a wildlife refuge? Using the Milford Point unit of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge as an example, public access would be widely available, officials said this week.

“It has been open to all types of multiple uses, including fishing, boating and hunting, 24/7,” said Milan Bull, of the Coastal Audubon Center at Milford Point.

The state Department of Environmental Protection manages the 840-acre Charles “Shang” Wheeler salt marsh and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, has direct control of Milford Point itself.

“There is no camping allowed on Milford Point,” Bull said, “but hiking and fishing are. Literally hundreds of bluefish have been caught off the end of the point.”

When the piping plovers — small sand-colored birds that lay their eggs in sand — are nesting, the immediate area around the nests are blocked off, said Bull and Timothy Chaucer, a naturalist and director of the Gulf Pond Nature Center in Milford.

The plovers, on the national list of threatened species, are particularly affected by human disturbance to their nests, Chaucer said. “The refuge might close off an area during breeding season, but there are nine or 10 months where that isn’t a factor at all.”

If the Bridgeport and Stratford beaches are eventually incorporated into the Stewart B. McKinney preserve, the situation there would be the same or similar, officials said. “We are mandated by law to allow certain recreational activities when we find them compatible with the refuge,” said Rick Potvin, manager of the 70-mile long wildlife area that stretches from Greenwich to Westbrook.

“We need to be relevant to the community and we don’t believe we’d be relevant if we didn’t allow public access,” he said.

Some Stratford and Bridgeport residents have expressed concern that if a proposed sale of Long Beach and Pleasure Beach to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service goes through, they may be kept away from the areas or barred from using them.

The Connecticut Post reported March 2 that the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Ipswich Bay in Massachusetts emphasizes that “wildlife comes first,” an apt expression of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s philosophy.

An early plan developed by the wildlife service provides public access to Pleasure Beach and the Stratford property, via water taxis and a refurbished dock on the Bridgeport side. But some of the park-like features many say they want — camping spots, cookout areas, pavilions, picnic tables, volleyball nets and designated swimming areas — are not included in the early plan.

The wildlife service envisions a more passive experience, with visitors strolling along nature trails, walking on boardwalks and pausing at viewing stations and scenic overlooks.

Federal wildlife officials have said they will seek local public input before final decisions are made here.

Potvin said that although the purchase by the federal government for incorporation into the McKinney preserve is “far from a done deal,” his staff has prepared a public access concept, anticipating what might be allowed at Pleasure Beach and Long Beach.

“Overnight outings might be allowed at Pleasure Beach, and there could also be a boardwalk” connecting the two sites,” the federal official said. The docks might be redone to allow water taxi service to Pleasure Beach, he said.

There is no money appropriated for the purchase, expected to cost $10 million or more, Potvin said. “If we knew the land would be transferred to us, we would do a series of pre-acquisition surveys, asking the public what they’d like to see.”

William Lipsky, who lives near Milford Point, said that access to the refuge area has never been an issue for him or his neighbors.

“There is a sign right on Milford Point that says there is public access to the water,” he said. “There’s never been a problem. But you almost never see anyone out there, not even the fish and wildlife service.”

Lipsky said he and his Cedar Beach neighbors have had more problems with the DEP about speed limits for boats in the Wheeler Salt Marsh that the state manages than with federal wildlife officials.

Several years ago, concerned about erosion in the ecologically sensitive marsh, DEP employees posted a 5-mph limit and prohibited boats from leaving wakes.

That has meant that a trip through the marsh out to the mouth of the Housatonic River can take a half-hour or more, Lipsky said. “Five miles, even in a boat, is slow. I ended up selling my boat; it was taking too long” to get to the river.

But Lipsky gives the DEP high marks for strictly enforcing a ban on jet skis in the marsh. “You still get a few jerks that think that the law doesn’t apply to them,” he said.

Another issue that flared up in recent years in the federally protected area was fireworks. The town of Stratford agreed to move its July 4th fireworks display farther up the river to avoid disturbing the birds, officials said.

“The whole thing died down pretty quick,” Lipsky recalled.

Bull, of the Audubon Center, said fireworks are still sometimes a problem, “especially regarding the threatened bird species. You have to be careful; you don’t want 800 people trampling — literally — through a nesting area.”

Canoes and kayaks are allowed into both the state-managed and federally managed areas of the wildlife refuge in Milford, without permits, officials said. Many people use the access point off Court Street; others put in at the state-owned boat ramp on Naugatuck Avenue.

“There are six priority public uses, and four of them are available at Milford Point,” said Potvin, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Overnight camping is not allowed, although it would be, by permit, in other units of the refuge. You do not need a permit for a canoe.”

There would be “extensive public involvement in the process of determining uses” for Long Beach and Pleasure Beach, should they be acquired for the McKinney refuge, Potvin said. “We would listen to what people want, and we’d do a compatibility study,” he said.

FRANK JULIANO – Connecticut post.com

Killing deer is NOT the solution

To be fair I felt the non-hunting side should be able to voice their opinion and idea’s for getting rid of Lyme Disease in Connecticut.

The Connecticut Coalition to Eradicate Lyme Disease is incorrect when it suggests that killing deer will “eliminate” Lyme disease [Connecticut Post, March 2 Commentary section]. This idea is based on simplistic studies that were done in the early 1990s by Andrew Spielman, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research focused on the relationship between deer, the white-footed mouse and the Lyme disease bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Since that time, significant discoveries have been made by peer-reviewed researchers that demonstrate the extreme complexities of the Lyme disease vectors. This expanded understanding of the scientific factors affecting the spread of Lyme disease shows that deer are not responsible.
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Son guides mom to hunting success

Photo courtesy of Tom Tatum: New London’s Jamie Branham, left, wields the flintlock she used to bag her first buck with the help of her son Justin.

A mother of three, New London’s Jamie Branham is anything but a stay-at-home housewife. Branham, 48, spends most days teaching science at Kennett Middle School, but autumn afternoons and weekends you’ll most likely find her stalking the wilds of Chester County in quest of deer and other game. On most of those forays, her 18-year-old son Justin is there to guide her. Although Branham is a newcomer to the sport, the rest of her family (with the exception of 17-year-old daughter Katy) has long been steeped in the hunting tradition.
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