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Today – September 3 -- President Obama proclaimed September 2009
as National Wilderness Month. Today also marks the 45th
anniversary of the Wilderness Act, among the most vital of any
legislation ever passed by Congress. I only realized the date, and
heard about the proclamation, after finishing this piece. May we
all celebrate the magnificence of our wild country, and not forget
its safety requires never-ending vigilance.
Protecting Land
There are hitches to
protecting what you love. For instance, once in Central Park,
trying to protect my dog from the insane kick of a
woman-one-ought-never-tangle-with, I ended up in an actual physical
fight. My friend Graham interceded and nobody died. (I did try to
talk to her first.) Another instance, joining with thousands of
people in voicing the opinion that the air and sound pollution of
snowmobiles has no place in Yellowstone’s winter has resulted in
numerous court cases, and, for now, a cap on their numbers and how
they’re used, but not a total ban.
And then, there’s my
own land -- wet meadows, woods and stream, and views to the edge of
the universe. Not huge, it is big enough to provide summer habitat
for a few sandhill cranes, nesting space for great horned owls and
swallows, bluebirds and robins, a place for deer to feed and
shelter, for coyotes to sing the moon into sky. In calving season
eagles hang out to clean up the afterbirth. This summer a white
pelican touched down on the creek, wings spread over the water like
an angel.
Believing the land
deserves permanent protection, a means to keep it forever from
passing to someone who would drain its wetlands to build condos, or
trophy houses, David and I went to the Department of Agriculture’s
Natural Resources Conservation Service. Our neighbors down the dirt
road have a conservation easement through the Service’s Wetland
Reserve Program. That seemed right for us, too. South Willow Creek
flows across our land, through a culvert under the road, emerges to
cross theirs, so it’s all the same land.
Approval for the
program is based on both the appropriateness of the land, and the
numbers of people applying in any one region in a given year. We
applied two years ago and were approved some months later. Then the
department’s lawyers discovered problems. My problems, as
far as they were concerned.
The big one was a
federal lien against the previous owner for back taxes. The title
company hadn’t mentioned this when I took the land over, so the
surprise came via the NRCS. It didn’t matter to them that it
wasn’t my taxes. I don’t always approve of how my tax
dollars are spent – on wars, for instance – but I do pay them. I
had friends who, refusing to pay taxes supporting the Viet Nam war,
moved to an island off the Maine coast where, living below poverty
level, they had no taxes. But they didn’t simply not pay
them.
Next came an
objection to an old telephone company right of way across the
property. The Wetlands Reserve Program Specialist took care of
this one. But the IRS deal took a year of time, a lot of work on my
lawyer’s part, and a more money than I wanted to spend.
Then, as we went to
closing in June, and I looked at the surveyer’s map, I thought the
government access had been placed in our driveway. Because a
mistake like that would require an entirely new survey, and probably
another year of time, this quickly got everybody’s attention.
Fortunately, I was wrong. Rarely has it been such relief to be
wrong.
In mid-August, David
and I and the five NRCS people involved in the project crossed the
perennially wet fields below the house. For us, this was
celebration; the easement now a reality. When we reached the creek
we could see the biologist’s excitement. “The trout in this creek
are whirling disease resistant,” he announced.
Whirling disease,
serious anywhere, is especially so in a state like Montana where
fly fishing is both a religion and a major industry. It is an awful
disease. A parasitic single-cell organism (Myxobolus cerebralis)
infects the Tubifex tubifex worm which excretes it into
the water in spore form. The spores then penetrate the skin of
fish, multiply inside the fish, move up the neural tissue and eat
the fish’s cartilage. The results are spinal deformities, black
tails and, when the fish is excited, whirling. There is no cure.
Food can make the already stressed fish whirl. But when it whirls,
it cannot feed. You rarely see a trout whirling in the stream
because fish this sick die quickly, either from starvation or
because they are easy prey. As their bodies decay, the M.
cerebralis is released back into the stream to await the next
T. tubifex.
About 10 years ago I
wrote an article about whirling disease for The Wall Street
Journal. I had driven out to the creek south of my land with
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists who were trapping young
fish to study. Infecting the salmon family of fish – trout, salmon,
gar, grayling, whitefish-- whirling disease, which is native to
Eurasia, was first found in the U.S. in Pennsylvania in 1956.
The NRCS biologist
comes from Pennsylvania. “A coal mining town,” he said. “Both my
grandfathers died of black lung disease.” I could imagine he was
glad to get out of there, get some fresh air, some Montana sky.
Ten years ago there
were moderately resistant fish in the Willow Creek system. Over the
years since I wrote the article, nature did a pretty major selection
process (the thing it does when we leave it alone) and the fish
within this system—Harrison/DeSmet rainbow trout-- have now become
highly resistant. The Willow Creek system is the only
source of this wild rainbow in the world.
The creek ran clear,
shallow, and fairly broad over pebbles, everything luminescent grey
on a grey morning. There was a lot of rain in Montana this summer
and fields that would – most summers -- have been tan remained
green. The biologist told us that the stream restoration would
narrow the channel in places, deepening it, making better places for
trout to hide. Old willows along the banks provide cover for birds
and for deer, and shade for the trout. The restoration may add some
other trees, maybe cottonwoods that grow naturally along a stream
bank. An old snag, providing roosting eagles a clear view of the
pasture to the west, rises above the willows.
We followed the
stream east, then crossed through tall grass covering an erstwhile
mill site, the place where farmers from surrounding towns brought
their grain in the early part of the 20th century. Cutting back to
the creek through waist-high grass, we arrived at the beaver dam
that divides the creek into two streams. The dam has created a
little falls and a broad pool. There is also a mess of beaver-felled
trees and half-chewed trees that needs only a little more beaver
activity before they, too, fall. Beavers have made a true wild
place of our stream. A year ago a trapper pulled two 70 pound male
beavers out of here.
When, one day,
somebody else lives in our house, the land they’ll get with it is
protected land. The easement is forever. With luck, the
surrounding ranches will continue as ranchland, keeping open this
sweeping landscape. In the name of the Harrison/DeSmet rainbow,
may this little piece of earth, and all its birds and mammals, be
healthy.
Copyright © 2009 Ruth
Rudner |
