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Quote of the Week
"As often happens, politicians would do well to catch up with the electorate."
--Phil Sharp of Resources for the Future, commenting on a poll conducted
by his group, Stanford University, and the New York Times finding that
the majority of Americans (including 51% of Republicans) favor government action to address global warming.
Winter Has Come
photos by Brendan O'Neill, see slideshow
Conservation Calendar
Island Grown Storytime
Thursday, Feb. 12, 10:30 to 11:00 am, West Tisbury
Storytime at the West Tisbury Library features a celebration of pea
shoots, February's Harvest of the Month from Island Grown Schools. Free
and open to all ages, more at WT Library.
Winter Walking at the Arboretum
Saturday, Feb. 14, 10:00 am, West Tisbury
Join Polly Hill staff to explore the Arboretum grounds in the
off-season. Winter is when bark patterns and architectural structure
become evident as deciduous trees lose their leaves, the conifers stand
out with their many textures and shades of green, and even some fruits
and flowers appear. Tours run for a little over an hour. Meet at the
Visitor Center and dress for the weather. Free.
North Shore Walk
Sunday, Feb. 15, 1:00 to 3:00 pm, Chilmark
The Trustees of Reservations host a walk at one of their conservation restriction
properties, featuring wetlands, rare habitat, and trails leading to a
beach. Moderate to strenuous hiking conditions. $10 (free for TTOR
members) and pre-registration required, call (508) 693-7662 or email.
In Season Recipe
Pea Shoot Salad
Island Grown School's Harvest of the Month
for February is pea shoots (see storytime event above). We don't have a
recipe from Chef Robin yet, so we're going to keep it simple: just
imagine a basic pub salad (a la our local alehouse) with pea shoots in
place of lettuce. Here's a great example from " Meg's Food Reality":
Ingredients:
- 4 cups pea shoots
- 1/2 cup toasted pecans, chopped roughly
- 1 pear, cut into thin slices
- 1/2 cup or 2 oz blue cheese, crumbled
Preparation: Lightly place the pea shoots in a
medium size salad bowl or platter. Sprinkle chopped pecans and pear
slices on top. Then crumble blue cheese all over. Drizzle vinaigrette on
top.
Balsamic Lemon Vinaigrette:
- 2 tbsp. honey mustard
- 1 tbsp. fresh lemon zest
- 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
- 3 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- salt & pepper, to taste
Whisk together the honey mustard, lemon zest and juice, and balsamic
vinegar. Taste and flavor with salt and pepper, then slowly whisk in the
olive oil.
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Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Local News
VCS Through the Decades: 1990s
A Winter Walk at Allen Sheep Farm
The vista from South Road toward the Atlantic. Or check out some warmer scenes: last October, or this from over ten years ago.
Our fourth Winter Walk of the season revisits an important piece of
conservation work from the beginning of VCS’s fourth decade, the 1990s.
Under the stewardship of the Allen family, animals have been grazing at
Allen Farm for hundreds of years. In 1991, collaboration between VCS,
the Land Bank, the state, and the Town of Chilmark brought permanent
protection to the farm. Development rights on a critical 22.5-acre
portion were purchased through raising $25,000 in donations, securing
grant funding, and the creation of a 10-year installment purchase
agreement. The farm’s owners, Clarissa Allen and Mitchell Posin,
provided a crucial lift to the process, donating back a substantial
portion of the appraised value of the development rights. Clarissa and
Mitch also placed a conservation restriction (CR) on an additional 7.3 acres of the farm in 1991, and another 5.3 acres in 1995.
The walk is scheduled for this Sunday (Feb. 8), but due to lingering
snow and ice from the blizzard we may be forced to reschedule – please
make sure to check our website and look out for email updates before
heading out! Stubborn snow also leaves the exact route for the hike
still to be determined, but it is sure to be an engaging walk with, of
course, the amazing scenery of one of the most spectacular open spaces
on the Island. Parking will be at or near the Allen Sheep Farm entrance – look for VCS flags as you drive South Road. We hope to see you there!
All VCS Winter Walks are free, start at 1:00 and are about 2
hours long, followed by cider and cookies. Walks are regularly scheduled
for the second Sunday of the month.
Offshore Wind Takes Another Step Toward Reality, but Bids Fewer and Smaller than Expected
The four offshore wind sites
auctioned last week, two of which were purchased. The blue area to the
northwest was auctioned in 2013 for more than 10 times the price per
acre. Click for full graphic. (Data from BOEM, graphic by David
Butler/Boston Globe)
A major milestone was reached last week in the effort to bring offshore
wind energy production to Massachusetts, as the federal Bureau of Ocean
Energy Management held an auction for the development rights to four
large areas about 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Only two bids
were submitted, each winning one of the four designated areas. One of
the winners was Offshore MW (the American affiliate of a German
renewable energy company), who had partnered with our local energy
cooperative Vineyard Power. A good summary of the deal and Vineyard
Power's plans can be found at the Vineyard Gazette.
The second winner was RES Americas, an arm of the British-based RES
Ltd. The bid from RES was considerably higher at $281,285 than Offshore
MW's $166,886, in part due to the discount received by the latter for
their partnership with Vineyard Power, and presumably also due to RES
winning the site closest to the shore.
The larger story, as related by the Boston Globe and Providence Journal,
appears to be that there were only two bidders in the auction, and that
the leases awarded went for much lower prices than expected. The areas
auctioned are very large and well-positioned to generate a lot of power
(the two that sold could produce 2 gigawatts in total, more than four
times the projected 468 megawatts
of the currently stalled Cape Wind), but they are also far offshore and
in deep water, raising the challenge and cost of construction and
transmission. As global oil prices continue to fall, the short-term
prognoses of all types of energy development look less profitable,
regardless of their environmental, social, or health impacts. Just as
cheap Saudi oil and North American shale gas have undercut the economic
argument for the Keystone XL pipeline (see the last Almanac), it seems to have undermined the immediate prospects for cleaner energy as well.
Fifty Tips for Protecting Our Island's Environment
A "Timely" Tip from VCS
If you are among those security-conscious homeowners who believe that
lights on timers will prevent potential break-ins in your absence,
please think again! Quite frankly, it is most likely you are simply wasting energy
worrying about theft, as the bad guys are generally well-trained in
detecting common timer patterns. But also, please consider unplugging
those timers because night-time lighting has other significant
environmental costs. Light pollution, especially when
visible from the coast, can wreak havoc on the navigational systems of
migrating birds. Also, many rare and beautiful moths (some endangered)
are drawn to outdoor lighting – where the light-trapped and spotlighted
concentration of prey can suffer enormous mortality in an ecological
instant.
As we celebrate our fiftieth year of protecting our Island
environment, VCS plans to share fifty tips to help all of us work more
effectively toward that goal. We know that many regular readers will
already be aware of some of them – this is the Conservation Almanac after all – so please help spread the word by sharing on facebook and other social media! Special thanks to Linda Jones for her work on this feature.
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