Where once a deep covering of snow meant a world of muffled sound and privacy, it now provides, in more and more parts of the country, a limitless speedway for some one million snowmobiles. The machines, which whine like chain saws, are charging into back-country forests and across frozen lakes heretofore unrcachable in winter except to a few intrepid wilderness enthusiasts, and so, not surprisingly, they are stirring considerable furor among conservationists throughout the country.
The first snowmobile was introduced only eleven years ago by Bombadicr Ltd. of Canada as a motorized replacement for the Eskimos’ and trappers’ dog team. Two hundred and twenty-five machines were sold. This season’s sales are expected to hit four hundred thousand. Nine out of ten snowmobiles arc bought purely for fun, and price tags ranging from $600 to $2,000 are no deterrent. The average snowmobile is a two- or three-man vehicle with two steel runners in front steered by a handlebar and propelled by a wide tractorlike tread that spins against snow. Usual speeds are fifteen to thirty miles an hour, but the gasoline engine can be souped up enough to make eighty possible. No driving license is required; anyone of any age can hop on and head for the wilderness. Among the hazards to environmental quality posed by the snowmobile—which is only the forerunner of a growing variety of off-road vehicles that arc designed to negotiate sand, mud, swamp, and snow—are the following:
The loud noise of the snowmobile’s engine is a source of possible damage to the hearing of those who ride it and an outright insult to anyone in the vicinity seeking peace and quiet. The effects of noise on wildlife are now being tested by the government. One industry reprcsentative commented to Malcolm Baldwin of the Conservation Foundation, “These machines could be half as noisy with a little extra cost, but they wouldn’t sell the American male just does not want a quiet snowmobile.”
The possibility of overfishing remote lakes is made vivid by a U.S. Forest Service report that “Pierz Lake, 16 miles off Gunflint !rail in Minnesota, can be reached only by a six-hour canoe and portage trip in the summer, but a reporter counted 67 snowmobiles and 120 fishermen there in mid-January.” They took out 556 pounds of two-pound Rsh, about a year’s production.
Seedlings and young trees brittle and dry in winter are easily damaged. A twenty-six-acre, three-year-old planting of Norway and white pines was ruined by snowmobiles at the Wilderness Research Foundation in Ely, Minnesota. Paper companies with forest lands in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have also reported damage to young trees.
Complaints about snowmobilers running down deer and other animals hampered by deep snow are commonplace. A particularly outrageous incident of the snowmobile killing of sixteen deer bucks, does, and fawns—ocurred last March on national forest land near Virginia, Minnesota. Some of the victims had been used for target practice; some had been sadistically run down by the machines and left to die of exhaustion. Several states have laws protecting wild game from snowmobile harassment, but non-game animals—foxes, coyotes, polar bears, mountain lions—are mostly not covered. A “sport” has developed of pursuing the coyote and finishing it off with a pistol.
Litter is developing into a serious problem, reports the Forest Service, “because snow provides such an excellent temporary expedient for covering empty fuel containers and other litter.”
Private land and wilderness areas are completely open to intrusion. It is difhcult if not impossible for a landowner to physically prevent trespass, since the machines can go anywhere there is snow, including right over fences. Vandalism of once-remote cabins is an increasing problem.
The snowmobile is not about to go away, but its use can be regulated. The Conservation Foundation in Washington, D.d., is at work on a report of suggested policies for management of the snowmobile, and it is hoped that the world snowmobile conference in Duluth, Minnesota, this month will make significant progress toward that end.
”… a large part of the pollution control equipment sold today is used to clean water coming into a plant for use m manufacturing rather than tu cleanse it before discharge. ”
— Business Week October 4, 1969
CARETTA CARETTA CARETTA
By ELIZABETH N. LAYNE
That egg hunters might wipe out the Atlantic loggerhead (Caretta caretta caretta), second largest of the world’s five species of sea turtle, has been a concern for more than a hundred years, or at least ever since the best cooks in Charleston and Savannah began producing pastries from the loggerhead’s leathery-shelled eggs. Thousands were collected each year along the open beaches of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida—wherever the female turtle lumbered ashore in the full moon of the spring tide to bury over one hundred ping-pong-ball-sized eggs. Time and again the female loggerhead returns from her wanderings on the high seas to deposit eggs on the same stretch of beach, perhaps even returning to the place where she herself was hatched.
Protective laws have reduced turtle-egg collecting, but the highest-priced beach property in the world—along our southern Atlantic shore—is the loggerhead’s main nesting ground. Development has destroyed innumerable rookeries, with the result that fewer and fewer female loggerheads are surviving to maturity.
Thus far the most ambitious program to help the loggerhead is a rookery rehabilitation project on Florida’s Sanibel and Captiva islands. Known as Caretta Research, the program is sponsored by the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation and headed by Charles R. LeBuff, Jr. Fifty years ago these small islands in the Gulf of Mexico just off Fort Meyers supported perhaps two thousand turtle nests. In 1968 only 186 were found, 73 of which were soon destroyed by predators and storms. Last May, June, and July, Caretta Research workers prowled the beaches at night, carefully gathering up thirty clutches of freshly laid eggs, which were quickly reburied within an enclosed hatchery. Common practice in similar projects is to turn the hatchlings loose once they emerge from the sand fifty to sixty days later. But Caretta Research is now raising more than two thousand infant turtles in salt-water tanks on a diet of lettuce and some two hundred pounds of ground fish a week. As soon as they are a year old and large enough to defend themselves, they will be released. Since protection of the males is not vital, and they could be let go earlier, local biology students are working on a method to differentiate the sexes. Dr. Archie Carr, famous for his work with the green turtle, calls the project “a good gamble” but is concerned that pen-raised turtles may lose their return-guidance capability. Knowledge about the sea turtles’ homing behavior is inadequate because a tag able to survive the reptile’s growth from a few grams to three hundred or more pounds has not been devised. Caretta Research is experimenting with a special notch in the shell, a new method tried in Australia.
The full success of the project will not be known for six to ten years, when the first batch of females to be released this June 17 will reach sexual maturity and return—maybe—to the beaches of Sanibel and Captiva.
WHO WILL PAY FOR THROW-AWAY SOFT DRINK BOTTLES?
By ELIZABETH N. LAYNE
Presently if you buy a carton of nationally advertised soft drinks you pay from 8 to 14 cents more per carton than if you purchased them in returnable bottles.
In addition you will sooner or later have to buy extra garbage trucks to haul them off, or to have them picked off the highways, or perhaps to buy a new tire for your car.
I have mixed emotions about them. As a retailer selling them for 61 cents per carton, I make 7 cents. I make 8 cents when I sell a carton of returnable bottles for 51 cents, and the extra 1 cent does not cover the extra costs of handling the bottles. So, as a retailer, I prefer to sell the throwaway bottles. As a citizen, I wonder if they are not one more thing that will in the long run cost more than the convenience is worth. Can you imagine Claytor Lake full of throwaway bottles? Even cans eventually rust.
What’s your opinion?
L. E. Wade
—A box in Wade’s Supermarket’s ad from the April 10, 1969, Christiansburg-Blacksburg (Virginia) News Messenger
WHAT IT WILL TAKE
By ELIZABETH N. LAYNE
“The immediate issue is environmental management. The price runs against our grain. … It includes a social ethic fur the environment; control of the world’s population; willingness to foreswear profits, pay greater taxes and higher prices, reduce the material standard of living, sacrifice certain creature comforts, revise social priorities, and raise sufficient public opinion against principal industrial offenders to compel change. …”
Edward C. Crafts, environmental consultant, speaking at the 1969 American Forestry Association convention
TECHNOLOGY’S CORNUCOPIA
By ELIZABETH N. LAYNE
In one year the United States of America produces:
142 million tons of smoke
7 million scrapped cars
20 million tons of waste paper
48 billion discarded cans
26 billion discarded bottles and jars
3 billion tons of waste rock and mill tailings
“What we have saved and what we will save in the next few years will be all that will remain to be passed on to future generations. There will never be another chance.”—The Nature Conservancy
SAVING A MOUNTAIN
By ELIZABETH N. LAYNE
Fifteen miles north of New York City the Tappan Zee Bridge reaches across the Hudson River to the southern tier of Rockland County and to the last large chunk of unprotected and undeveloped land in the region, a ridge of the Palisades range called Clausland Mountain. At this time of year parts of the mountain are green with eastern hemlock. In spring the deciduous forest understory comes alive with pink and white dogwood, wild cherry, and shadbush—a sanctuary for wild flowers, warblers, owls, fox, deer, and people. For the past two years a small group of nearby residents, extraordinary only in their perseverance and determination, have struggled to save Clausland Mountain from urban development and preserve it as natural parkland. They are now in the last crucial stage of the battle.
Just before Christmas, 1967, Rockland County papers reported that Columbia University planned to build a one-totwo-thousand-unit faculty housing development on Clausland and held an option to buy the five-hundred-acre ridge. The first of many “Save the Mountain” strategy sessions was held that New Year’s Eve, with a total of six people present, John and Gretta Alison, Barbara and Vincent Porta, Susan and Don Preston. Their early efforts to block the Columbia scheme included visits to local, state, and federal officials, school boards, civic associations, and the gathering of some two thousand signatures for a petition. But when the university responded only with vague assurances and renewed its option, an enlarged Save the Mountain committee set to work on the formidable job of raising the $1,350,000 to buy the mountain. By June an application was in for a 50 per cent matching grant from the federal government’s Land and Water Conservation Fund. (This vital fund, currently severely crippled for lack of money, aids in state, city, and county acquisition and development of outdoor recreation areas.) By August, in response to mounting pressure, the county board of supervisors voted to put up 20 per cent of the money needed and to designate the land, if necessary, as a wildlife sanctuary.
In November the federal government’s matching grant came through the committee’s first real victory after eleven months of work. $675,000 was now available provided another $675,000 could be raised within sixty days. Rockland County increased its commitment to 25 per cent ($337,500). With all possible government funding sources tapped, with $337,500 still to be found, Irving Maidman, the realtor who owned the land to which Columbia held option, contributed $100,000. An urgent appeal to the Nature Conservancy, a private nonprofit organization whose sole effort is directed to preserving valuable land, resulted in the largest loan in the history of that organization—the $237,500 necessary to match the federal grant. Apparently the mountain would be saved. All that remained to do now, it seemed, was to raise the money to repay the Nature Conservancy. But not so. Columbia University did not wish to release its option. The university intended to make a profit on the land, and not until April 8, 1969 over two months after all the money had been raised—did Columbia, in the face of public pressure, finally agree to give up the option.
Save the Mountain’s efforts to repay the Nature Conservancy loan have been hurt by Columbia’s delay and by a failure to get two or three big donors. But a sale of works by noted Rockland County artists last fall and support from local celebrities—Burgess Meredith gave a fund-raising party, Helen Hayes signed three hundred letters—have all helped. At this writing it appears Clausland will survive just as it is.
GAMBLING ON AN ISLAND
By ELIZABETH N. LAYNE
“If you want to save a piece of history and preserve a Maine island of natural beauty,” commented the Maine Times, “you can do one of three things: be born a millionaire and buy it outright; interest a conservation group or foundation in buying it, and hope that they will respond in time to save it … or take a king-size gamble like going into debt to raise a down payment and working like mad to raise the balance from other conservationists you know must be out there somewhere …”
Last March, three mmmillionaires in Kennebunkport took the king-size gamble when they heard that Vaughn ‘s Island, thirty-five acres of unspoiled sand, salt marsh, and pine just off the Maine coast, had a developer ready to buy. Alexander B. Brook, Sterling Dow III, and Alexander Armentrout formed a trust binding them to preserve the island for the people of Maine and took an option on the $60,000 property. A donor put up collateral for a bank loan for the down payment, and the three trustees obligated themselves to pay $10,000 every six months until the $60,000 was paid off. As interest fees and other expenses mounted, including an $18,000 out-of-court settlement with the developer, what at first had seemed a not too impossible task of raising $10,000 by September 14 quickly became a $45,000 anxiety. Funds were raised by an auction and a Labor Day lobster bake. “But what really brings in the money, ” says Mr. Brook, who is editor-publisher of the York County Coast Star, “is personal letters to local people we know and particularly personal visits. They take time, but they bring it in.” The Vaughn‘s Island Preservation Trust got its $45,000. “It shows you people will respond,” says Brook. March 14 is due day for their next $10,000 plus $1,000 interest on outstanding notes.
NOMINEES FOR THE AMERICAN HERITAGE SOCIETY AWARDS
SEE ANNOUNCEMENT ON PAGE 3 By ELIZABETH N. LAYNE
(1) Alaska Conservation Society, College, Alaska,
is fighting to soften the impact on Alaska’s fragile environment of massive development triggered by the newly found oil reserves. It is calling for a long-range plan for the entire state that will protect the resources, including potential wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, and game ranges, and it proposes additional national parks.
(2) Big Thicket Association, Liberty, Texas,
is working to save a fragment of what was once a sweeping expanse of over three million acres. This wilderness is a dense and luxurious growth of giant magnolia, beech, oak, and pine; a haven for orchids, ferns, and flowering shrubs. Today’s remaining three hundred thousand acres of Big Thicket are the last refuge of the once bountiful wildlife of Texas—bears, panthers, wildcats, and possibly the ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct. The entire acreage is privately owned and is currently disappearing at the rate of fifty acres a day.
(3) Conservation Society of Southern Vermont, Bondville, Vermont,
works to counter the destruction of natural resources brought on by an unchecked land boom. Developers are bulldozing forests and farmlands to build small-lot houses for skiers, hunters, and vacationers. The society is fighting a major paper company’s badly planned subdivision of twelve hundred acres on and near Stratton Mountain, one of the few wild tracts in the area.
(4) Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, Philadelphia,
stimulates local action to combat air pollution in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Its members helped pass Philadelphia’s new model air-management code.
(5) Escalante Wilderness Committee, Salt Lake City, Utah,
was formed to preserve the Escalante Canyon country as a protected wilderness, and is fighting a proposed state highway that would cut across this unspoiled and beautiful bit of southeastern Utah.
(6) Hells Canyon Preservation Council, Idaho Falls, Idaho,
is challenging private power companies in its effort to prevent the building of any dams on the Middle Snake River between the existing Low Hells Canyon Dam and Lewiston, Idaho. This one-hundred-mile stretch of wild white water plunges through the awesome canyon depths along the Idaho-Oregon border.
(7) Laughing Brook Education Center, Hampden, Massachusetts:
On a farm owned by the late Thornton Burgess, author of children’s stories, a nature center is being established by the Massachusetts Audubon Society “to be both testing ground and prototype for innovative conservation education.” The Burgess landscape (“Green Meadows,” “Green Forest,” and “Old Orchard”) will be preserved; real-life counterparts of Peter Rabbit, Reddy Fox, and Jerry Muskrat will be on view in natural settings; and a program of lectures, films, and outdoor-indoor exhibits will be developed to give children an ecological view of the natural world and of their place in it.
(8) The Old Santa Fe Association, Santa Fe, New Mexico,
has worked since 1926 to preserve valuable old Spanish, American, and Indian buildings and to maintain the special character of the city. A recent effort of the association has been a three-year fight to save the last row of eighteenth-century working-class homes in the Bario Analco, one of the oldest sections of Santa Fe.
(9) Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation, Inc., Sanibel Island, Florida,
has been established to protect from commercial development the natural heritage of these two semitropical islands in the Gulf of Mexico, long famous for their birds, seashells, and scenery. Little time is left to implement its program of land acquisition, wildlife protection, and education.
(10) Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference, New York, New York,
is dedicated to the preservation of the natural resources and areas of scenic and historic importance along the Hudson River. Through vigorous campaigns to save the Hudson Valley from highways, industrial developments, and power plants (most notably at Storm King Mountain), the organization has gained national recognition for its conservation victories.
(11) South Hill Neighborhood Association, Lexington, Kentucky,
is fighting in the courts and the community to save fourteen historic buildings of unusual interest in a three-block area in Lexington. Listed on the National Register, the buildings span one hundred years of history and include four eighteenth-century log houses, imposing Federal town houses, and two churches.
(12) The Wyckoff Association in America, Brooklyn, New York,
is working to restore the Pieter Wyckoff House, the oldest building (1641 or earlier) standing in New York ‘state and one of the oldest wooden buildings in the country. It has been designated a landmark by the Landmarks Commission and described by the State Historical Association as a “unique treasure.” It is in critical condition after decades of deterioration.
