A New Ecology Program Blooms

The origin of the word ecology comes from the Greek word “oikos” meaning home. It is the study of home, or more appropriately, homes. To learn ecology is to seek a deeper understanding of the interactions between living beings and their homes. What better laboratory than wilderness? Wild places offer autonomy, a rare and valuable gift in a world too often bent to human will. There is much we can learn from self-willed Nature, so much, in fact, that we may not even know all the questions to ask.

The Wildlands Ecology program began in 2020 with the mission of learning to be better listeners, a skill the land has always known. What else is lost, aside from the trees, when a forest is logged? How long after logging ceases does it take the land community to recover? Could the northern forests of today once again sustain apex carnivores who were driven out by humans a century or more ago? Do older forests in the Northeast present a higher risk of fire because of the accumulation of dead wood? Or a lower one, because of their ability to retain more moisture? How does carbon storage in woody debris in the forest compare to that stored in wood products, such as lumber or furniture? Now safeguarding over 73,000 acres of rewilding landscapes across the region as a living, learning laboratory, the Wilderness Trust is committed to looking for answers and sharing that knowledge with you and the scientific community.

In 2022, the Wildlands Ecology program’s accomplishments included:

Established long-term research plots on Woodbury Mountain Wilderness Preserve;

Piloted remote camera study on wildlife use of coarse woody debris;

Began collecting baseline soundscape data at multiple Preserves; Co-authored the research paper, Determining puma habitat suitability in the Eastern USA;

Organized a session on the science of old forests at the Northeast Natural History Conference.

Six-spotted tiger beetle Wood frog

Measuring an emergent white pine