FCCI visits the Waterboro Barrens Preserve
Written by: Gavriela Mallory
The fourth year of Maine’s Forest Climate Change Initiative (FCCI) kicked off this fall with a field tour of the Waterboro Barrens Preserve. The FCCI webinar and field trip series is a collaborative effort between Maine TREE Foundation, the Forest Stewards Guild, and UMaine’s Center for Research on Sustainable Forests (CRSF). Through quarterly webinars and field tours, the initiative fosters conversation and learning on the impacts of climate change in the Maine woods. The theme of FCCI’s fourth year is adaptation and implementation. Workshops will explore climate-catalyzed forest health concerns and the many tools and strategies land managers are implementing to address them.
Waterboro Barrens Preserve is found in a pitch pine barren ecosystem, a globally rare (S1 in Maine) natural community. As participants arrived on site on a crisp fall morning, bluebird skies overhead, many immediately noted its unfamiliarity. The Waterboro Barrens are a far cry from arm-scratching branches of a spruce-fir forest or the patterned light pockets on the floor of a northern hardwood stand. This recently thinned pitch pine stand features tall trees with abundant elbow room over an understory of low, crunchy-leafed scrub oak. It’s a forest you could cartwheel in.
The open and airy composition of the Waterboro Barrens reflects many years of thoughtful ecological stewardship by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the preserve’s property owner and land manager. The pine barrens ecosystem is fire-adapted, meaning its species evolved in relationship with fire, and subsequently require fire to regenerate, compete, and thrive.
Fire has always been a present force on Maine’s landscapes. For tens of thousands of years, Wabanaki Peoples used fire to shape the land we now know as the Maine woods. Beginning in the early 1900s, land management agencies in Maine, and across the United States, prioritized suppression when responding to fire on the landscape. This tactic was responsive to the harm that wildfire can, and has, caused in human communities. However, universal fire exclusion is detrimental to ecosystems like pitch pine barrens that depend on fire to thrive. Jon Bailey, Southern Maine Land & Fire Manager at TNC, works with his team to consistently put good fire on the landscape at the Waterboro Barrens and across Maine’s fire-adapted ecosystems.
What characterizes “good” fire? Good fire achieves the conditions native species, like pitch pine, blueberries, and whippoorwills, need to thrive, such as bare mineral soil for successful regeneration and suppression of competing vegetation like woody shrubs. Good fire cleans up fuels, like dead leaves, twigs, and small branches, on the forest floor to ensure that future fires (intended or unintended) burn gently on this landscape. Good fire is ignited with abundant forethought, preparation, and care to limit smoke exposure for neighbors and maintain reliable burn boundaries. As climate change rapidly shifts the landscape of forest health threats in Maine, good fire is also helping to ward off newly threatening pests.
The Southern Pine Beetle, in particular, has become a concern for TNC and other managers of New England pine forests. Native to the Southern United States, this pest has historically tormented loblolly and shortleaf pine stands south of New Jersey. But warming winters have allowed Southern Pine Beetle (SPB) to grow its range northward. Kevin Dodds of the USDA Forest Service is one of many researchers monitoring SPB’s spread and helping forest managers work to avoid its more severe impacts. Forest management activities, like thinning and burning, can lower habitat quality for SPB. The open spacing of the Waterboro Pine Barrens allows wind to move through and disperse SPB pheromones, which would otherwise accumulate and attract additional beetles. Using baited traps, Dodds and his team have detected SPB presence at Waterboro Pine Barrens since 2021. However, detection levels indicate a smattering of visitors rather than an infestation or outbreak. This limited impact is likely thanks in no small part to TNC’s forethought and management.
The FCCI tour closed with a discussion of the complicated work of being both a good ecosystem steward and a good neighbor. The Waterboro Barrens Preserve abuts neighborhoods where residents are not always excited to hear logging operations or experience smoke impacts from prescribed burning. Good management and good fire are not without tradeoffs. Maine Forest Service District Forester, Oliver Markewicz, and Jon Bailey discussed the importance of building relationships, offering educational opportunities, and listening well. Understanding tradeoffs requires thoroughly considering differing perspectives. As Maine builds towards a climate-resilient future for ecosystems and human communities alike, deciphering our best path forward will require disagreement, expertise, lived experience, good conversation, and trusted collaboration.
At the Waterboro Barrens Preserve, TNC works hard to ensure neighbors have plenty of heads up on harvest plans and burn days. When smoke management doesn’t go as planned, the organization finds creative ways to offer relief to impacted residents. Jon, Oliver, and their teams are also working to educate community members about the unique ecosystem they live within. Prior to systematic fire exclusion, pitch pine barrens were more prevalent; but today, not many Mainers call pine barrens home. That’s part of what makes this preserve so special.
Are you curious about fire-adapted ecosystems and good fire? Check out these resources:
